[theo_luddite]

You juniors on here rabbiting on about how young you are!!! Hmmph (you know how it sounds). I've been retired for over 8 years now and I can highly recommend it. If only I'd had the sense, or more likely the money, to do it earlier. Enjoy your cask ale, theo, for the next 20 years or so.

That could get interesting round here ritchie. When Banks (or Bonksies as it's known round here) Brewery bought Marstons and a bunch of other breweries and went with the Marstons brand, it was anyone's guess whether the Wolverhampton or Burton-on-Trent breweries would survive. It was mostly the smaller one's they bought up that were put to the sword however. Then they sold a big share of the business to Carlsberg and aaaaaall of a suddink earlier this year, Marstons/Bonksies decided they only wanted to sell beer rather than brew it, so sold up the rest of the business to Carlsberg.

Now, if there's one brewery that probably does brewery closures better than anyone else, it's Carlsberg. They've more than just a little history in this department when it comes to once Great British Breweries. So despite the "We're Hiring" banners on the brewery walls that face the Ring Road, they are shutting down 150 years of brewing in Wolvo. It will be interesting to see where (other than maybe Burton-on Trent) Marstons buy their beer from. I reckon it's just got "more expensive to buy at the pump" written all over it either way.

Moving back home to Yorkshire is starting to look like a good idea again.

PS - the same bunch of barstewards ruined then shut Tetley's not long after I moved down here. The bland piss they claim to be probabaly the best lager from fook nose where never get's near me anymore. It isn't and it never will be. They could learn how to brew lager properly if they ever drove south from Denmark into Germany and stopped at the first brewery they come across to ask for directions.