Why should we have to pay the price, in every sense, for the failure to control underage and binge drinking, neither of which can happen in a properly run pub?
Real ale is making a comeback, pub food has improved no end, the breweries no longer seem to be forcing pubs to serve food even if the punters don't want it, the replacement of historic names and signs with facetious or obscene rubbish seems to be in very well-deserved decline, and all manner of other good things.
But then along comes the Political Class to ruin it all in response to the problem that it has created, of teenagers drinking themselves delirious in the street. What does that have to do with pubs? Save Our Pubs!
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This cousin of yours has wrecked my deathday party next weekend. I was planning to get several cases of Chilean Reds in for the lads. But now the price has gone up and I will have to turn some Highland Spring into wine again.
ReplyDeleteSame with all "make your own" stuff. Never tastes as good as the professionals make it.
Got the twelve out in force. Judas has got parole from Hell. Muhammed is providing security on the door with some dead Afghani guys. Invites have gone out to Luther, Calvin, Robert Runcie and Cosmo Gordon amongst others. Pope JPII is providing some of the entertainment with his impressions of Martin Luther King and Stevie Wonder.
Will be buying in some Asda muscat or Schloer for Muhammed and the boys. Also for anyone who is flying home. God does not approve of drinking and flying.
"teenagers drinking themselves delirious in the street"
ReplyDeleteAnd at half past four in the afternoon, too.
yeah, 4p a pint, and 3p on cider - that'll really drive people away. Don't be so silly.
ReplyDeleteYou're right to raise the issue, David. For example, I drink in the Red Lion on Whitehall, and they've put the prices up by loads recently. Still, my boss normally puts it on expenses, so its fine. Or else my parents just up my allowance. All in all, most researchers can cope, I think. So no need to worry.
ReplyDeleteJust because your mother smoked crack when she was pregnant with you - and it shows!
ReplyDeleteRacit, too, bdj. Why am I not surprised?
ReplyDeleteJon, Darling clearly thinks that it will. And so does the pub trade.
No, Darling doesn't think it will shut pubs. if he did, then it would clearly be a stupid thing to do. He may think that it will help tackle binge drinking. Or, if he's honest, he thinks it will look good, and bring in some extra revenue for the Treasury.
ReplyDeleteAnd - shock horror - an industry that has additional taxes levied on it and its customers pleads for special treatment under threat of closure? You don't say. Next up, BA and Virgin on why additional taxes on flying won't really work, but will put airlines out of business.
Alcohol duty has risen almost every Budget (with the exception of spirits, where incidentally duty hasn't risen for 10 years, thus making it considerably cheaper in real terms). Every Budget people say it will close pubs. There has been no evidence that it has - as opposed to, say, the general wasting away of rural life, which is responsible for many closing. But not duty.
Darling believes that these price increases will discourage binge drinking.
ReplyDeleteAnd pub closures are not just a rural problem. I know a town where there were never any more pubs than one might have expected. But every time I now go there, I see another one boarded up. Yet we object to people drinking without control at home or on the street!
The people deciding these thing can cope with pubs that pretend to be something else, such as Manhattan wine bars or Viennese coffee houses. But your common or graden pub is just too British for them.
That's why the don't like pubs. It's because they don't like Britain.
Here's a question then - if your thesis is correct, why didn't Darling raise beer duty by (say) 20p? Or 50p? Or £1? After all, if The Political Class like trendy bars, but not pubs, then you'd expect the former and its clientele to be able to absorb those costs, but it would surely be much easier to drive your common or garden pub to the wall. And its an even stronger argument about tackling binge drinking. So - why no bigger duty?
ReplyDeleteGive them time.
ReplyDeleteYes, give it time. Maybe another ten years, since that was the last time spirit duty was raised. And do you know, beer was about £1 in 1980? Look at the increases since then.
ReplyDeleteInflation, you say? Don't be silly. Its's all a plot by the Political Class.
Thus speaks the Political Class, even the Tory pretending to be Lib Dem branch of it.
ReplyDeleteBeyond the Mockney public school accent, I never could work out where Jon was from. But he must be planning a move back north considering his political trajectory. Or do we really need to welcome him to the anti-war fold?
T - how curious. You sound just like "old Durham hack" (another brave soul who puts their own name to their post). And, bizzarely, both of you sound quite like David. How curious, indeed.
ReplyDeleteI note, however, that your post - which made absolutely no sense to me, incidentally - didn't provide any rebuttal to my point, or anything else to substantiate David's point that alcohol duty is a plot to shut down pubs. Do you have any?
So people who read David's blog tend to agree with him and each other? Some of us, anyway. What's so surprising about that?
ReplyDeleteJon, are you planning a return to the north as Lib Dem Tory? Or have you really joined the anti-war movement? Go on, tell us.
Er, ok then - no, and no. I really do fail to see what relevance either of these two questions have to do with the issue at hand, but nevertheless, I have answered them truthfully and without dissembling.
ReplyDeleteNow your turn, T. Do you believe that increased alcohol duty is a plot by The Political Class to kill off pubs? And if so, why has spirit duty not been raised for ten years, and why did the government not increase duty by a greater amount in this year's Budget?
Stay tuned for the neocon entryist takeover of the Lib Dems. It's one of the big coming stories in British politics.
ReplyDelete