Four pence tax hike on beer is a grievous blow to brewing industry

Mar 15 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

SING along now: “Oh my Darlin’, oh my Darlin’, oh my Darlin’ smarmy swine,

You have lost the plot forever, to commit a ghastly crime.”

A puerile adaptation perhaps, but it’s as nothing compared to the insults many city publicans and “responsible” beer drinkers would have hurled at the Chancellor if he’d popped his head round the door of their locals after Wednesday’s budget.

Think Tom Hicks Junior, his trip to The Sandon in Anfield – and then multiply it a thousand times.

It’s the sheer nanny knows best ignorance – and arrogance – of Labour Boy which probably gets to the craw of most.

The four pence tax hike on beer was a grievous blow in itself to a brewing industry hit by spiralling costs from hop and malt shortages caused by a bad harvest. To compound it with an unprecedented 2% increase above inflation rate on the price of a pint for the next four years was taking the proverbial P – especially when the “wages of sin shalt pay for the welfare of the young and the old” and the war on binge drinking were brought in as Darling’s excuses for it.

It was an outrageous piece of moralist shysterism designed to prevent anyone daring to disagree with a move that could ring the death knell for some Merseyside pubs already reeling from the smoking ban and cheap supermarket takeaways.

Everyone knows – apart from Darling and co perhaps – that the war on so-called binge drinking should not be being fought in the pubs, where most landlords carry on their own effective policing, but at the supermarket tills. Those forced by circumstance to take a Saturday evening train into Liverpool will see the collateral damage already taken on the young Dawn of the Dead “fun” crowd after hours of glugging cheap carry-out WKDs and Wife Beater in the living room and bedrooms beforehand (with maybe some Colombian marching powder – that’s now cheaper than a pint – snorted up as a chaser in between).

It normally only takes one more drink to set light to the blue touchpaper when they reach their destination – and it’s the landlord left to pick up the pieces from a drinking spree and expenditure that has had nothing to do with them.

No wonder that there’s been such a wave of frustration and rage coming the Pub Column’s way in the Budget’s aftermath.

Geoff Edwards, chairman of the Liverpool and Districts branch of the Campaign For Real Ale, said the price rise had added insult to injury in a week when nationally the group had asked for a tax cut on beer to stop the flow of 57 UK pubs being permanently closed every month because of the crisis.

“This is just going to accelerate the process, now,” he said ominously.

John O’Dowd, landlord of the Lion in Tithebarn Street, says that many pub companies were already quietly contemplating a massive 25-30% drop in annual business.

“Smoking has taken many pubs to the wall – this will take them beyond that,” says John, who adds that continuing closures were destroying the cultural and community fabric of the country built up over centuries.

“Even Prince Charles is always banging on about social cohesion and that the pub is the hub – and he’s right. Labour, in doing this, have given a kick in the teeth to their own voters.”

Richie Owen at the Exchange in Old Hall Street agreed.

“The politicians were once told to beware getting between the working man, his beer and tobacco. That line’s just been crossed and the party will suffer for it. ”

Still all right, Darlin’?