Skálduggery

I smelled a bit of a rat when I first encountered the Einstök range up north. Icelandic beer, in the supermarket, with an English language label? It screams inauthenticity (a difficult word to scream, in fairness). But it's only sort-of inauthentic: the beers are actually brewed in Iceland, albeit under contract at a large industrial brewery. The brand itself is American-owned and the beers are barely available in Iceland: they're certainly not typical of the place.

Missing the seasonal Doppelbock, I got three from the range and the first I opened was Einstök White Ale, brewed with coriander and orange peel. So, a witbier then. Well, not really. They've got some lovely juicy citrus fruit and a hint of the herbal spice, but it's totally clear: a wan yellow-gold. And I think the spicing you get from suspended witbier yeast is an important part of making this sort of beer worth drinking. But witbier isn't a style to get precious over: it's intended as quaffable summery refreshment and that's exactly what you get with this. Drinking closer to the source, Icelandic blogger Haukur had similar thoughts, though his beer was properly hazy.

Next I tried the Einstök Pale Ale. At 5.6% ABV and a deep orange colour, this started me thinking immediately of English-style IPA. It has a bit of the marmalade too, but not nearly enough hops. In fact, it's a bit sticky, with more burnt sugar than fruit or bitterness. The bottle had been sitting about for a few months so I may have missed the best of the hop flavour and aroma, but it's hard to believe they disappeared leaving so little trace. I'm not about to run out for a fresh one anyway.

Dessert in this puffin-free Icelandic feast is the Toasted Porter, 6% ABV and quite thick with it, forming a long-lasting ivory head over a black body tinged with red at the edges. The aroma certainly lives up to the "Toasted" moniker, exuding an intense burnt roasty dryness. It's not all toast in the flavour, however, and there's a generous dose of dark chocolate and coffee to lighten the load. Not to add weight to this particular style argument, but this porter reminds me more of many an English mild, what with the roast, and then a vaguely fruity finish suggesting damsons and plum jam.

Icelandic dark mild: could be a winner.

Serially and cereally

Session time again. February's host is Montana Beer Finder and the topic is "How We Love Beer". Well this shouldn't be too hard. Specifically, Ryan's Valentine's-inspired theme asks for the little things we do that show our affection for beer. Or the big things.

I'll leave aside the nearly eight years of scribbling tasting notes here and the beer consumers' organisation I help manage, and say on a more personal level that I express my love for beer by usually having a different beer to the beer I just had. In fact, I almost don't have a go-to beer, and when I revisit old favourites they're generally beers I haven't tasted in several years. My first call, everywhere, is for the one I've not tried before. The new experience, the thrill of an unfamiliar brewery, especially one that lots of other people are talking about. Adding a new famous beer to my tick list gives me social ammunition to fire when beer is being talked about. Yes, I'm a beer bore, but beer loves me all the same.

So it was with a frisson of excitement that I heard the new one from Galway Bay brewery had landed in Dublin. Its real name is Buried At Sea but it was travelling under an assumed identity, introducing itself as "Galway Bay Chocolate Stout" when we made our rendez-vous at The Black Sheep.

It's billed as a milk chocolate stout so I was expecting something thick and sweet and creamy but it's not in that vein at all. Instead we have a 6% ABV thumper very much along the lines of Carlow's wonderful Leann Folláin: heavy with dark malts and a generous dose of dry roast at the end. It hides the chocolate coquettishly, revealing it gradually as the pint slips down. Not overly sweet, it's a kind of a crumbly, flakey effect. This is the sort of stout to enjoy as you disappear under a waterfall in a rowing boat.

Only the satisfying weight of the beer stops it from being a wham-bam down-the-hatch sinker. Take it slow and don't think about other beers as you're doing it. It'll know.

Beer: whatever the colour, whatever the weight; no matter how it smells or tastes, I have time for it all. Form an orderly queue.

Time is running short - call national strike action!

