a small independent brewer's opinion

As some of you are aware I brew beer for a living. Ok so it's currently unpaid as we're getting our small independent brewery up and running but very soon we'll get to a position where it will provide an income of sorts. So when I read SIBA (the Small Independent Brewers Association) giving space to repost, without comment or rebuttal, a piece from the Burton Mail it makes me even less inclined to sign up to their scheme.

This is the same SIBA who gave space on their website and in their journal to Alcohol Concern, an article written by their chief prohibitionist Don Shenker, and accepted them as a corporate member. You read that correctly - Alcohol Concern are a corporate member of the Small Independent Brewers Association. For some reason SIBA think this is a good idea. I hope that other brewers in my situation tell SIBA to go fuck themselves and withdraw from the organisation. Alcohol Concern is not the brewers friend and, ever increasingly, neither is SIBA.

So what did today's piece do to annoy me further? It was a report of a commons debate secured by Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) in which the usual idiotic statements, fallacious comparisons, and calls for price regulation were made by MPs. I'll pick out some of the comments from Hansard

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) Numerous studies around the world have shown public health benefits as a result of price increases and taxation policies, so is it not time for some evidence-based politics?

Evidence based? As in all those European countries who have lower rates of tax on alcohol than we do and less trouble with drunkenness and those crazy Swedes with their healthy black market of smuggled alcohol because their government raised the tax on booze so high? Which evidence were you looking at?

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) I draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to the letter in today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph signed by 19 organisations.

This letter? Signed by the BMA, Alcohol Concern, Alcohol Focus Scotland, Action on Addiction, etc etc etc. As many of these organisations receive large chunks of their income from the public purse I think they should fuck off and not get involved otherwise we might suspect they're being paid to promote the government's agenda.

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) In 2010, a total of 48.4 billion units of alcohol were sold in the UK. Of those, 31.8 billion units—about two thirds; the great and increasing majority—were sold by the off-trade. The widening gap between the price of on-licence and off-licence alcohol is becoming far more significant and is fuelling the rise in home drinking

And the smoking ban, instantly making smokers unwelcome in pubs, bars, restaurants, had absolutely nothing to do with this shift to off-sales?

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) I absolutely agree. Most of the alcohol-related carnage is caused by young binge drinkers and by heavy or dependent drinkers

Young drinkers who, due to increasingly heavy handed state regulation of pubs, can't learn how to drink properly until they're adults by which time it's too late. And if we can identify the cause of the antisocial behaviour (i.e. the individuals) why do we need even more regulation? Use the existing laws, don't create new ones.

Andrew Griffiths (Con): I agree with her about the need for the Government to take action. Does she agree with me on this point? Twenty years ago, the price in a supermarket and the price in a pub were much the same at about 75p a pint. Today, a pint costs £3.10, £3.20 or £3.30 in a pub, whereas in a supermarket it remains at about 70p or 80p.

I've yet to find a supermarket that sells decent quality beer for 70p per pint. Looking around the web the cheapest I can find is approx £1.40 per pint (for decent beer. More on that in a moment) The differential between the cost of on-sales and off-sales is misleading though. If you are taking away from the premises you don't need your glass washed (you do that yourself), service is quicker and therefore less costly, furniture doesn't need to be supplied, toilets aren't provided etc. The cost of your pint in a pub pays for all of those things too.

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) I absolutely agree. The point is that in the UK harmful drinkers buy 15 times more alcohol than moderate drinkers, yet they pay 40% less per unit.

Is there a government scheme for a special discount card? Harmful drinkers pay exactly the same as every other customer of a given retail outlet for their alcohol (unless they steal it of course).

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) With a four-pack of bitter for 68p, the price was just 17p a unit.

Asda Smart Price Bitter, at 2.1% ABV, which works out to 0.9 units of alcohol per can or, after rounding, 19p per unit (not 17p as claimed), and tastes like dishwater. A decent beer, such as Thornbridge Jaipur, is £2.39 a pint in a supermarket. It costs £3.20 in my local.

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative)I particularly objected to the labelling. It said, “Asda Smart Price”. I put it to hon. Members that there is nothing smart about charging 68p for four units of alcohol. That would send a woman well over the safe limit for a single day for just 68p.

Safe daily limit? What if that's the only alcohol your imaginary woman drinks all week?

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. We need to show what minimum pricing means in practice if we set a reasonable price.

The problem is that once you've got a minimum price you can claim it isn't working and raise it higher and higher.

If we set a minimum price of around 45p a unit, as the Scottish Government are planning to do, in a Bill introduced at the end of October, it would mean that a bottle of whisky containing 28 units could not be sold below £12.60, a bottle of wine containing 10 units could not cost less than £4.50, and a pint of beer with two units could not cost less than 90p.

As your colleague pointed out earlier that a pint of beer was as little as 70p or 80p in a supermarket and this was scandalously low the idea of a 90p pint is, quite honestly, fucking ridiculous. Almost immediately minimum pricing is introduced there will be calls to raise it as it hasn't had the impact it was supposed to.

Such prices would not suck all the fun from a night out; in fact, they would not raise the price of alcohol in the on-trade at all.

Don't tell Shenker that. He clearly wants to suck the fun out of everyone else's lives so that they are as miserable as him.


So, the organisation that allegedly represents the interests of small brewers has aligned itself with an organisation that seems determined to destroy the small brewers of this country and politicians who are of similar mind. Cunts.