Is this yet another victory for big business against local communities?

One of the first rules of investigative journalism, thanks to Watergate, is: follow the money.

Well this blog is clearly a forge of investigative work, ahem, so now the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has this week decided that the landlord-loathed "beer tie", which the pub-owning corporations use to boost their profits (or screw every last penny from their tenants, depending on your opinion) is absolutely fine, how did our loyal friends "the money markets" react?

Shares soared, of course. Because the tie is all about money and people who are all about money. It's not about your local boozer or your genial landlord pulling you a glorious pint of Exmoor Ale or Country Life's Golden Pig. It's not about working pubs which reflect history and community; it's about corporations, spreadsheets, boardrooms, and second homes in France. There are national, even international, margins which must be kept and must be kept to improve dividends.

The news wires are today, October 22, are reporting that shares in Enterprise, which owns loads of pubs round 'ere, gained 19% after the controversial OFT announcement, while Punch went up 12%, and Marston's jumped 4%.

The OFT told the national press in a statement: "The evidence indicates that consumers benefit from a good deal of competition and choice within this sector."

Of course there are universes of meaning within the apparently simple phrase "consumers benefit". Which consumers, how many, and how do they benefit?

My personal opinion, as a consumer who loves the benefits of the English pub with a passion, as I hope this blog shows, is that the tie is an outrage and a scandal. I know some North Devon landlords agree with me.

Camra, which brought a "super complaint" to the OFT, is now appealing to Lord Mandelson to intervene. Maybe like he did with the Post Office? Fat chance.

I'm not a member of Camra but I can only support its ongoing campaign to save the local pub. I hope one day we'll all accept that the pub is not a business like any other, it's a cornerstone of our culture, which shouldn't be subject to the cut-throat vagaries of the Alice in Wonderland stock market.

When it comes to Back Street Boozers, there is Good Ordinary and Bad Ordinary

The landlord stood behind the bar like the captain of a ship on a warm glassy sea.

No waves, no storms, no icebergs, no monsters, no theme nights, no McDonald's-isation, no pap music.

From the chill autumn evening we went into the Black Horse Inn with a draft of woodsmoke in the air behind us. Such a fine moment: crossing the threshold of an unvisited pub.

If my odyssey so far has taught me owt, answers on a pigeon, it's that there are back street boozers and there are back street boozers (BSBs); they are not all alike. The Black Horse, for example, is pleasingly ordinary. Although its history is said to go back 400 years, or so, the pub has not been preserved in amber or, shudder, Made To Look Old. It is homely without being over-domesticated; clean and tidy without being sterile. It smells invitingly of beer, rather than of stale human bodies, like some ale houses do these days.

There are BSBs which are dipso-magnets, who keep the fires burning with a certain high level of mutually-assured addiction, while others seem to exist on thin air, with never more than two, often fairly unusual, customers at any one time. The best type of BSBs are not like that; they are the ones like the Black Horse: unpretentious but still with a bit of character, friendly, with good beer. The landlord and the customers make the pub, not the decor, or the food menus, or the gardens, or the money wizards in offices on business parks.

When it comes to BSBs, as with any pub in fact, there are perhaps two main categories: Good Ordinary and Bad Ordinary. The Pubco chains, in particular, seem to do things on the cheap and without much soul; they are money people; they have a tendency to make pubs Bad Ordinary. In fact some of them have a tendency to try to knock pubs down and built nasty flats, but that's another story...

The pints of Otter served to our party of three at the Black Horse were poured by the "good captain" behind the bar straight from the cask. If, like me, you have yet to meet a beer which is too bitter, or too hoppy, you might share my feeling that Otter can, if the moon isn't right and you've slept badly, wash down a bit inspid. I was thinking, for comparison, of that superlative pint of Proper Job we had drank down (like lemonade it was so tasty) at the Corner House in Barnstaple the week before.

Still, so few pubs serve beer straight from casks, by gravity, it is always worth trying what is on offer.

We were there on a Friday evening at about 9pm and there were about eight other people there, all probably over the age of 50. There was no loud piped cack, so we could, you know, sit and, you know, TALK TO EACH OTHER! 

Why were noisier pubs in Braunton busier that night? Could be lots of reasons. I guess once upon a time the locals immediately near the tucked-away BSB Black Horse would have been slightly less wealthy than they are, at least in property terms, now. The pub has always been a refuge for the English man, and indeed woman, away from home. If home is your obsession, and indeed your money pit, perhaps you're more likely to stay in your over-decorated palace and drink wine from Tesco. Bit of a shot in the dark, that theory, and, to be honest, I have what can only be described as slight drunkenness and zero evidence to back it up. But that's what pubs are all about: thinking and then talking unsubstantiated rubbish without some do-right telling you to Fill In A Reality Form. Take away my Reality Form, I have a Theory! Particularly if the seas are calm - and the tiller's steady.

The Black Horse Inn, Braunton

Adam's Ales Rating: 4 out of 5

Drink This: See what's in the barrel behind the bar