LETTERs

Camra does not profit from club

Greene King's Rooney Anand is wrong to suggest that the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) profits from the success of the Camra Investment Club (Morning Advertiser, 2 November).

The Investment Club allows individual Camra members to club together to invest in the future of the British brewing and pubs industry.

Owned entirely by its members, the Investment Club is a separate legal entity from Camra, which does not receive a penny from any profits the club generates.

The Club has a consistent record of opposing brewery takeovers and brewery closures, and has delivered more than £10m of investment for real-ale brewers and pubs.

Camra simply cannot accept as inevitable the loss of some of Britain's best- loved breweries and beers.

The key to preventing brewery closures lies in increasing consumer interest in real ale. Growing consumer interest in quality, local and natural products means that now is the ideal time for a renewed effort to promote it.

By supporting the Cyclops tasting scheme, Cask Beer Week and launching its own "Ask if it's cask" campaign, Camra has shown strong commitment to promoting real ale in partnership with brewers.

The way to increase

profits is not via mergers

and brewery closures but through investment in real-ale promotion.

Camra is ready to

support an industry-wide partnership to promote real ale and I have written previously in these pages calling for exactly that.

Mike Benner

Chief Executive,

The Campaign for Real Ale,

230 Hatfield Road,

St Albans,

Hertfordshire

Pub game losers and winners

My customers want to watch horse racing on TV. Sky wants to charge me £7,400 per year for the privilege. I refuse to pay. My customers go elsewhere.

It's a sad day when TV decides who wins and who loses in the pub game.

C Wright

The Bee Hive Inn,

145 Market Street,

Droylsden,

Manchester

Correcting Wells Young's figures

I was delighted to read your recent article on the setting up of the new Wells Young's business (MA, 28 September).

Sadly being out of the country delayed my reply, but I felt I should make some technical points, with reference to the AC Nielsen figures, published with the article.

As is often said, one can make numbers mean anything and we all see politicians do it for a living.

However, the article read as though it was referring to the On Trade only, when in fact the AC Nielsen numbers and charts, covering 2003 and 2005, were calculated using retail value, in both GB on and off-trades and excluded 2004 data completely.

What in effect this does, is to move Wells Youngs brands into pole position (no surprise there then) whilst relegating other brands to the lower reaches of the league table, some in near relegation status, referred to in the article as Winners and Losers.

The data is correct and given the combination of ons and offs data, I'd give an accolade to our client, for an intriguing use of data mining, to unearth such positive data gems, in support of their brands - well done!

But for the Morning Advertiser or the article to imply it's on-trade only data, when it includes offs as well, was unfortunate.

Of course Bombardier is in a 568ml in bottle, giving it a higher take-home value than competitors in 500ml bottles, so that would add to the value calculation and their brand values.

For the purposes of accuracy and fairness, I felt I should make the point, whilst wishing Wells Youngs great success in the new business, though I'd ask all AC Nielsen clients to check with us when anything is to be published in the press or media generally.

We do like to ensure interpretation of our market data is correct.

Graham Page

Consultant

AC Nielsen Liquor Services

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