Friday 26 October 2018

Lager

More from Cask Marque this week

Lager
 
Before you all spit out your beer in disgust and wonder what the hell Cask Marque are doing writing about lager, indulge us for a few minutes of your time. One of the most commonly uttered phrases we hear from drinkers is:

“I don’t like beer. But I like lager”

But lager is a beer, whether you like it or not. And for many drinkers, lager will be the first beer style they try, and for brewers, making a good lager requires technical brilliance.

So before you dismiss all lagers as yellow, cold and fizzy, read on…

What’s The Difference Between Lager And Ale?

There is one main difference – it’s in the type of yeast used to ferment the wort (the liquid produced when grain is steeped in hot water) into beer. Lager yeasts ferment at relatively cold temperatures, they ferment much more slowly than ale yeast, and the yeast lies at the bottom of the fermenting vessels.

Coming from the German verb lagern, (‘to store’), lagers are usually matured after fermentation, on the yeast, for between several weeks and several months, often near or below the freezing point (known as lagering).  During this process unwanted flavour and aroma compounds are reabsorbed and transformed by the yeast which settles to the bottom of the beer, leaving it clear.

 



Where Did Lagers Come From?

All lagers have their roots in Bavaria. During the 16th century it was decreed that no beer could be produced in the region between April and September, because it would spoil during the summer months. So ale was made during the winter months, packed into cold, icy, underground caves. The result? The ale yeast became dormant resulting in only lager yeast surviving, and in 1883, this lager yeast was isolated and cultured by the Carlsberg brewery. Called Sachromyces Carlsbergensis, they shared it with brewers around the world, meaning all lagers actually originate from this strain of Carlsberg yeast.

 
Did you know that …… 9 out of 10 beers consumed around the
globe are lagers?

 
As well as mainstream brand lagers such as Budweiser, Carlsberg and Stella Artois, there are also:
  • Pilsners – made using soft water, European hops (usually Saaz), Czech grown malted barley
  • Dark Lagers - There is a common perception that all lagers are golden, light and low in alcohol. However, there are dark and strong lagers, smoked lagers, sweet malty lagers, and blond spritzy lagers.
Additionally, world lagers such as Cobra, Asahi and Peroni have been created to match the cuisine of the country where they were developed (Asahi and sushi, or Cobra and curry, for instance.)

Characteristics:

To Serve:

Lagers match a range of foods. The light citrus notes in mainstream lagers CUT through oily fish and pizzas. The bready notes in Pilsners COMPLEMENTS cheese and charcuterie, and the toffee notes in darker lagers COMPLEMENT ribs, burgers and roast meats and even suit chocolate puddings.

Just avoid very hot and fiery foods (like vindaloos). Mainstream lagers do not always complement these – instead creating an unpleasant bitterness in the beer.


Still think they’re yellow, cold and fizzy? Maybe it’s time to try a lager again?
 

Saturday 20 October 2018

Wheat Beer

Another post from Cask Marque.

Wheat Beer
 
If there is one beer any novice should try first, it’s wheat beer. Why? Because it immediately dispels the preconceptions that all beer is brown and bitter! This is a beer which is ideal for someone who loves Champagne or Prosecco.

Surprisingly, wheat beer is not made entirely with wheat grain. It typically contains between 30 to 60 percent wheat and the remainder is malted barley. Most brewers tend to prefer barley because this grain has a husk, which filters out the proteins. Wheat doesn’t have a husk so when we brew with it, the beer will always appear hazy.

Where Did Wheat Beers Come From?

Before the invention of modern lagers in the 1840’s, there were broadly two types of beer in Bavaria: smoky, strong, lagered (“stored”) brown ales and light, fresh tasting white or wheat beers. ( Although, as early as the 9th century AD records survive of brewing with wheat across much of the Roman Empire).

In 1516, Reinheitsgebot (the ‘Beer Purity Law’) was passed in Bavaria, stating that beer could only be brewed using barley, hops and water, although brewers were allowed to use wheat if they paid a higher tax on the beer.

When this tax differentiation was removed in 1602, however, wheat beers enjoyed a massive increase in popularity, before falling out of fashion in the 1840’s in favour of modern style lager.

