Comment: If it ain’t broke…

It seems that we Brits just cannot be trusted to look after ourselves.

Public safety officials delight in spending government money on “Danger – deep water” signs beside lakes and rivers, as though most casual observers would mistake the vast expanse of water for a mere puddle.

The age-old playground favourite game of conkers has now been deemed to carry too much risk for it to be safe enough for today’s youngsters.

Flymo lawnmowers come complete with a helpful warning to ensure all limbs are safely out of the way of the blades before switching the thing on.

Now it seems we’re not even to be trusted to hold a glass.

Yes indeed, with nothing better to occupy themselves, the health and safety dullards have deemed the classic British pint glass to be too much of a hazard when in the hands of the average human being.

Apparently glassware causes an estimated 87,000 injuries each year. Pint glasses are seemingly more of a danger to the public than knife crime. Yet I for one have never managed to cut myself on my glass, and I can’t think of ever knowing somebody who has.

Regardless of the startling lack of evidence, the Home Office has instructed the Design Council to create a new, safer pint glass. Design Bridge, which has been tasked with the job, says its aim is to reduce the “opportunity for the vessel to be used as a weapon”. This in itself is fair enough, but changing the material or shape of a pint pot isn’t going to stop someone who wants a fight from having one.

Can you imagine big Billy down the pub, getting set to kick off a ruckus with the bloke across the bar who looked at him in a funny way for a split second, only for his rage to subside when he realises the glass in his hand might not shatter on impact with his nemesis? No, Billy will hit him anyway, and maybe throw a bar stool in to the mix for good measure. The new shape and material of his pint glass is as irrelevant as it is confusing to this angry ape and only forces him to come up with new and more imaginative ways of expressing his discontent.

If you want to curb violence in pubs and bars, then the Home Office should perhaps look at ways of helping out over-stretched local police forces and pub doormen. Maybe the money being spent on this project could actually be spent on putting some extra bobbies on the beat or on subsidising the wages of bouncers, which pubs could employ to help keep the peace.

Then there’s the key issue of taste. I’m not talking in a design sense, but as a beer fan. I like my beer cold and in glass – be it a pint glass or a bottle. Beer in plastic or paper cups just isn’t the same. It feels cheap, tacky, and whether it’s a subconscious reaction or not the beer just never tastes right.

This is not simply an opinion, it’s a stone-cold fact which is recognised by the beer industry. Mark Hastings, director of communications at the British Beer and Pub Association, which represents 98% of beer brewers in the UK, said this week: “A glass is a better container for the quality of the beer. You can pick up a taint of plastic from a plastic container.”

He could also have highlighted the costs involved for a pub trade which is already being decimated to the scale of 50 closures per week nationwide. The replacement of an entire stock of glasses may not be too much of a problem for pubco-owned chain bars, but independent rural pubs will find themselves facing yet more administrative costs just to satisfy the desires of a woefully out-of-touch health and safety brigade.

And what’s to say they’ll stop with pint glasses? This could open the floodgates to a whole raft of changes to our drinks containers. Soon we could be drinking our cocktails out of paper cups, or wine bottles could be replaced by polystyrene.

The absurdity of these suggestions merely serves to highlight the total lack of need for change in the way our drinks are served or consumed.

I’ve been drinking in pubs for many years without ever hitting someone with a pint glass or getting hit by one myself.

Once again it’s the actions of the foolish, thuggish, moronic minority that have brought about potentially far-reaching and catastrophic consequences for the average, well-behaved, normal drinker who has never had much of a problem managing to drink a pint without slashing any arteries.

It’s patronising, it’s pointless and it’s not going to make the blindest bit of difference.

Alan Lodge, 26.08.2009 

Do you agree with db? Have you ever injured yourself with a pint glass, or seen others similarly hurt? Do you feel there is a real need to modernise the pint pot? Email your views to debate@thedrinksbusiness.com