Beer

Mike Arkus’s letter of 9 September [A guide for the perplexed, please] about the inebriated journalist reminds me of the German reaction.

Management issued an order banning alcohol from newsrooms throughout the world. Manfred Pagel, then in charge of the Bonn newsroom, promptly riposted that to ban beer from German newsrooms would be illegal. Staff could not be prevented from consuming food on the job and in German law beer was defined as a food. ■