Fast forward to the swinging 60’s when Pierre Celis, a diary manager, revived wheat beer with the addition of coriander, cumin, and the dried peel of Curacao oranges. The result was Hoegaarden, named after his home town. The beer looked and tasted completely different and was the first craft beer of recent origin to become a worldwide hit for a global brewer.
It’s Not Just About Hoegaarden!

Wheat beer has lots of variances, depending on where it’s brewed. I’ll explain more below (stay with us though – there’s lots of German words!)

Weizen (German for ‘wheat’) gets its flavours from the grain, hops and particularly the yeast. By law these beers, when brewed in Germany, must be at least 50 per cent wheat and the remainder barley.

German Wheat Beers are also known as Weissbier, Hefeweizen Weizen, Weizenbock, Kristallweizen, Dunkelweizen

Wit Bier (‘Wit’ is the Flemish word for ‘white’) originates in Belgium. Some of the flavours come from the grain, hops and yeast, but they include other ingredients such as coriander, orange peel, and oats

Belgian and French Wheat Beers are also known as White Beer, Witbier and Bieres Blanche

Characteristics:


To Serve:

Wheat beers are one of the most versatile beers to match with food. The citrus notes CUT through oily fish and COMPLEMENT light shellfish. The bready notes also COMPLEMENT cheese and charcuterie, the creamy mouthfeel CUTS through fiery chilli and quench heat – in fact, wheat beer is one of the best beers to have with a hot curry!

PERFEKT!

Podcast Update

As mentioned I have added the Test Match Special podcast to my library.
Some great discussions on there, though there tends to be a bit of repetition over it's various formats.

An excellent in terview was "Vaughany meets Warney"

I dont want to have to give some spoiler alerts, but there was some really good discussions about life, the universe and everything, to quote Douglas Adams.




Another podcast that I have just deleted, is BBC Four's Comedy of the Week.

If the episodes that I listened to, were the comedies of the week I dread to think what the others were like, though when I say listened to, I started 3 episodes and never made it to the end of any of them, such was their lack of Comedy of the Weekness






Mike Brearley

You can tell that Mike Brearley has a book out, (Mike Brearley on cricket) he has been appearing all over the place.

I caught part of an interview with Gary Richardson on Sportsweek last Sunday.
Very good interview, along with the interview with Kevin Keegan, is at the time of writing is available for download.

I also downloaded the Test Match Special podcast which also included an interview with Mike Brearley.

In a discussion following Eoin Morgan's comments about potentially dropping himself, due to lack of form, I was surprised that Mike only played 39 test matches, given his success as an England captain. He was brutally honest about not scoring enough test runs, (I never scored enough runs) he never scored a test 100, but did score approximately 25,000 first class runs.

The part that really caught my interest was his comments on society in general, aligned with cheating in cricket. It is something that I have already commented on in my book. (editting still on going) 

Gary - Why do people cheat in sport?

Mike - I'm afraid to say that people tend to go close to the mark in all areas of life, they cheat in finance, they cheat on their wives, they cheat this way and that and everyone has a certain narcism who wants to be successful. I'm afraid that there is always going to be a tendency towards it in small, usually small ways, it's pretty shocking isn't it?


However, as with DHL, this doesn't make it acceptable.



Islamic Republic of Dewsbury

Adding Dewsbury to my search for Ijtima brought up a link to this interesting article on
the background of Muslims in Dewsbury.


The Islamic Republic of Dewsbury

by Danny Lockwood

by Esmerelda Weatherwax (May 2012)

This isn’t a book review. It’s a recommendation. What it describes is worse than what has happened to Whitechapel and Walthamstow. It’s what awaits West Ham.

It’s The Islamic Republic of Dewsbury by Danny Lockwood.

Danny Lockwood is the proprietor and sometimes editor of The Press, an independent newspaper in Dewsbury Yorkshire. He has a column there which he writes as ‘Ed Lines’. Much of what he reports does not go down well with local Muslims to the extent that he has been threatened and demonstrated about, not to mention a court case between him and former MP Shahid Malik.

