What happened?

CAMRA mail lists etc.

In article , ChrisF writes

When was it vibrant?

Does anyone remember when there were pubs like this, you'd walk in and there was nobody at all, just the dust dancing in a sunbeam and the pub cat. You'd sit down and read the CAMRA branch newsletter or something until the landlady's husband wandered in and said "We aren't actually open until half-past, but would you like a drink while you're waiting?"

Almost all usnet groups I've been involved are a shadow of their former selves. People don't really now what they are, or use FB.

And I wonder whether there's a bit of information fatigue nowadays too, as the sheer volume of stuff we have to get through on the internet is a bit overwhelming.

Despite this I hope your comment right inspire a mini-revival!

Cliff

Be careful, there are lurkers out there........

Yep. A few years ago, I could not have received, free of charge, and ten minutes after asking for it from my office chair, the manual and parts list for a long-out-of-date Hayter lawnmower's engine, or found information on the bulbs required for the light fixture I got from Freecycle yesterday, or any of the hundreds of other bits of information that I just type into my keyboard, and the results come zooming towards me. Facebook and Twit(ter) are the scourge of the modern world! I refuse to keep up with old friends by going to their Facebook pages, if they don't want to correspond with me, that's tough.

Could easily be the lists. Now I'm retired, a friend and I go for a lunchtime pint and a sandwich in a different country pub around Gloucestershire once a week. We've been using the LocAle guide in the CAMRA booklets, and although my pal is a Guinness drinker (it saves him having to have a sandwich - a Guinness and a knife and fork is all he needs :-) ) it has served us in good stead for finding some good beers - not having done this for years I'm very pleasantly surprised as to how many good beers there are around, and how many good pubs there are left.

CAMRA didn't like discussing real ale "outside of the club" so they put up the barriers and took all their discussions private.

It appears that now no-one outside of the organisation knows what they are doing.

CAMRA didn't like members discussing private internal matters on a public group - that's somewhat different.

General chit chat now occurs all over the place and this is one such location. Much of the general news promulgation now occurs on the individual web sites, details tend to be on the local news letters distributed in pubs. You can also find details of the web sites etc by going to the main CAMRA web site.

The thing is the campaign has a lot of younger members these days and they like the new fangled face-twitter etc and rather look down on such old fashioned things as newsgroups. No pictures you see.

The problem is that certain parts of the CAMRA fraternity seem to believe that internal matters extend to everything related to beer, pubs and beer festivals.

Isn't that going to be preaching to the choir?

Worse still, some might listen to popular beat combos. And a few might even have female tendencies.

The patronising or even hostile attitude to "young" people that I found more than once was the main reason I never joined CAMRA. There was the distrust of the interwebz, but I particularly remember some years ago being lectured on how historic pubs were being trashed because of students - there was no concept that some of students might want to drink real ale in traditional pubs. A friend-of-a-friend in CAMRA managed a website, and told me there was an on-going argument about whether to update ASAP or only once a year as if it was a book.

Yeah, I could have joined and lobbied for change. Or I could not, and just drink beer.

and of course a newsgroup is always going to attract the youthful. People like you and me use these things but the truth is that most non-fossils use the social media stuff. Finding where these things are in said social media is achieved by many means and the main web site is one such and also points to places where real people can meet real people (I believe they still call these places pubs)

Well the morning wake up in this house was advertising the Great British Beer Festival the other week in a gap between Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, or was it Muse?

Kerrang doesn't make the earspace until we get in the car you see.

The wife plays with the social media, it's never interested me much possibly because I spend most of my life treating IT kit as a tool or object for repair. Most people that used to frequent this group now use said media - which has the facet (advantage or disadvantage?) that you can access those channels via the fancier phones around these days. I could go all geeky here about the processor in use being a personal favourite.

Strangely enough the main reason for destruction was greed by owners trying to promote vertical drinking for maximum space utilisation. Most people going into such establishments had left the student category at age 16

Content or layout? Frequent and eventually are probably the correct respective answers.

Or work at events and meet like minded people on a regular basis - some I've known for years missed the presence of the wife at this years Great British Beer Festival which was due in large part to accommodation issues, mostly disgusting ripoffs by hoteliers and landlords of flats/apartments. Of course just drinking at the right places is a form of lobbying - vote with the feet and all that.

Quite.

Content. IIRC the issue was along the lines of the management of having moved to in town, which was now the best pub for miles around and deserving of support. But nobody could be told this, because updating happens on the eighth Tuesday after Michaelmas or something. So visiting drinkers would instead go looking for the pub which had burned down and sank into a swamp.

And regional representatives refusing to accept GBBG entries in electronic form and - and staff CAMRA HQ believing that it was OK to turn around orders in 28 days when nearly every company on the web was promising next day dispatch etc.

I joined, I lobbied, I became active - and after a few years realised that change was almost impossible. 15 years on, I occasionally still see the current active committee members in pubs - very little has changed.

In fairness, they're very underfunded compared to the poeple who have the budget to samp their fingers for short deadlines.

Don't see how you can say that. CAMRA has effected tremendous change, even in the last fifteen years, in forcing or encouraging brewers and landlords to up their game.

Cliff

I think it was a reference to the internals of CAMRA branches and regions not changing but that is very much a mixed bag. Some branches change at the same rate granite erodes and some show rapid evolution. It tends to depend on the people in them and whether they want to change. I changed certain aspects of my local branch by not being there to do things so others had to do them and they used their own ideas.

OK, I've been away again.

But upon my return I see a much healthier list. Maybe, as I noticed further up, my input has stirred things; but at least we can all see that lurking this NG is no worse than sitting maturely beside the warming glow of a comfortable fire in a friendly hostelry with a glass of golden ale to enchant those dancing flames, immersed in the hum of companionable conversation. Content and all without emulating that somewhat teenage need to incessantly interject inane, instant, inconsequentialities.

"Another 'Landlord', please........."

Possibly this thread is a good example of why some folk have passed on to other forums, the start of the thread is quite a good question but then devolves into CAMRA bashing, I can't remember the last time I was on here,so hello to those who remember me on here