Mulled said:
I am fairly sure i read somewhere that "Mild" originally meant that the beer was lightly hopped, not that it was of low alcohol content. (snip)
I think that mild originally meant unaged and had nothing to do with strength. That is my memory from reading a couple of Martyn Cornell books. I'm fairly sure that stale beer at that point would have meant aged without any negative connotations.
I think most people tend to think of milds as being dark and low strength now. They are usually quite roasty in flavour in my experience. Definitions do change over time and from place to place but my guess is that is the way most people in this country think of them. There are a couple of ruby milds that break this expectation (Sarah Hughes, Rudgate) but I think that they are the exception not the rule. I would expect a brown ale to be stronger (like Newcastle Brown or Sam Smith's nut brown ale) and you don't see them so much on pump in my experience. However I've seen plenty of bottled milds so it isn't a packaging thing to my mind.
As for lambert's suggestion: since oldjiver lives and drinks in England and presumably (given the name) has done for a while, looking to the BJCP guidelines to tell him what an English beer is seems absurd. Unless he is intending to enter this beer a competition which uses those guidelines.