Dewsbury, or more specifically the area within Dewsbury called Savile Town, is known nationally as, first, the home of three of the four suicide bombers who murdered 52 people in London in July 2005 and second for being the current United Kingdom HQ of Tablighi Jamaat and the site of their Markazi Mosque. As we know Tablighi Jamaat control many mosques including the Abbeymills site in West Ham where they want to build the so called mega-mosque, which will then be their national Headquarters, if not their European Headquarters.
Dewsbury and Savile Town are also of personal interest to me as my husband lived there for two periods during his childhood and things his father told us of those times are relevant. 

The title of the book speaks for itself; it details the islamification of those Yorkshire towns and villages starting from Savile Town and spreading out to encompass most of Dewsbury itself. Savile Town is an estate built in the 19th century between the River Calder and the railway line on land owned by the Savile family.

Lockwood dates the takeover to a specific date, the 24th June 1989. That was at the time of the furore over Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. On that day copies of the book were being burnt in Bradford and the BNP held a rally in Dewsbury. This was countered by the Black Workers Group who mustered the Muslim youths of Savile Town and a riot broke out. The police co
ntained the angry Muslims and started to move the mob back across the Savile bridge over the River Calder into Savile Town. Before them was a bastion of traditional white Englishness, the Scarborough pub.


The landlord described the scene. He looked out. All the Asian shops were suddenly shuttered. Their cars, which he allowed them to park in the pub car park, were gone; only a car belonging to a lunchtime customer at the pub remained. A sea of people was advancing down Savile Road towards him. He locked the doors of the pub but they broke the doors down and, unable to break the shatterproof glass pushed in the entire window frames. The customers fled upstairs while the downstairs of the pub was completely smashed. They feared that the building would be set alight with them inside. Outside the car in the car park was a write-off. Eventually the police arrived and the rioters left.

Although the pub was cleared up and reopened for business very quickly, it was never the same. The landlord moved on but died young, the pub “limped on like a festering sore on the side of the Muslim enclave” until the brewery sold it cheaply and it became flats. In the fallout after the riot 70 arrests were made, 59 of them Muslim and the Kirklees Black Workers group assisted by the usual white Marxists took up their cause. The police officer in charge of the arrests was retired shortly after. The Muslim community had begun to flex their muscles and realise their potential power.

A large part of the book is made up of the internal politics of the Dewsbury area. Lockwood doesn’t use the word “taqyyia” but if you want to see some practical examples those chapters are full of them. I won’t describe his relationship with former MP Shahid Malik (of the notorious ‘there should be 20 Muslim MPs in Parliament and Insh’allah very shortly we’ll see that’ speech) which resulted in a defamation trial. 

He also had a run in with Baroness Warsi, “sweet, smiling, witty Sayeeda”, as he calls her. He tells how she sat next to one of his staff in the hairdressers wondering aloud whether to accept the political courtship of the Labour Party or the Conservatives. Both parties could see the value of an articulate educated and ambitious Muslim woman. Her history in the ‘human rights’ field suggested she was left wing, but the Conservatives offered immediate local career openings.

One story I cannot resist repeating. HSBC bank sponsored an Eid celebration for 2000 people organised by Shahid Malik. Warsi wangled invitations for her family from the bank. As she tried to enter the main hall Shahid Malik told her that no women were allowed in the hall and that she should join the other women downstairs. She defied him and walked into the hall which may have ultimately cost her votes. Her choice has served her well. She lost in the 2005 election but gained a life peerage 2 years later.

What I want to concentrate on is not the specific Dewsbury politics (Paki politics as Shahid Malik described it – no-one else could use that phrase) but the things Lockwood describes which make sense of what I have noticed elsewhere. Things that are happening in towns and cities all over England. In Dewsbury the protagonists are Pakistani Muslims, in Whitechapel Bengali Muslims, in Walthamstow a mix but the principles are not dissimilar.

For example the cash businesses. In Dewsbury the heavy woollen industry has been succeeded by bed manufacturing. Sayeeda Warsi’s father, Safdar Hussein (a friend of disgraced life peer Lord Ahmed) made his fortune in that useful and legal trade. Others make large sums of money in the illegal drug trade. Hence the proliferation of cash businesses, more takeway shops in a town than the number of curries sold in that town on any one night. But takings are paid in and who can prove that these relatively small sums, which quickly mount up, are not the proceeds of a half dozen tandoori chickens and a lamb korma?

