Letter: Beer tax targeted at wrong people
Thursday 31st December 2009, 10:03AM GMT.
Letter: In this year’s Budget, the Chancellor announced that beer, wine and spirits would be taxed at a higher rate and that rate would increase every year for the foreseeable future. Alistair Darling claimed this was part of the war on binge-drinking which, I think most would agree is a spiralling problem possibly not helped by the same Government’s introduction of 24-hour drinking.
But are they targeting the right people with their binge drink taxation?
Ask yourself, when did you last see a drunken teenager in such a state because of his penchant for real ale?
The fact is that if you want to attack alcohol abuse, you need to target the alcohol abusers. That’s not the average drinker in the average Shrewsbury pub after a day at work.
It’s the kids in the local park loaded up on high-volume cider or the alcopop drinker who hasn’t learned to drink responsibly.
But the higher taxes don’t seem to be targeted in that direction. In fact alcopops are amongst the least taxed drinks. There seems to be an attack across the board which damages local pubs as much as it does the binge-drinker’s wallet.
Daniel Kawczynski MP
Shrewsbury
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Yes, Daniel, that’s because they aren’t really targeting binge drinking, they’re just raising taxes. That and the government’s hatred of any institution that may provide a sense of community without government interference – pubs, for example.
The binge-drinking excuse is a red herring.
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If the government really wanted to stamp out binge drinking they could use the existing powers to prosecute clubs and pubs that continue serving people who are already drunk. This is the major cause of trouble on town streets any night of the week. Closing down the worst culprits would do the trick without hitting the responsible majority with more taxes. Unfortunately that would upset New Labour’s paymasters in the drinks trade who have already been rewarded with 24-hour opening hours.
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I can see a lot of Home Brew shops opening soon.
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Daniel, as you should already know; duck houses, clock tower repairs etc. need funding from somewhere. Whomever is in power, spin is constantly applied to extract cash from the pockets of the hard working to alledgely improve the ‘topic’ of the day.
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Binge drinking is fuelled by cut price supermarket alcohol accessible to young people who then knock it back as quick as possible as the barrier of actually queueing to buy a drink is removed. It is also fuelled by ‘happy hours’ encouraging people to get as bladdered as possible in the space of 2-3 hours because it’s cheaper.
Raising taxes will fuel binge drinking as more people get tanked up on cheap supermarket alcohol before hitting the pubs, causing trouble and buying next to nothing as it’s too expensive due to the taxes
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Breweries should be taxed on the amount of beer they produce.
There should varying tax levels for varying outlets.
Supermarkets, Clubs, Public Houses should all have differing levels with Traditional Pubs keeping traditional opening hours being the LEAST taxed of all alcohol outlets.
Save the Traditional British Pub to save the British way of life.
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