The article below is from the latest Classroom Teacher bulletin. A copy can be downloaded from: http://classroomteacher.org.uk/ctfeb2013.pdf

UNLESS WE TAKE NATIONAL STRIKE ACTION SOON, Gove will have won his ‘war’ on teachers without teaching unions even having put up a serious fight. Teachers face losing thousands of pounds from our pay, and from our career-average pensions, as cash-strapped schools refuse teachers pay-rises. Demoralisation will get even worse as managers pick-and-choose who gets what, and impose even harsher demands and targets on us.  

Keep up the pressure on the Executive
Time is running dangerously short to force Gove back. That’s why the NUT National Executive’s decision NOT to call a first day of national strike action on 13 March will have been a disappointment to many teachers. But the narrow margin of the vote – with 20 votes in favour and just 22 against – shows that the pressure from classroom teachers IS having an effect. It’s now vital that, in every region of the country, NUT members apply even more pressure on their Executive members to vote for the urgent campaign of strike action that we need. That same pressure also needs to be applied inside the NASUWT too.
 
“The time to sit back has to end”
The official NUT press release following the National Executive meeting rightly stated that “Michael Gove must understand that unless this onslaught against teachers’ pay, pensions and working conditions stops then strike action is inevitable. Teachers do not take strike action lightly but when the profession is being torn apart by a Government whose reforms have little to do with standards, or evidence, then the time to sit back has to end”. That’s true but, for now, teachers are still being told to sit back!”. The February NUT Executive MUST call action!  
 
National action needs to to start THIS term
A programme of national action really needs to start before Easter. Action at the end of the summer term alone will surely be too late to force Gove into retreating from his damaging threats, or, at the very least, into making some concessions to teaching unions. By then, the legislation will have already been agreed by Parliament. Governing Bodies will already be meeting to discuss how to implement the plans for September. By then, some schools will be deciding which teachers will receive a 1% annual increase, and who will receive nothing at all. Some will start to make pay decisions based on THIS year’s appraisal targets – blocking pay progression for teachers from September 2013. If we’re not careful, teachers will have concluded that the battle’s over before it’s really started ! 

Follow action in March with further strikes 
Teachers are practical people. It will be tough to lose pay on strike days but, if we can force Gove back, we’ll save so much more! But, a one-day ‘protest’ strike won’t be enough; we need an ongoing programme of action. At school meetings, Reps’ Briefings, and NUT Conference, teachers will want to debate what, when and ‘how often?’ At the 300-strong London NUT Briefing, there was a lot of applause given to reps who proposed escalating from an initial one-day action to a further 48-hour strike next term. Whatever is agreed, teachers need to start preparing now by putting away some cash to pay for the strikes to come and building hardship funds to help those who can’t do so. 

Teachers will support action - if unions give a lead
The London NUT Briefing voted unanimously for national strike action. Last year’s legal ballot - and subsequent internal surveys - have also backed national action. Of course, the mood isn’t even across all schools and all regions; that’s inevitable. But we have no shortage of arguments to give to both teachers and parents to explain why Gove, in general, and PRP, in particular, has to be opposed. It’s high time unions started getting those arguments out to their members and building for action!  
 
How long can we wait for the NASUWT?
By that narrow majority, the NUT Executive voted to delay calling action and to wait to see if further discussions with the NASUWT could produce a joint plan of action. But how much longer can the NUT wait? And are the NASUWT prepared to sanction more than just a one-day protest? If the NASUWT won’t act quickly enough, then the NUT will have to act without them to start with - just as happened in June 2011 over pensions. If the NUT calls action on March 20, then it’s very likely that, as in 2011, it can co-ordinate with PCS members taking national action too.

NUT Executive meets again on February 28
Time is now dangerously short, but pressure from below has been having an effect. Further pressure can make sure that the next NUT National Executive meeting on February 28 finally calls national action. The future of education, and of union organisation, is at stake. Gove is out to wreck education and rip apart our national pay and conditions. But the stakes are too high to get downhearted by the continued delays. NUT members, reps and Local Associations must demand that a serious programme of action is called before it is too late.