But there is more. They don’t want to pay tax either. A businessman described a particular scam he knew of to Lockwood one night. Lockwood has no proof but the man was convincing with the details which obviously are not repeated in the book.

A ‘businessman’ goes to his bank and withdraws £100,000 cash. The bank don’t object; they have been accustomed to transactions according to sharia law, ie no interest, no credit, no western usury. The notes are carried out of the country and stashed away abroad. The businessman returns to the bank with another £100,000 cash and pays it back in. Sadly his sharia transaction fell through.

So many purchases of houses, often from elderly people who are desperate to leave because they are the last of the original inhabitants left on that street, are made by cash. At the time my husband’s family lived in Savile Town they worshiped at St Mary’s Church. The church closed in the 60s, the stained glass and war memorial were removed to the mother church in Thornhill Lees and I am informed that the site is now flats. My late father-in-law remembered an excellent cricket club and sports facilities and wondered what had become of them. Danny Lockwood describes the days when the home of Dewsbury Cricket Club hosted County matches. That makes it holy ground to a Yorkshireman. The sports ground included pitches for hockey, football, rugby and bowls. The cricket pavilion and stands burnt down during the 1980s. The ladies hockey team suffered abuse and attacks even during matches. The police advised that their presence was provocative and they found other premises. The rugby team were more stubborn. Vandalism became normal. The pitch would be littered with broken glass which had to be cleared before every match. Pieces of jagged metal would be deliberately embedded in the turf, in particular around the try lines where players would slide across the grass. The police encouraged them to find other premises and eventually they did so. The playing fields were held in trust for the people of Savile Town by the trustees of the Savile estate. When one trustee died the others decided that they could kill two birds with one stone. Offload the responsibility of unused playing fields and make friends for the Tory party in the Muslim community. They decided to give the playing fields to the ‘Muslim Community’ by a sale for the nominal sum of £1. In their ignorance they decided that the organisers of the largest and most prominent mosque would be the right people. So Tablighi Jamaat became the proud owners of what had been in its prime the finest Cricket ground in West Yorkshire. This upset the indigenous white inhabitants who had been pushed out of their playing fields, and many of the local Muslims who did not attend the Markazi Mosque. Its influence was not so all pervading in Dewsbury at that time. To quote directly “Even after 30 years in the town the shadowy figures who run the Markazi don’t do ‘public’ and they have certainly never done ‘gratitude’ in any form I have witnessed. There isn’t and never has been any attempt or desire to engage with the wider community outside the Markazi walls – not here in Dewsbury or nationally . . . They certainly don’t do ‘thank-yous’. “ He describes the difficulty of even taking a photograph of the building. Google street view succeeded where he was wary. Like their building in West Ham the atmosphere is not welcoming.
He describes an event which took place in June 1994 which makes sense of something I witnessed in West Ham in either 1992 or 1993. I took the many tents which appeared all over the (contaminated) site to be part of an Eid celebration. I now believe it was an Ijtema, or pilgrimage, but can find no confirmation of this on line.

In Dewsbury, a town of 55,000 people another 50,000 (or so, no one really knows) appeared almost overnight. As if by magic. And no one outside the Muslim community, not even a newspaper editor with his ear to the ground, knew they were coming. All the open space was covered with canvas, homes were thrown open, all criticism of the call to prayer at 4am was dismissed as racism. The main road in and out was blocked and with the river to one side and the railway line to the other Savile Town was sealed. District nurses with patients to see couldn’t get in but Muslim GPs set up their own clinics and their weekend of overtime and the prescriptions they wrote for all and sundry cost Kirklees NHS £10,000.

Lockwood is of the opinion that if the 1989 riot was the turning point for Muslim youths expressing themselves by physical violence then the Ijtema of 1994 was the maturing of a united and aggressive Islamic front against authority.

Danny Lockwood was born and brought up in Dewsbury. He worked as a journalist and other careers in several parts of England and abroad. After a period with Johnson Press who publish several local papers he set up The Press (and League Weekly a rugby paper – his great love) which is a free newspaper, financed by advertising. This makes the regular call by Muslims offended by his reporting for people not to buy the paper rather silly. I wish The Press website had a proper archive. Even if you can locate previous reports of, for example, the Dewsbury bus being stoned as it passed through Savile Town, it isn’t always possible to put a date to the incident. That’s a minor point.  In one chapter he lists crimes or stories of absurdities from 2002 to 2009 which involve the Muslims community.

