Tyranny prevails as Portman provisionally upholds BrewDog ruling

Here is the background for those who missed it

http://brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=12

http://brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=20

For those of you up to speed here is the update.........

On the 31^st October the Independent Complaints Panel provisionally upheld all the complaints the consultant commission lodged against BrewDog. Beers such as Punk IPA and Rip Tide are on the brink of vanishing in the UK for good.

The Portman Group have also come up with stunning new allegations towards our products which are so insane they have diminished my faith in humanity ever so slightly. The new allegations also belittles appreciation of fine food and drink if some regulator is going to control the language you used to describe it.

Their findings on Punk IPA.

The phrase "aggressive beer" ‘is more likely to be seen applying to the drinker rather than the drink'. Now let's step back for a second and look in a bit more detail about this astonishingly incompetent interpretation of very basic use of the English language.

Most sentences have a subject matter, this is predominantly a noun. So if we analyse the accused sentence "This is an aggressive beer". We find that the subject matter of the sentence is indeed beer. There is no mention of the drinker there whatsoever. It would make equally as much sense for the Portman group to say the sentence "This is an aggressive beer" applies to insanely annoying reality TV nutters and go on a witch hunt for Jane Goody.  It just does not make any sense and the further they go with unfounded allegations the more unrealistic their reasoning becomes.

In the above sentence, beer is the noun and the word aggressive is an adjective. An adjective's main syntactic role is to modify a noun, giving more information about the noun's referent. Note the role of an adjective is not to scandalously apply to anything in order for cartel like regulator to try in vain to justify its own existence. At least not according to the Oxford English Dictionary, but who cares about language, rules, European Regulations and Freedom of Speech when you are a big-shot like the Portman group. All this is obviously beneath them. 

Does the phrase ‘this is a friendly pig' apply to the farmer and not the pig? What if the farmer is having a bad hair day and in a fowl (maybe he also farms poultry) mood?

It is pretty clear the subject matter of the short sentence is indeed the pig. Now to blacklist the product and risk bankrupting a young micro-brewery based on such a scandalous min-construed interpretation is obscene.

Their Findings on Rip Tide

In the phrase "twisted merciless stout" the terms ‘merciless' is more likely to be seen as applying to the drinker rather than the drink. Please re-visit the above arguments. Otherwise I can only think they are referring to the Chris Stout, the famous Shetland fiddler (www.chrisstout.co.uk) In which case I concur and I would categorically ban him from drinking Rip Tide, especially when armed with a fiddle, I am pretty sure everyone else will be fine though.

Their Findings on Hop Rocker

The phrases "nourishing food stuff" and "magic is still there to be extracted from this drink" implies it could enhance mental and physical capabilities. The label text is above. Further accusing us of "claiming that the drink would provide mental or physical benefit". I think beer industry Melissa Coles views on this point are both eloquent and accurate.

 "Frankly, if you are so stupid that you think the phrases ‘nourishing foodstuff' and "magic is still there to be extracted from this drink' implies that 'it could enhance mental or physical capabilities' you damn well deserve to have your life terminated by jumping off some very high scaffolding with your pants over your trousers, screaming 'I Believe I Can Fly' - because at least it would take you out of the gene pool!"

At the end of the day the Portman Group is funded by companies concerned about BrewDog infringing on their market share. They are acting like a cartel - in clear breach of EU laws on competition and freedom of speech. I intend to fight them every step of the way. We will take this to the courts, we will take this to the press, and we will take this to parliament.