New tricks from the old guard

It had been many years since I tasted any beer from  3 Fonteinen. Once upon a time it was one of the top lambic houses in Belgium and then in 2009 disaster struck when a faulty thermostat destroyed about a year's worth of stock. And unlike most beers, with lambic you can't simply throw together a replacement batch and have it on sale in a few weeks. The company became a blendery, though plans have been hatched to start distilling and brewing once again.

Recently, the missus brought a bottle of 3 Fonteinen Doesjel back from Brussels. This is a blend of 1, 2 and 3-year old lambic and I'm guessing it dates from the post-catastrophe era. It's 6% ABV and a lovely orange-gold colour. The first surprise is in the aroma: sour, of course, but there's a distinct and intriguing sweetness too. On tasting this unfolds into a juicy, pithy jaffa flavour backed by a mild, short-lived, tang of sour funkiness. An odd combination for an old lambic and one that left me feeling something was missing. I expected bigger sourness and perhaps some old wood. Instead, the fruit flavours put me in mind of Cantillon's Iris, except it's nowhere near as good as Cantillon's Iris. Disappointing, in short.

From one first-string gueuzerie to another. You wouldn't have thought one of the most po-faced and serious of the lambic breweries might produce something as frivilous as this garishly-labelled beer. Yet here it is: Framboise Girardin. Proper grown-up lambic, with raspberries.

From the half champagne bottle it looks gorgeous, a crystalline blood red. The aroma is pure raspberry: sweet without a hint of sourness. Nothing sugary when you taste it, though. The raspberry is still present in a big way, but it's the dry crispness of raspberry seeds. You can just about tell there's a sour beer underneath -- a bit of an acid burn in the nostrils and the faintest catch at the back of the palate -- but otherwise it's all about the raspberries, while avoiding any trace of sugary sickliness. It's the sort of beer that reminds me why people thought of putting fruit in lambic in the first place, and makes me wonder why more of them aren't better at achieving this kind of balance.

Lobby the NUT Executive on February 27

At a General Meeting held last night, described by Betty Joseph, the NUT Executive member present, as "very angry indeed", Hackney NUT became the fourth London NUT Association, so far, to back the call for a Lobby of the NUT Executive on Wednesday, February 27th - the evening before the full National Executive meets again to discuss the action we will be taking to stop Gove's Performance Pay plans. 

To download a copy of the leaflet, go to the Lewisham NUT website, https://local.teachers.org.uk/lewisham/news/PerformancePay.cfm

Can't see the sap for the trees

The claim on the back to be brewed with "a glimmer of Canadian maple" is a bit of an enigmatic one. I can't help thinking that the word "syrup" got cut from the copy at the last minute. As is, Holt's of Manchester leave it up to us to decide whether it's twigs, bark or something else in their Maplemoon "mystical maple ale".

It looks lovely: a deep clear amber. The aroma is less impressive, vaguely sticky smelling dark malt and a significant carbonic bite, made even more disappointing by the promise of Cascade on the label. Fortunately it's not overly sweet, sticky, heavy or fizzy on tasting, but it's not much else either. The flavour is a short-lived one-dimensional mix of biscuit and dark fruit -- think garibaldis or similar -- and there's nothing as exotic as maple syrup, or Cascade hops for that matter.

Perfectly drinkable, then, but not as interesting as Holt's would like you to think.

London NUT members call for action

It needed to be an important event to pull a trade unionist away from Lewisham this weekend - but I left over 20,000 others to march to defend our hospital!

Young and old march to save the NHS in Lewisham

However, as an NUT Executive member facing a critical moment in our campaign to stop Gove's plans to rip apart our national pay scales, I had to be in Stoke Rochford for the NUT's London weekend, which gathered together around 70 local officers and reps to debate how to build the Union and its campaigns.