Another chapter is devoted to the horrifying attack on local man Lee Massey by a group of illegal Iraqi Kurds. He mentions the closing of each pub and church and the Islamic institution which replaced it. The White Hart Inn is now the home of Dewsbury’s Sharia court the Islamic Institute of Great Britain. The Gladstone Liberal club is now the Islamic Tarbiyah Academy.

Danny Lockwood has nothing but criticism in his book for the BNP (but some sympathy for decent people who have voted for them or even joined them in desperation). However he has been accused of being a member on several occasions, most recently by Hope not Hate after the publication of The Islamic Republic of Dewsbury. Sam King wrote a blog post entitled ‘When a Journalist turns Rogue’ and called him a ‘washed up bigot’. This despite him conforming to the National Union of Journalist rules to always describe the BNP and EDL in an unfavourable light.
To be in bad odour with Hope not Hate, is however, to be in good, indeed the very best, company. He has no time for the EDL either. I don’t know why, unless it’s the age old contempt of the rugby player for the football player. He has noticed all the abuses associated with  much of the Muslim way of life, what he now needs to do is realise that most of these are not cultural and peculiar to Pakistan, but are universal in the Muslim world and are attributable to Islam. He seems to be moving some way towards this with his recognition of the universal state of Muslim victimhood and that what is the truth one day, is not necessarily the same truth the next day.
There is a bit where he ponders for his time as a court reporter why men plead not guilty to crimes that they had no possible defence for. All he can imagine is that they feel that as they are not British they are incapable of breaking  British law. A friend told him that if they plead innocent within their understanding of the offence the can return to their community with their heads held high, having been stitched up by the English legal system. He is very close. I wonder if the trial of the Muslim men in Rochdale blaming the under-age girls they raped for being ‘prostitutes’ racists and liars has helped him since with his thoughts?

He must be finding it hard to throw off the teachings of Common Purpose. Many people are very suspicious of Common Purpose. Ostensibly it is, according to its website, ‘a not-for-profit organisation that brings together people from a wide range of backgrounds to help them become more effective leaders in society’. However many believe that it is a tool to spread and indoctrinate the kind of Marxist, liberal, political correctness that has undermined western society such that Islam has been able to become the threat to our way of life and traditions that it is. He is not a member any longer as he breached a confidence under the Chatham House rules, an act which still fills him with shame.

He has the facts. They are in his book. They shriek for his blood outside Kirklees Police Station regularly. I recommend that you read his book to see how stealth jihad has spread into our towns and cities.

I recommend that Mr Lockwood reads some Bat Ye’or,
or Global Jihad by Patrick Sookhdeo so that he can see the reasons behind the facts he so bravely reports.

(Bat Ye'or is the pen name of Gisèle Littman, an author of the history of religious minorities in the Muslim world and modern European politics. Ye'or has popularized the term dhimmitude in her books about the history of Middle Eastern Christians and Jews living under Islamic governments. Ye'or describes dhimmitude as the "specific social condition that resulted from jihad," and as the "state of fear and insecurity" of "infidels" who are required to "accept a condition of humiliation." She has also popularized the term Eurabia in her writings about modern Europe, in which she argues that Islam, anti-Americanism and antisemitism hold sway over European culture and politics as a result of collaboration between radical Arabs and Muslims on one hand, and fascists, socialists, Nazis, and antisemitic rulers of Europe on the other. Ye'or's work on the history of religious minorities under Islamic rule and her use of the term dhimmitude have had a predominantly critical reception among academic specialists in the field. Her work on this subject has been praised by some authors writing for a popular audience. Ye'or's other books have also been a subject of controversy.)

Ijtima

Four thirty on a Friday morning and the streets of Savile Town, Dewsbury have numerous hi-vized men standing on street corners.

I assume that these men are connected with the signs that I had seen on Thursday evening for Ijtima parking. I was going to add a picture here, but my computer has decided that however I format the picture it will be viewed on it's side. Or maybe that just my incompetence.

But what is an Ijtima?

