beer

[El Gordo]

I read about this when the kerfuffle began, but presumed it would have blown over by now. Evidently not. A great shame. You wonder what 'Greede King' hope to gain from standing firm on their decision. As the article says, they used to have a sterling reputation among consumers of proper beer. No longer, by the sound of it.

I fear it won't help the thirsty people of Lewes, but I hereby announce my personal boycott of GK IPA. This isn't a totally empty threat, as it's the beer I tend to drink in one particular pub here where I live. No more.

There is almost certainly more to this than meets the eye. If it were a small brewery with a handful of pubs, the threat of a boycott would have been enough to make the brewery see sense. The fact that they're holding out, apparently happy to see half a dozen customers per evening instead of a hundred, and an empty space where once was a thriving community pub, suggests that there are bigger corporate considerations. It fits in with a strategy -- presumably the same strategy that destroyed Hardy & Hanson's, and more tellingly, the same strategy that has turned them into a £1bn FTSE 250 company.

Awfully depressing, but GK beautifully reflects Oscar Wilde's celebrated definition of a cynic: someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.