The original agenda of the weekend, now an annual event, was focused on how to strengthen our organisation of the 50,000-plus NUT members in the Union's strongest region. Important plans were developed to train and consolidate school reps, to make links to support Local Associations across the capital, to pursue Union recognition in Academies, to publicise the damage being caused by Tory education policies - including the free school plans of Mayor Johnson - and more. However, all of these discussions was understandably overshadowed by the debate around the PRP campaign - and the regrettable failure of the Executive to vote for strike action on March 13.

All six London NUT Executive members had voted for that March 13 action but strong criticism was voiced by many reps at the decision, by a small majority of the National Executive, to continue to delay setting a first date for national strike action. Other reps were less sure as to how their members would respond to the news from the Executive - but were left with a lot of food for thought to discuss back in their Local Associations.

Some reps were critical of the lack of information that was being circulated to members to explain Gove's attacks. Many took copies of the materials that had been produced and circulated by Lewisham NUT ( posted on the Lewisham NUT website: http://local.teachers.org.uk/lewisham/news/PerformancePay.cfm ).  

These Lewisham materials included a model leaflet for parents. Plans were proposed for joint days of action where we circulate materials to the public of London - both at the school-gates and in our local shopping areas.

A few reps were hopeful that the NASUWT would agree to joint action and our campaign could then be put back on track. However, I warned that a joint one-day strike late in the summer term could too easily be seen by teachers as 'too little, too late'. If we were to show teachers that we were seriously seeking to force Gove back, it was vital to take action THIS term. 

I called on London Associations to back the call for the National Executive meeting on February 28th to call a national strike on Budget Day, March 20th, hopefully co-ordinating with the PCS union who may also take national action on the day.

This was backed by several other Local Association officers. For example, Kash Mallick from Redbridge, making clear that he had no affiliation to any party or 'bloc' within the Union, angrily questioned why the National Executive couldn't see that all these plans for Union organisation would be ripped to shreds if teachers were divided and beaten down by performance-pay.

London teachers are obviously not alone in expressing this anger. A report posted on the LANAC website ( http://www.nutlan.org.uk/?q=node/841 ) confirms that NUT reps at the Regional briefing in Leeds on Saturday voted unanimously to ask the National Executive to overturn their decision and call a national strike on March 20.

In discussions with me, some questioned whether I could seriously expect the Executive to vote for action on March 20 when they had just voted down action on March 13 ? However, I explained that pressure from classroom teachers was already having an effect, and we had to keep up that pressure between now and the next Executive. We had no choice but to demand that the Union enacts the campaign that was needed to defend pay, conditions and education - before it was too late.

To help keep up that pressure, Lewisham NUT are calling for support for a Lobby of the NUT Executive, meeting outside NUT HQ in Hamilton House, WC1H 9BD, on Wednesday February 27th at 5pm. 

'Outstanding' teachers speak:

Tim Woodcock, Greenwich NUT Secretary, read out some comments from his colleagues that reveal the low morale of teachers - before Gove's plans make things even worse:

"If your card is marked they will find fault with your lessons. This is not fair but I have seen it happen. We would not treat children with such a lack of respect".

"I love teaching and the pupils are great. I am prepared to work hard but I no longer have a life outside school. I cannot see how I can do this much longer. I have been a teacher for four years".

"I used to walk into every class in my department most days to talk to teachers and the pupils, check how they were doing. I have stopped because it is seriously affecting my relationship with teachers who are constantly worried they are being mentored or judged. Yet all of their lessons are good or outstanding"

"I do not know what outstanding means anymore; it does not mean to innovate, because to innovate you need to take risks. I can no longer take risks because I need to follow the OFSTED criteria".

... and finally,

"I wanted to be a teacher all my life. I am leaving at the end of term. I have no job!"

.. and before any critics wonder if these are teachers that are just 'not up to the job', Tim pointed out, these quotes all come from teachers deemed to be 'outstanding' ...