Wiki says......


Ijtema is an Islamic congregation organised by Islamic organisations in association with millions of Muslims. It is an essential part of the Tablighi Jamaat around the world as it plays a significant role on the lives of Muslims, and a huge number of people engage in Ijtema. Many countries celebrate this event in a similar way. According to the European Journal of Economic and Political Studies, participation in Ijtema increases religious authority, status and empowerment, and contributes on the Muslim identity through the idea of brotherhood and ummah.
Ijtema is the annual three-day congregation of Tablighi Jamaat (TJ). It has a strong appeal to South Asian Muslims and its diaspora. The immediate concern of TJ is the moral reform of individuals and purification of the self, often described, as ‘making Muslims true Muslims’: Muslims should go back to the basic principles of their faith to follow strictly the commandments of Islam in their personal lives and in their dealings with others. On the other side, this is a faith renewal movement. TJ gets the attention of the wider world through its annual three-day congregational gathering that is Ijtema, with millions of people. Ijtema has become a symbol of the TJ movement.
Ijtema is popular among the TJ activists and to the larger number of people who do not actively engage with it. However, hajj is a farz, compulsory for a financially solvent Muslim. Because of a large number of participating people, ijtema in countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan become a desirable pilgrimage event for the global Tablighi Jamaat activists. However, no evidence of anthropological research can be found on ijtema in Bangladesh. This is one of the main reasons to choose Bangladesh as the case of study. The European Journal of Economic and Political Studies shows that participation in Ijtema increases religious authority and status, which acts as the means of religious empowerment in society.[4]

Bangladesh research

Ethnographic method has been used in this research to provide an in-depth understanding of the current notion of Ijtema in Bangladesh. Participant observation, which is the main tool of ethnographic approach, provided a deep insight into the movement and challenged some of the more homogeneous accounts of Islamisation portrayed in Bangladesh. This study adopted multi-sited ethnographic method to explore TJ movement. Here, it would not be possible to understand this movement conducting traditional single site fieldwork, because the basic principle of Tablighi Jamaat is to move in various places, so I had to move with them in different sites and location to get the holistic perspectives of the movement. The total length of the fieldwork was ten months in Bangladesh with an interval of five months. Apart, form this day-to-day participant observation I used case studies, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), and informal discussion to gain a holistic perspectives of the movement. In-depth interviews has conducted among selected TJ followers both male and female, religious leaders, leaders of other leading Islamic movements, people from the different social class and TJ organisers at local, national and transnational level.

History

Early history

The tradition of Ijtema was initiated Muhammad Ilyas al-Kandhlawi, an Indian savant, and began as a small group of religious-minded individuals gathering at a local mosque. For 41 years Tongi has been the chosen location, although similar programs are held on a lesser scale in other countries. These days India has also been considered a very popular place for organising such congregations. The Ijtema is non-political, and therefore it draws people of all persuasion. Prayer is held for the spiritual adulation, exaltation and welfare of the Muslims community. This immensely popular program gives the people of the different countries an opportunity to interact with Muslims from other countries and is commonly attended by prominent political figures.
Around 1927, TJ entered in the Bengal region. The first Bengal provincial Tablighi committee formed under the secretaryship of Moulvi Abul Hayat with Moulvi Aftabuddin, who was sub- editor of The Light (De, 1998). However, this movement found its inroad into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) just after the partition of Indian Sub-continent in 1947 (Sikand, 2002). During this period, three Ijtema centres have developed in three parts of the Subcontinents; they are Bhopal in India, Raiwind in Pakistan and Dhaka in East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh). Sooner after partition, East Bengal becomes the part of Pakistan and identified with a new name as East Pakistan. This was the formative period of TJ in East Pakistan. TJ was able to recruit people from various backgrounds during this time. In this early stage of TJ in East Pakistan, many people from the professional class and students have involved with TJ.
Moulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi mentioned in a biography of Moulana Ilyas that, in the 1930s, they used to have the annual ijtema at Mewat and they had a fixed place for ijtema. Moulana Ilyas used to take part in these ijtemas regularly. The biggest ijtema was held at Nuh of the district of Gourgano from 28 to 30 November 1941 (Nadvi, 2006:118). That was the notable Ijtema in terms of participating number of devotees. According to Nadvi (2006), there were about 20-25 thousand people in that ijtema. This ijtema was successful in many ways; one of them are to be able to send many jamaats to the various places in India such as Khorza, Aligarh, Agra, Buland city, Mirath, Panipath, Sonipath etc. In April 1943, they had sent a jamaat in Karachi (a major city of Pakistan). The first Ijtema held in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was in 1954 in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Later that year they had organised another massive ijtema in Khulna, a south-west district of Bangladesh. Since then they have been organising ijtema every year in a regular basis. During this time, the centre of TJ in Bangladesh was based on the Lalbagh Shahi Mosque. Due to limitation of space, they had to move to the current location at Kakrail.[8] Background of TJ in Bangladesh, In 1954 there were about 15-20 thousands participants took part in the first ijtema. However, by 1965 even Kakrail had become too small for the ijtema. Therefore, they had to think about a new place for the ijtema. In the same year, they had to shift the venue at Tongi near Dhaka. Since then, TJ has been regularly organising ijtema at Tongi.






