The
Pipe of Port Wine bar
84 High Street, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 1JN. Tel. (01702) 614606.
www.pipeofport.com e-mail; info@pipeofport.co.uk
NEWSLETTER OCTOBER, 2009.
Last October, I mentioned that we were told officially, that we were in recession. Little did I know then actually what that would mean to us. Whilst we have not had quite such a bad time as my London colleagues, it has not been very exciting by any means. In the new year things were fine then we hit April. It was as though someone pulled down the shutters it was so quiet. To be fair, the sun shone like it was August and that always clobbers us anyway. But we are still here and just about thriving. Our weather has returned and we are doing very decent business again. It is like a sleigh ride though sometimes. We can have 20 bookings on a Monday /Tuesday and do 85 covers, whilst the next week have 20 bookings, 2 don't show up and we do 18. The blessing is that at the end of the month it still stacks up. We are just grateful that you come any time.
About 15 years ago, I was part of the first ever wine trade delegation to visit Australia. It was a memorable trip lasting a whopping whole month. A couple of months ago, I was invited to return with some of my companions from that visit. I did question the wisdom of inviting us old codgers on such an expensive trip when we are way above the age limit usually applied to such trips. The reasoning being that we are too close to running off with our pot of gold pension and taking up windsurfing or something for them to get value. But they were keen to see us so I threw my name into the hat. Wouldn't you?
I was then offered a trip to South Africa. As I would not be able to do both and have yet to visit South Africa, I dropped out of the Australia trip. Some weeks later, I got the Africa dates and would you believe it, they clash with Burns Supper week! I must not miss Burns at the Pipe so I dropped out of Africa and asked for my place back for Australia. It was full! I'm going nowhere. Time was I'd have done them both.
TIPS GRATUITIES etc.
There has been quite a lot of controversy about what happens if you leave a tip or pay service charges on your bill when visiting a restaurant. As ever, the press have an interest in creating a sensational story out of not much. The authorities, keen to be taking "tough action" play it up as well. I can tell you that few establishments such as ours get up to such tricks. Part of the reason is that you'd never attract decent staff and they certainly wouldn't stay around. However, some of the larger chain operators might especially if they make a service charge. This is what we do.
Tips come in three ways, cash, credit cards and accounts. They are all treated as the same. We do not deduct anything (under the code, we are entitled to deduct any credit card charges and admin costs) we pay the credit card company charges. Anyone involved in service from peeling the potatoes and washing up, to bar service and of course working a front of house station gets a share. The division is set out by the front of house staff and was decided very many years ago by the then senior waitresses. It has changed little since. Owners and management do not, as a rule get a share, unless there is a shortage of staff and they have to take a station. Whilst management or owners always assist during service, they do not generally have a share. Neither are we allowed to directly use tips for "reward or punishment" nor do we get involved in the share division. There are two senior staff who mange it and they give us the figures of who gets what. We add them to the salaries for tax & NI purposes and that is that.
We do not use any form of tip / gratuity to top up wages. The only places I know that may use tips in that way are perhaps some older style very smart family run restaurants. They often guarantee waiting staff quite a substantial minimum weekly take home pay, substantially above minimum wage. They agree a set amount the employer will pay and the rest is made up out of the tips. If the tips fall short, the owner makes it up, if there is a surplus it is carried over. We are talking of fairly smart restaurants here and waiters who earn very serious money. The system works in that situation and I don't have an issue with it. There is a legal issue as far as national insurance is concerned, but that has been resolved pretty much now. (Neither staff or employers pay N.I. on gratuities.)
CLAMPERS
I am so glad that these modern day highway robbers are going to be reeled in at last. I cannot think how we managed to get ourselves into such a mess. Men (usually) who are often more familiar with the other side of the dock in a courthouse have been appointed "Court Officers" and allowed to seize our vehicles, for a perceived parking offence. They can spot fine us very substantial sums of money. God help you if you have the temerity to protest as they have the power to crank up the charges almost at will. They can also charge you £50 credit card fee. The police seemingly are helpless to intervene even when it seems they are acting beyond their powers. They don't even have to demonstrate that they have authority and permission to operate so long as they have signs up and carry a badge. In one incident in Southend, a father was strapping his child into the baby seat when the clamper struck. I guess that if this scam is stopped and the revenue cut off or dramatically reduced, we may well see a rise in post office hold-ups, which funnily enough, has not been quite so prevalent in recent times. Well, I can hardly see them taking up child minding.
MPs AND EXPENSES
Am I the only person who thinks this is a very serious and damaging situation that the press and most of us have got it terribly wrong?
I have met only a few MPs and like you all have watched various current affairs programmes etc. My impression is so different in that I firmly believe that most of our politicians are decent hard working people who are seriously trying to do a worthwhile job in very difficult circumstances. Of course we have some rotten apples who should be in prison. But parliament is representative (or should be) of the population and there will inevitably be a minority of self serving individuals and a few downright criminals who will get into parliament. But that should not lead us to start accusing all of them of wrong-doing. If we are serious about democracy, we need to have good MPs. Sadly, they have to be in London for most of their working week and that means they have to have decent accommodation in London. Are we really serious about asking them to spend 5 nights in special hostels or even hotels? Do we really feel that out of £65, 000 per year that they should rent a flat as well as keep a family homein their constituency?
