Beer should not be a premium product. Beer is a basic human right. But increasingly, in pubs afraid to introduce cover charges, premium beer is doing the evil work in an underhand way that a cover charge will do in an upfront, beer-drinkers-don't-like-bouncers way.

White beer is perhaps the worst of these premium brews. Does anybody apart from me believe that a beer which is white has something intrinsically wrong with it? Apart from the price, of course, which is double the standard going rate for a pint of cheap beer.

Smart bar owners realise that these premium beers cost no more to buy, store or serve. They go where the profits are highest, and by degrees, offer more and more premium beer and less cheap beer options. Eventually, the two-pitchers-for-a-penny deals disappear and cheap beer fans have to follow the same sad route back to fight-or-frolic sawdust saloons.

Imported beers

Some people believe that, unless a beer comes from thousands of miles away, it's not worth drinking. This flies in the face of the recent trend towards microbrew pubs, which produce their own beer in-house, often allowing them to sell them more cheaply than external beers (you notice I said "often": some greedy microbrewers still charge top prices for their in-house grog).