Royals Sample Carbon Neutral Beer: Chuck and Camilla Chug Cold Ones

As Canadians, we're grateful for all the Royal Family have given us, namely a holiday in May that coincides with warmer weather, and currency featuring the Queen, whose craggy visage youngsters can fold into creative shapes when they're old enough to earn an allowance.

We've also noted how gratifying it is to find a crumpled twenty in the pocket of a pair of slacks and included only one tale involving royalty in our who's who of drunks, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, and that concerned a footman who was adding whiskey to the water bowls of the royal corgis – an offense which, although funny, resulted in his demotion.

According to reports, the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were in Suffolk recently, sampling 'carbon neutral' beer (there are conflicting reports as to whether it was flat or fizzy) and arriving by helicopter as befitting such an eco-friendly event.

Here are pictures of the couple testing the 'beer goggles' phenomenon they've no doubt heard so much about.

Big Deal: Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) Switches to Paper Bags, Maintains Python-like Grip on Booze Sales

When it comes to purchasing alcoholic bevvies in our home province, there is only one game in town and that is the retail equivalent of Dodge Ball, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). When Ontarians speak of going to "The Beer Store", or "The Liquor Store" it is not due to some inherent Canadian fondness for speaking in generalities, but an actual trademark reflecting the incredible heights of the government's creativity.

The LCBO holds a government monopoly over the sale of alcohol. To suggest that this should be otherwise is practically a form of apostasy and categorically dismissed not only by the folks who benefit from such an arrangement (the cashiers who lug your cold ones out of storage for $29 an hour in the case of the Beer Store), but by digit waggers who believe that corner store hawkers would be less than diligent about checking for ID (kinda like R Kelly) and that society would descend into oil-drum fire burning, Hobbesian lawlessness.

Of course, these are the same folks who fail to realize that booze is actually purchased for minors by older brothers or more commonly, the guy who hangs around the parking lot who will do it if you slip him a fiver. [Editor's note: those do-gooders also believe the allure of cigarettes is so compelling to young people wandering into a corner store looking for cheese doodles, that packs of smokes should be completely hidden from view]

Along with a minority of people who are of the ludicrous belief that keeping a government monopoly in place and thus a competition level of zero in the liquor market actually ensures a better selection of booze, moves to privatize the LCBO have been stonewalled by the lobbying efforts of a union that would have made Jimmy Hoffa look like the boss's arse-kissing son.

To mitigate the natural resentment many feel towards monopolies and being treated like infants, the LCBO blows millions of taxpayer dollars making their stores look like Saks 5th Avenue outlets (unless you live in a bad neighborhood where they don't bother, and where a security guard with a baton will follow you around keeping a watchful eye on your purchase of an Antinori Chanti Classico or can of Schlitz malt liquor). To boost its public image, which is often more tarnished than Phoenician pottery, the LCBO has recently taken to fancying itself a steward of the planet.

"We try as a government to demonstrate the kind of behaviors that we want others to emulate," according to Public Infrastructure Minister David Caplan, who is responsible for the LCBO.
[Editor's note: Ontario ranks among the top polluters in North America and is number one in Canada]

According to reports, The LCBO hands out some 80 million bags a year. Now, these will be solely of the paper variety, so the transition between laying down your hard-earned $2.75 for that King can and swilling it right out of the bag on the street will be made that much easier.

Ontarians who've had to make the frozen trek to the nearest government-run liquor store or beer store in the dead of winter, polluting the air with their cars and their curses because they're unable to pick up booze at a grocery store like a normal human being, are unlikely to be too impressed by this too-little-and-too-late bid for good PR.

Beer as Fuel, and not just for your drunk Uncle Lou's awkward advances

In a previous blog, we drove home the true threat posed by global warming. Several polar bears may have been set off on that great ice-floe journey from which there is no return since that posting; however, the danger that we were pointing out looms large much closer to home – as close as your basement fridge – the possibility of a global beer crisis due to a lack of barley.

The warming of the planet, combined with a supply-side crisis, has also resulted in a short supply of hops in the US. Microbreweries, faced with less available hops, a key ingredient in their product, have taken to jacking up their prices, and, unless there is a change in the situation, we may be forced to either pay through the nose or agree with those who taunt us for drinking microbrews and settle for whatever is cheap and available because, after all, beer is beer.

This is the kind of news that is best met drunk. A recent TV news report suggested that beer is recession proof, and we would tend to agree. A few years ago you may have been toasting your good fortune, wondering why in the world someone would give a walking debt machine and astronomically high credit risk like yourself a mortgage. Now, with fortunes having reversed, and gas so expensive that you’re bargaining with the neighbor’s kid for his used 10-speed, you can tilt that same bottle to keep your mind off the dark state of your financial affairs.

Beer, however, is useful for more than just pouring down your throat in an effort to escape from the crippling grim reality of the diminished financial and natural resources of you and your country, although it is quite good for that. Beer is working for a better tomorrow.

The 2008 Democratic Convention will be sponsored by Molson Coors Brewing Company. The company’s Coor’s Light, which can most charitably be described as “quite quaffable”, will be on sale at convention events. Despite both he and Hilary Clinton attempting to appeal to the lumpen by palming the odd pint on TV – which we covered here – Barack Obama tied with “none of the above” on a survey asking Americans who among the presidential candidates would make a good drinking partner. To be fair, the best drinking partners we know are able to do things like put cigarettes out on their tongues and so forth, and they would not make good holders of public office.

Perhaps sensing that it would not find a future presidential candidate that was as beer-drinker friendly as Bush, Coors chose a different and innovative tack – rather than merely fueling the drunken antics of young Democrats in functions near the event itself, it will also be fueling the convention’s fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. As the “official ethanol sponsor” Coors will donate fuel made mostly out of beer waste – E85 fuel, 85 percent ethanol (beer in this case) and 15 per cent gasoline). When we speak of beer waste here, we’re not talking about spillage as a result of a shaken beer, or what results when you knock one over your keyboard while typing out a blog. The waste beer being turned into ethanol by Coors comes from beer that had been lost during packaging, or rejected for quality reasons.

Rarely, have the words of Homer J. Simpson been more appropriate: “Here's to alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all life's problems.”