We used to be represented by people who had a private income and could afford to run another household in London. That was no good for us as we know but we still seem to want our representatives on the cheap. Of course the way the expenses system was tuned over the last 30 years or so was wrong. As a young manager I was promoted to a bigger job and had to move some 300 miles up north. There was a pay freeze on at the time and my company had signed up to it. It was not financially viable for me to move as I was already at the top end of my pay scale. I was offered "expenses"!! I was invited to put any old receipts into the envelope and it would not be checked. We shared the same chairman as the Conservatives (Lord Thorneycroft) and I can well see how the mess developed over the years. For many years it has been seen as good fun by our tabloid boys to work up a head of steam every time MPs salary increases were mentioned. The result is that we simply don't pay them anywhere near enough. The expenses were a way of the authorities being able to make up salaries. Otherwise we would have fallen back to the bad old days. Most of our most able MPs could not have survived were it not for the expenses. We can't have it both ways. The very sad thing is that our fearless journalists are very aware about the expenses and how they arose. We've pandered to the Kelvin MacKenzie rabble rousing lazy journalistic style at a potentially terrible cost to our democracy. I bet you'd die if you saw their expenses. Would they be happy to have these scrutinised and made to repay anything that current thinking may feel was unfair? I think we could have dealt very efficiently with the miscreants and got them out of parliament without all this damage. We don't have to look very far back in time to see the result of a weakened parliament. Only last week there was an attempt to gag parliament here in our country in 2009!
Someone said "Freedom ain't worth nothin' when its free".
Our MPs should be on a much more substantial salary. (paid for by having less MPs)
They should be given a monthly allowance for rent or mortgage interest based on the cost of a two bedroom flat or small house. All second home expenses on a pre set basis. They should have a monthly sustenance allowance. So what if they make a capital gain out of the house when they sell it? If you are required to live away from your family for most of your working week, then I don't see why we can't ensure that they are at least as comfortable. The whole lot will still be cheaper that putting them up in hotels!
If we do those things, then, hopefully, we will not get the sleazy ones who see no wrong in flipping and moats etc. We will attract people who would otherwise find it too difficult to give up a financially sound career, to try to run two homes on the wage of the head of a largish high school. We have to think differently about theses things. Spare a thought when next some jumped up interviewer who earns as much in a week as the hapless MP they are berating, earns in a year!
CLONAKILLA
I was very fortunate indeed to attend a recent tasting at Aspinal's club in London last month. The invitation was from Tim Kirk of Clonakilla Wines. Clonakilla is a small winery in Canberra specializing in Shiraz. Tim's father came to Canberra from County Claire in Ireland, as a government scientist in 1968. He noted that no-one planted vines in the area and his studies of conditions led him to believe that quality vines would thrive. He planted in 1971. His son Tim, having studied then taught theology at the Jesuit college in Melbourne and working in his father's vineyard in the holidays, decided that he should become a winemaker. After spending time in great vineyards in the Rhone Valley, he took up position of winemaker and general manager in 1996. Clonakilla ("Meadow of the Church". The name of his great grandfather's farm in Claire) very soon started to show extraordinaryquality and has been described as "one of the country's most important small wineries" and a "producer of some of the country's most breathtaking wines".
Tim models his wine style on Cote Rotie. The cool climate in Canberra's hills produces a fruit very different from the searing hot plains of the Barossa. The result is a silky finesse that I have never come upon in Oz Shiraz before. I am just blown away by the shear elegance. As you know I love the Barossa and the wine it produces. I did think however, after tasting Tim's wines, that perhaps Barossa needed to look for cooler climate sites and follow Tim's lead. Actually, that is not what they should do. They must carry on producing the big busters that Barossa can do like no where else. Canberra produces a different wine altogether. Which one do I prefer? Well I love ‘em all!!
The tasting was attended by a small number of the great and good .. and me. About 30 of us in all. The famous names from telly and the broadsheets. When these chaps turn up in numbers, you know it is something special. We tasted 12 consecutive vintages of his iconic and highly collectable Canberra District Shiraz / Viognier from 1997 to 2008. It was an outstanding event. From the mature 1997 with its dried fruit and spice on the nose. A gentle meatiness that was to appear in other vintages later. It had the juicy sweet fruit and perfectly balanced acidity with well refined tannins that again was to repeat itself throughout the tasting. To the fantastic smoky leathery Christmas cake nose of the 2001 and 2005 and the volumptuous 2008 with amazingly vibrant black fruit and violets with a savoury character, drinking so well as it is, never mind in 15 years. There is a serious shortage of Clonakilla wine in the UK. I have no doubt that quite soon Clonakilla wines will follow the path of Cullen that in a few years we will not be able to get it at a sensible price, such will be the demand. I am only glad that I was there to taste his wonderful wine.
On top of that; my cousin, Vince Jones, is quite a famous jazz singer in Australia. Tim Kirk is a fan of Vince so we hit it off. Clearly Tim is a man of some taste.
Tim has three different styles of Shiraz. The Hilltops is made from fruit taken from lower slopes where the fruit is riper, plus some younger fruit from the top vineyard blocks. O'Riada from fruit is bought in from neighbours who grow grapes on top Canberra District sites similar to Tim's, but only where Tim supervises the vineyard. And his iconic Canberra District Shiraz from his own vineyards.
Janet, Sue and I really do wish you all well over the coming months and hope that things brighten up a bit in the New Year. Bank Managers are human as well. Be kind to them. When you see them with a scowl upon their face, it's not you and your overdraft, its just that they haven't yet made the target for this month. Buy a policy and help them out! I bet then they will soon doff their trilby as you walk into the branch.
Its ME!
Steve.
