I never want to hear another British complaint about silly EU directives. This one tops them all, so to speak. I don’t care how those warm, flat pints of what the British call beer are poured, but to mandate that Belgian draught beer be served without a head in Britain should be grounds for dismissal from the EU. We should not give Baroness Thatcher the pleasure of pulling out voluntarily. And while we’re at it, let’s boot out the Greeks as well, for not being sufficiently on our side.

[Tue, Mar 19 2002 – 10:34] Felix (www) (email) Mandate WHAT? Come on, Stefan, you know as well as anybody that there’s no hint of “without a head” in any of the legislation. The only question is whether the head is considered part of or additional to the pint of beer.

[Tue, Mar 19 2002 – 15:00] Charles Kenny (www) (email) That 95 percent of the pint (not the glass) has to be liquid does create a problem for Belgian beer, if not the one you think, Stefan. Its that about 50 percent of Belgian beer is apparently made up of the silt from the bottom of Bruges harbor. Not that it doesn’t taste good and all, but surely it doesn’t count as ‘liquid’. So they’d have to serve it in a three pint glass (one for the head, one for the silt, one for the liquid) in order to meet the legal standard.

[Tue, Apr 09 2002 – 11:52] uppers (email) Oh my god, don’t mention the Greeks. What are you trying to do to me???! They were very against the bombing of the serbs too. I think it’s because they think the CIA helped engineer the Generals’ Rule in the 1970s, (to stop the Greeks going Red, when all they were thinking of doing was turning a mild shade of pink) that killed quite a few Greeks in a sort of Pinochet type thing.