The Null Device
2010/11/20
Let it not be said that the far right are not a diverse bunch. While in Australia, Christian authoritarians flirt with Islamic-style prohibitions on female nudity, in Denmark, the anti-immigrant People's Party wants to show all immigrants videos of topless beaches, to weed out those unsuitable for Denmark's liberal culture:
A documentary film on Denmark that is shown to immigrants as part of the test for entry should include topless bathers, said Peter Skaarup, the party's foreign affairs spokesman. "If you're coming from a strict, religious society that might make you stop and think: 'Oh no,'" he told the newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. "Topless bathing probably isn't a common sight on Pakistani beaches. I honestly believe "Meanwhile, an anti-immigrant party in Switzerland has launched an online campaign featuring an image of naked, distinctly Aryan-looking young women standing in Lake Zürich, contrasted with an image of women in Islamic headscarves in filthy water. Stay classy, SVP.
Why the right in Australia and the right in Europe take different sides in a hypothetical Islamism-vs.-liberalism argument is an interesting question.
The story usually told about British brewing goes something like this: since time immemorial, Britain has had a fine tradition of brewing rich, foamy ales, in shades from amber to nut-brown. Then someone invented lager, which was cheap and convenient, and the undiscerning masses abandoned the venerable traditions of old in droves, instead choosing to down pints of ice-cold Foster's and Carling, and soon the "pint of mild" all but disappeared. As would English ale have altogether, were it not for the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), a sort of Village Green Preservation Society of beer comprised largely of paunchy, hirsute middle-aged men in handkerchief hats, who have so far successfully managed to preserve the tradition, coining the term "Real Ale", and expelling the serpent of unwelcome innovation, such as pressurised kegs, from the Edenic garden that is the British pub. The subtext here being that any use of technologies more recent than a few centuries ago is somehow cheating, and the slippery slope to forgetting Britain's fine heritage and gormlessly pouring pints of bland, gaseous lager down one's gob like some kind of benighted colonial.
Now, however, a new generation of British craft brewers is challenging the CAMRA orthodoxy, and its claim to ownership of proper beer in Britain:
The Scotsman believes Camra holds back innovation in the UK; he takes his inspiration from the US, where a wildly innovative new breed of brewers have revolutionised American beer.
Watt prefers to see his beers served from a keg than a cask, an approach that brings him into conflict with many of the craft brewers who have sprung up across the UK in recent years. "We want to get beyond the people who currently drink good beers in the UK," he explains. "We want to convert fizzy yellow lager drinkers into craft beer aficionados. The easiest way to do that is with keg – if you give them a cask ale, it's so alien, it's much warmer and it doesn't have the nice mouth feel. Keg is much better for the beers we produce."More power to them; in the USA and Australia, where traditions are less entrenched, there is a lot of mass-market swill, but also a lot of superb craft breweries. Perhaps, in adopting the idea of Real Ale as the sole bulwark against homogeneous corporate lager, Britain is erring too much on the side of conservatism.