Dogs' dinners

A dog-friendly pub chain is trying out a new idea: providing meals for dogs while owners scoff their own food. A doggy menu will be provided.

The Brakspear pubs in the trial are the Five Alls near Lechlade, Gloucestershire and the Catherine Wheel in Goring-on-Thames, Berkshire.

What next? Bringing a horse to a watering-hole? Taking an old bull to the Bush? Inviting a cat to the Rat and Parrot? We'll see. It'll depend if the dogs woof the dinners down.


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Another con bites the dust

So, another stakeout ends in a blaze of gunfire: Raoul Moat, the Northumbrian killer on the run, has shot himself when cornered.

The sad truth is that this was a predictable outcome. Think of Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Billy the Kid, John Dillinger, and Adolf Hitler, and a pattern forms. I can only think of Saddam Hussein and Radovan Karadzic as examples of people who came quietly when surrounded.

Perhaps in times of economic uncertainty we are more aware of heinous crimes, as a backdrop to financial hardship. Whether symptom or cause, these cases spring from despair but are magnified by the media. Once such a crime spree starts cascading, the media supplies the oxygen to keep the fire raging: taking the criminal alive would almost seem like an anti-climax.

And how come the most infamous of these episodes always seems to happen in rural idylls? Hungerford, Dunblane, Cumbria and now Rothbury? Why not, say, Birmingam, Cardiff, Edinburgh, or London? After the fuss has subsided, there may be an eerie fascination for a certain type of tourist in visiting the scenes of the crimes.


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Cider House of Commons rules

Cider and perry got the brunt of yesterday's Budget hikes, to the tune of 10 per cent. This was ostensibly to crack down on the problem of binge drinking cheap hooch, witness the ability until recently to buy a pint of cider for 26p in Sainsbury's supermarket.

So what's a poor boozehound to do, now that so many alcohol options are being taxed to the hilt?

Like the recent mephedrone problem in drug culture, where legitimate substances (in this case plant fertiliser) are being abused for cheap yet self-destructive highs, perhaps hard-core drinkers may be tempted to try cheap underground sources of alcohol without the benefits of quality control? Or maybe try to brew moonshine at home? And cheap supermarket loss leaders are not going to disappear overnight, as the British obsession with alcohol is deeply ingrained.

The next phase will be to print warnings on labels, as with cigarette packets, and warn drinkers of the long-term health dangers of over-indulging. While such tactics may be admirable and desirable, the Government earns too much from taxing alcohol to bite the bullet too hard. And too many MPs enjoy a tipple or two, especially in their subsidised bars.

In a few years' time, should social attitudes change, we may see bans on people drinking in public spaces(including outside pubs): the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, made a big play about banning alcohol on the tube. But too many voters enjoy their booze for politicians to get really serious about limiting access to alcohol: accusations of nanny-state policies don't go down well at the ballot box.


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Last bastion of amateur rugby?

Time was that tales of gargantuan drunkenness among international rugby union players were the stuff of awe and legend. Witness prop Colin Smart's encounter with a bottle of aftershave after a rare England win in Paris.

These days such escapades are looked on as schoolboy errors. Welsh No. 8 Andy Powell was rewarded for his buggy trip on the M4 with a 15-month driving ban, a £1000 fine, court costs and -- most pertinently -- by being dropped by Wales like a hot potato.

There's no room in modern sport for 'characters'. Discuss.

Whisky galore on the rocks

Hurrah, explorers have found a whisky stash buried in Antarctica belonging to the ill-fated polar expedition led by Ernest Shackleton.

Boo, hiss. The original manufacturers of the whisky, Whyte & MacKay, intend to get hold of bottle to recreate the long-forgotten blend.

Another example of where an interesting factoid about a genuine hero might be turned into a marketing opportunity to turn Mr Shackleton into a 21st-century celebrity.

I can imagine the label featuring a grizzled Shackleton photo, gurning like Colonel Sanders: less 'Finger lickin' good', more 'Lip-whettin' smooth'.

Hoochenanny: happy New Year

Whether you braved the freezing temperatures to get crushed in a crowd waiting for those fleeting firework moments, nursed a celebration pint in a pub (without having to pay through the nose for the privilege for entering the premises), negotiated a house party without crashing out or leaving territory-marking evidence, or watched the organised mayhem that is Jools Holland's annual Hootenanny music show, it was inevitable that news items in the morning would report a huge spike in alcohol-related admissions to Accident and Emergency facilities.

The spectacle of ambulances screeching towards hospitals is almost as much of a feature of the New Year as the London Eye, Edinburgh Castle, the Eiffel Tower, the Times Square ball drop, the Kremlin, or Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I'm not sure if drinking culture abroad is so endemic outside the UK: our parochial news suggests that British tourists are feared in certain popular holiday destinations, but I don't know if foreign tabloids cover drinking escapades of their own citizens to the same extent.