A pint of plain minus following day’s pain

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

As oxymorons go, alcohol-free Guinness is right up there with Government intelligence – our greatest export neutered by taking the only thing of real substance in it out of it.

Alternatively this might be the saviour of the nation – a way to drink Guinness to your heart’s content and then drive home and be perfectly fine for work the next morning.

Diageo has been forced into action in Indonesia – the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country – after the government clamped down on alcohol sales this year.

And given that the company controls around 15 per cent of the Indonesian beer market – until last year was the world’s fifth-biggest market for Guinness – it could hardly stand idly by.

Although the ban doesn’t apply to big supermarkets and restaurants, its implementation already seen a 40 per cent fall-off in sales there – so now Guinness Zero is set to bridge the gap.

Bearing in mind that the Guinness you get in Ireland bears little more than a passing resemblance to the saccharine Guinness you get in Africa, one might presume that Asian tastes are different to ours as well.

So perhaps they are starting this process with a very different product in the first place.

But what if it works?

How great would it be to get a pint of Guinness with no alcohol in it?

You could go out again on a Tuesday night and not worry about a headache that will last you through the rest of the week.

You won’t have to wait for a taxi or someone to collect you because you’ll be perfectly able to drive yourself home.

And best of all, you won’t get people coming up to you in your local asking you why you’re drinking orange – viewing you with overt suspicion or spreading stories that you’re just back from John of God’s.

Of course part of the attraction of the pint of Guinness is the kick off it but equally, if you weren’t drinking, think how nice it would be to still enjoy that sense of anticipation as your pint slowly settles to black with a creamy head in front of you…even if the alcohol is gone out of it.

It’s quite a task of course because most of the alcohol-free beers and lagers currently on the market have all the attraction and consistency of a pint of Jeyes fluid – taking the alcohol out seems to take all of the good with it.

But if anyone can crack it, Guinness can – so let’s go with the flow.

In praise of  politicians

There will be plenty of abuse hurling at them from all quarters – including possibly this one – over the next few weeks, but just before they come under starters’ orders, it is timely to heap a small trailer-load of praise on our politicians.

Not just the elected ones either but also those who would seek to displace them – because it takes courage and bravery to put yourself forward for election…or, more likely, rejection.

None of the rest of us have our work analysed in forensic detail, at least every five years – and none of us is open to the scrutiny that those who represent us and aspire to represent us are.

Some of what we all say about them may well be true, but often the criticisms are not alone not valid, they’re not even factually correct.

Collectively, politicians are too easily dismissed as underworked, overpaid and on the make.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.