Wednesday 17 October 2018

There are some things you just can't write

It was only last week that MP's appointed a suicide prevention Minister.

Q: What is a cause of suicide?

A: Bullying

Q: Who has been accused of bullying in a recent report?

A: M.P.'s


What did I tell you?

Or as the late Frank Carson would have said "It's the way I tell 'em!"

or even "It's a cracker!"

Sunday 14 October 2018

Welcome

Welcome to my American and French readers.
Hope that you are enjoying the blog.

Saturday 13 October 2018

Stouts & Porters

From Cask Marque



The Cask Marque Guide To Beer Styles:

I bet you all have a friend or a colleague who tells you they don’t like beer? I know. It’s unfathomable to you and I. But these mad, sad fools need our guidance because their experience or perception of beer has probably been a poor one. We know that not all beer is the same, we know that saying you don’t like beer is akin to saying you don’t like food.

So, in this new series from Annabel Smith, in-house Beer Sommelier at Cask Marque, we’re going to take a light hearted look at a range of beer styles, and help you persuade the uninitiated masses to try a tipple.

Stouts & Porters

The darkest beer of them all, stouts and porters get their colour and flavour from the dark grain used to make them – roasted malt, roasted barley, or sometimes other dark grains. From the first sip, expect bold flavours – espresso, chocolate and roasted elements

Where Did Stouts & Porters Come From?

Porter is actually an older style than stout and was named for the porters who unloaded ships and carried goods around the world’s mightiest metropolis, thus it was the great beer of the 18th and early 19th century London. Stouts derived from the shortening of ‘stout porter’, meaning a strong porter (although this is not necessarily the case!)
Imperial stout was brewed in the 18th century with the most famous being shipped to Russia. They are full bodied, massively malty, very dark and bitter sweet.
So, contrary to popular belief, stouts do not originate in Ireland, but in London! Why London? In a word – water. The minerals and sulphates in the hard water in London create a very dry flavour and mouthfeel in this beer (now that’s one to remember for the pub quiz!)

The Many Myths:

Other than stout originating in Ireland, there are many other myths surrounding this particular beer style.
Have you heard that its great for pregnant women and those suffering from iron deficiency as it’s packed full of iron?
Well there’s actually more iron in a slice of white bread than there is in a pint of stout!
How about stouts being full of calories? No more so than other beers (so less than a pint of milk or orange juice).

As for the Shamrock drawn in the head of a pint of stout this was very much a cultural thing and one which the Irish dislike to this day.
During the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, the USA was subject to prohibition, therefore a lot of Americans descended on Europe, particularly Ireland.
Irish bar owners would draw a Shamrock in the pints of stout served to Americans to denote they were an outsider, ie, not native to Ireland.
It has NEVER been a brand standard for Guinness to draw this Shamrock, it is all just an urban myth









