Drinkuary: Raining on the parade

This article was first posted on Drinkuary. Rejoice be glad the beer duty escalator has stopped and beer duty has been dropped by a penny!! Big whoop and it’s not even true despite the headlines. I hate to be the one to rain on the parade but the Daily Mash has it right the Chancellor has bought you for a penny. Let’s have a quick look at the parade before the rain clouds open: “Success for the TaxPayers’ Alliance MashBeerTax campaign with the scrapping of the beer duty escalator and a 1p cut in beer duty” – Tax Payers Alliance … Continue reading

Hiding the decline

Sorry if I’ve misled you but I’m afraid I’m not talking about climate change, but about the equally false problem with alcohol consumption. As Leg Iron and others often observe the puritans and statists only have one play book, everything they do follows the same strategy. So it is with the current panic over drinking, as the protests against alcohol controls rise and look like derailing the project along comes a handy study that shows the problem really is as bad as the puritans claim it’s just we’ve all been “lying about how much we drink”. It seems that according … Continue reading

Liberty Forum London

Thanks to a post over at SamizData my attention was brought to the upcoming Liberty League Freedom Forum in London. the line up of speakers and talks looks good and being close enough to not need accommodation at £25 quid it’d be daft not to. Given my recent fun and games with Drinkaury I’m really quite looking forward to these talks: Chris Snowdon, Director of the Lifestyle Economics Unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and author of “Sock Puppets: How the government lobbies itself and why”, on “Are you paying for Prohibition?” Wolf von Laer, chairman of European Students … Continue reading