50 years of CAMRA

[trummy]

I have been a member for more years than I care to recall. Love the mag and I enjoyed the newspaper but that is being discontinued. Cannot understand why they still use not easily recyclable plastic envelopes and have refused to change.
The vouchers cover several Pubcos as well as Spoons now.
When I go for a pint I go where the beer/food will be good which tends to make the vouchers superfluous. I do use the membership card to get a bit of discount at some participating pubs (if I remember.)
Must admit I am considering not renewing this year now the newspaper is on the way out

 

[MickDundee]

I'm no pub or brewery business man, but I imagine that the breweries are glad to get their beer in a big chain. Sure margins will probably to tighter, but exposure would be widespread and probably lead onto good things.

I'd imagine wetherspoons provide the vouchers and not camra anyhow.

My dad used to often chat to the (now retired, but sold on) owner of a local “real ale” microbrewery (the brewery was about a mile away from my parents’ old house and the owner was a regular at local beer festivals etc)

This brewery regularly has beer in Aldi and Tesco but says that as much as he would have liked to sell his beer in Wetherspoons, with the prices Wetherspoons pay it would cripple him financially so he couldn’t do it. Margins weren’t just “tighter” they were on the verge of loss making for a brewery his size.

Being in every Aldi brochure in the country when they have their “beer festival” and Scottish themed events gives him much more exposure than being one of eight pumps in a couple of dozen ‘Spoons, and they actually pay him a price that means he can actually live.

Even if the vouchers do come from Wetherspoons not from CAMRA - there are 170,000 CAMRA members in Britain (according to Google) each getting £30 of Wetherspoons vouchers. That’s over £5M of business taken away from other pubs.


I’m not meaning to piss on CAMRA here because what they did in their first 20-30 years was great, but there’s no way they can claim to fight for local pubs whilst pushing the very pub chain that is responsible for so many pubs closing and prices so many small breweries out of having their beer in their pubs.

 

[An Ankoù]

I'm no pub or brewery business man, but I imagine that the breweries are glad to get their beer in a big chain. Sure margins will probably to tighter, but exposure would be widespread and probably lead onto good things.

I'd imagine wetherspoons provide the vouchers and not camra anyhow.

It's the distribution and promotion of these vouchers that led me to drop CAMRA, or at least see it for what it has become. CAMRA are always, rightly, bewailing the closure of pubs, pointing out that pubs are the centre of community and yet they sponsor a chain, which already undercuts the average pub by distributing their 50p-off-a-pint voucher. If that were not bad enough, when Tim Martin started his overtly political campaign he should have been dropped like a hot brick, but no. Whatever they stood for in the past, it's clear what they stand for today and I regret ever having been a member.

 

[obscure]

I was legally allowed to drink on 2008 so I don’t have any of the real horror stories that some have of beer in the 70s and 80s, which I suspect is one of the reason I have no aversion to keg beer in pubs I can quite happily accept that for many styles kegs are the ideal dispensing method and that a lot of the problems where the beers going into the keg rather than how they where dispensed. That being said their is something I think still quite unique about a properly kept pint of cask ale. When I can go back into pubs again it won’t be a pint of keg DIPA or similar that I will be seeking out but a pint of cask bitter. I don’t think CAMRA is perfect but the fact that I can still go into most high street pubs and get a half way decent pint of 4.2% bitter served at celler temperature is something that makes me think that CAMRA is still relevant and has done more good than harm.

 

[trummy]

I will repeat - the vouchers are multi pubco now. However I throw the majority away each year.
Whether CAMRA has much relevance today is debatable but yes a real ale drinker has a lot to thank CAMRA for.