This one will address pubs and beer, but first a gulp or two of less appealing liquids.

Here are things that aren’t happening, never mind what certain people say.

The Labour government isn’t cancelling local elections, never mind how often Nigel Farage hisses like a Siamese cat with its head stuck in a tin. It is true that elections for nine councils in England have been postponed from May 2025 to May 2026, so that the councils can take part in local government reorganisation.

All other local elections will go ahead as planned in May, not that the government is looking forward to them.

Nothing has been cancelled, although the people saying that things have been should be.

PS: the Government also did not cancel Christmas; despite what you might have read online, the season went ahead as normal, for good or ill.

Sir Keir Starmer does not wish to cancel the social media site X never mind what Elon Musk, the site’s 54-year-old multi-billionaire owner, says. Musk always carries on like a whiny14-year-old.

What government ministers have said, reasonably enough, is that people should not be able to use X’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to create sexualised images of women without their knowledge or consent. Some of these altered images are also said to have been of children. Why would that even be a thing?

Musk has agreed, mid massive sulk, that only people who pay him to use X can now do that awful thing.

Nothing to do with suppressing free speech. It’s about decency and not behaving like a dick. Or a 14-year-old who can only see the world through his. And, no, I would not like to change ‘dick’ to ‘duck’, as suggested just now by Word’s artificial intelligence interference monitor.

And, no, this does not make Britain a police state, Mr Musk.

For clarification, a police state is a country where an innocent 37-year-old woman is shot dead in her car by a government ICE agent, as happened earlier this week.

Her name was Renee Nicole Good (above). She was a mother and a Christian, or so it is reported. It is also reported that the man who shot her is a Christian, although where does that get us?

Before anyone knew what had happened, Trump and his gruesome acolytes went on television to say without evidence that it had been her own fault. They put on their fibbing faces, the only ones that fit, and said Good ran over the agent who then shot her in self-defence. Yet assorted film clips from different angles appear to show that the agent remained quite uninjured.

This is what happens when everyone lies to back up the lies of the man who lied before they all did. A sorry game of liars’ leapfrog.

Also, back on our own shores, London is not a crime-ridden hellhole, never mind what assorted right-wingers here and in the US say. Go for a weekend and find out for yourself. You’ll have a good time.

Trump does have his fans over here who nuzzle up to that old orange face and sing his praises.

Among Brits lurking in that squeamish vicinity are two former Tory prime ministers. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are seemingly in competition to see who can crawl the most to Trump. I don’t care who wins as they are both, to quote their unworthy hero, losers.

And, no, never mind what you might have read in the Telegraph or the Mail, the government isn’t waging war on country pubs by wanting to reduce the drink-drive limit.

As this was going to be my original starting point, let’s put in an item break and go for a drink.

 

I STARTED swallowing beer as a slightly under-aged drinker in the 1970s and continue now as a slightly over-aged drinker. A decent hand-pulled pint is one of the sainted glories of British life.

And, yes, pubs have faced difficult times, so news that the government may relent on its plan to raise business rates for pubs is a good thing.

No less a York authority that John Pybus, landlord of the splendidly eccentric Blue Bell pub in Fossgate, told the BBC website: “I think a lot of businesses are going to be squeezed into non-existence in the next financial year.”

But drink-driving is a different matter. Years ago I used to have the odd glass of wine at lunch and drive home later. But now if I’m behind the wheel, I don’t drink.

And why should reducing the drink-drive limit hurt country pubs when there is so much alcohol-free beer available nowadays?

Our local bar always has one alcohol-free beer on tap. Not a patch on the real stuff but perfectly OK. It won’t spoil lunch or a night out.

Still the usual suspects spout on, even though this is about road safety, keeping people whole.

As we know, Nigel Farage, the brag and moan man of politics, complains about everything all the time. He says that lowering the drink drive limit would be “absolutely ridiculous and wholly unnecessary”. He also claims the proposals were the work of the “Islington, north London bicycling classes” who “hate” rural Britain.

Ah, there he goes, wheeling out those stale cliches again. What a load of beer-dribbling twaddle.

Should you yearn for more, here’s Stanley Johnson burbling in the Telegraph over the froth of his pint – “We must be allowed to have a pint and still drive. It is an essential freedom.”

Ah, yes, the essential freedom to get pissed and run someone over. What a twerp.

Full disclosure: I have been known to have two pints – or even two-and-a-half very occasionally, look at me go – and to then cycle home, although not all the way to Islington.

Perhaps that is not something to boast about. Anyway mostly now I am carried home by my bus pass, which is almost certainly safer.

As today is Sunday, I shall be going for a pint or two later. A short walk away so need for the alcohol free.