Suicide prevention Minister


From the BBC website

World Mental Health Day:
PM appoints suicide prevention minister
10 October 2018


A minister for suicide prevention has been appointed in England by the prime minister as the government hosts the first ever global mental health summit.
Theresa May said the appointment of Health Minister Jackie Doyle-Price to the new role will help tackle the stigma surrounding suicide.
While suicide rates are falling, 4,500 people take their own lives every year.
The appointment comes as ministers and officials from more than 50 countries assemble in London for the summit.
Wednesday's meeting - hosted by Health Secretary Matt Hancock and attended by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge - coincides with World Mental Health Day.
The government has also promised more support in schools, bringing in new mental health support teams and offering help in measuring students' health, including their mental wellbeing.
Ms May said: "We can end the stigma that has forced too many to suffer in silence and prevent the tragedy of suicide taking too many lives."
Alongside the announcement, the prime minister pledged £1.8m to the Samaritans so the charity can continue providing its free helpline for the next four years.
Hannah Lewis - who campaigns for improvements to mental health services having suffered from panic attacks, anxiety and suicidal thoughts as a teenager - said that it can be a year before someone who is referred for help actually begins treatment.
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Mental health is known to deteriorate when you are left without help, and you can only imagine how things got worse with me." said her mental health issues dated back to when she was a child
Ms Lewis welcomed the government's announcement - especially the proposals to bring more awareness of mental health into schools - but she added: "More joined-up working at schools and early intervention is great, but we need to make sure then there are sufficient services to be signposted to."
Mrs Doyle-Price, who has been an MP since 2010, will now become the minister for mental health, inequalities and suicide prevention.
As health is devolved separately to the UK's four nations, her role will include making sure each local area in England has effective plans to stop unnecessary deaths and to look into how technology could help identify those at risk. 2010
She said she understood the "tragic, devastating and long-lasting" effect of suicide on families, having met some of those bereaved.
"It's these people who need to be at the heart of what we do," she added.
Manchester University's Prof Louis Appleby, one of the country's leading experts on suicide, said having a minister for suicide prevention would "open doors" and make it easier to have conversations about the role such things as benefits and online gambling have in suicidal people's lives.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the appointment would also help with getting support for mental illness on a par with services for physical health.
"There is a long road to travel to get there. This is not something you solve overnight," he said.
But others criticised the government's record on mental health.  Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity Sane, said there had not been enough improvements to services since Mrs May pledged to tackle the issue two years ago.
"While we applaud the intention [of the announcement], it is striking that the UK should be hosting such a summit when we hear daily about people left untreated due to a lack of nurses and doctors," she said.
"The prime minister must examine our own mental health system before addressing other countries."


Unless Mrs Doyle-Price is going to make some changes in the law, I can't see her appointment making any difference to suicide caused by bullying.

Wednesday 10 October 2018

Targets

For what will be fairly obvious to any potential readers of my book, I am aiming to publish on 3rd November 2018.
Best get my finger out then

Sunday 7 October 2018

Hello

Day One

Welcome aboard.

Have you been bullied at work?

I have, to the point where I think I've got "bully me" tattoo'd on my forehead.

Whilst this is Day One of my blog, it is somewhere around Day 17 on my attempts to write a book . I have no idea, as yet, how to get this published, or the processes involved in getting it to a stage where it could be published. My efforts so far have involved culling some information from various sources;
e-mails
Reports
Employment Tribunal statements
Liquidators Reports
and a few other sources that aren't readily coming to mind.

I have a working title, which I have incorporated into a cover.



To quote Rolf Harris, "Can you tell what it is yet?"

This will be a work of Fact  oops, sorry that category doesn't exist does it?

This will be a work of non-fiction. That doesn't have the same ring about it though.

I have been bullied by DHL.
I have been bullied by Savage Blue Ltd. A Service Provider for DHL.
I have been bullied by Diamond Logistics. 
Just for clarity, that is Savage Logistics who are trading as Diamond Logistics in Leeds. Sister Company to Savage Blue. Not Diamond Logistics, Head Office in Guildford who were absolutely fantastic.

Oh, and just for anyone who this this might be a bluff, deception, subterfuge, pretence, sham, fake, show, deceit, false show, idle boast, feint, delusion, hoax, fraud, masquerade, charade, trick, stratagem, ruse, manoeuvre, scheme, artifice, machination;
humbug or bluster, this is my work so far;



just in case that font is a little small for you, that's currently 342 pages and 89,277 words, plus a number of screen shots of other paragraphs from documents that I only have PDF formats of.

It's going well.