As a foreigner, I feel myself in some ways a spectator with a ringside seat when following the goings-on between the British Government and our industry.
It certainly confirms my opinion that the British are different, and probably not to their own advantage, in their failure to take to the barricades even when their livelihoods are threatened.
The Jacqui Smith plan for strangling the pub trade brought this home to me. I don't know what astounded me more — her plan (or should I say "cunning plan", as it's far dafter than anything Baldrick ever dreamed up), or the spokesperson for one of our industry's most respected professional bodies saying in response to it that it "couldn't pursue a political agenda".
Why in heaven's name not? As the current Government is either (a) clearly hell bent on destroying our industry, or (b) so stupid it needs to be removed, I should have thought we were entitled to take any measures to fight it .
I have noticed that my Brit colleagues do tend to be a little bit uneasy about even the mention of anything becoming "political". I think this is because for them it is shorthand for things having gone out of control (and they have).
I suppose being a South African plus working for Czechs gives me this view. As a South African, unlike my Brit friends, I don't see politics as something to be shoved under the table. Rather it should be embraced as a way of changing things or defending the status quo.
The Czech connection shows me a people who, even in their darkest Stalinist days, didn't allow a busy-bodying state to mess with their beer. That's why there are now no licensing laws to speak of there and why there is no mayhem around the booze issue.
Surely the simple answer to the whole problem is to make sure that this Government doesn't get re-elected by encouraging as many people as possible to vote against it at the next election. Despite one or two good guys in its ranks it clearly hates our business like the Puritans, which it so closely resembles, hated the theatre.
Outside the home the pub is probably the last place where the politically correct and the control freaks are not tolerated. We must not let them in.
Tony Jennings is chief executive of Budweiser Budvar UK