Save your pint -sign the petition

The Government now take a third of your pint of beer in tax, according to CAMRA, who have launched a new website and campaign in order to get more people to sign up to the e-petition to halt the beer duty escalator.

The duty escalator is applied in an already shrinking market, hardly a good idea in a recession, or at any other time.

The escalator has seen beer duty increase by 42% since 2008 including a rise of 5% in last month’s budget.

Securing 100,000 signatures for this e-petition is a key aspect of the ongoing campaign to lobby the Government for the escalator to be abolished.

The e-petition needs 100,000 signatures in order to trigger a high profile Parliamentary debate which will put pressure on the Government to abandon the beer duty escalator in the 2013 Budget.

The Save the Pint Campaign is also backed by beermats and posters - click here to order them for your local - good to see beermats being used for this as most publicans I know are only too glad to have some. Apart from the ones made by the local rozzers that is.

Budget blues for drinkers

Confusion reigned today in the media over the budget coverage when the Chancellor announced that there was to be no change in the alcohol duty set by his predecessor. The BBC took this to mean that alcohol duty was not going up, this is of course a falsehood as the Beer Duty Escalator, set up by 'Eyebrows' Darling, remains in place so Beer Duty is going up:
Inflation (4%) + Escalator (2%) = 6% increase on beer duty
Have just been informed that RPI not CPI inflation is used so its actually only 3.7% but we all know these things are rounded up

The South Wales Argus tweeted "No change to duty rates on alcohol", proving its not just the BBC who get these things wrong.

Mike Benner, CAMRA Chief Executive, said, ‘The fact Britons are forced to pay over 40% of the EU beer tax bill, but consume only 13% of the beer sold in Europe, is remarkable. British beer in a pub is so heavily hit with duty and VAT, the tax man’s whirlwind hikes translate to him guzzling a third of every pint served, a shadow cast over the beer drinker depriving people of an affordable night down their local.

‘Such high taxes on beer are totally unsustainable, and therefore CAMRA is launching a consumer fight back in a bid to make the Government see sense. We today urge all beer drinkers to visit this site to get behind this new industry-backed e-petition to help safeguard the future of the beer and pub industry.’

Before the budget announcement on Beer Duty, George Osborne mentioned that the Government has an alcohol review strategy coming out later this year - expect more Draconian price controls in that with the introduction of minimum pricing, favoured by the prohibitionists alcohol concern and other such fake charities.

Do Your Duty - sign the petition against the beer escalator

Tomorrow (Wed) is budget day, the one day of the year that all drinkers can guaranteed to get screwed by the Government. The horrendous beer tax calculator is still on the books, which adds 2% plus inflation to the price of beer. This makes a 45% tax rise on beer since 2008!

There is a petition to sign about this but only has 12,000 signatures at the moment, odd that a certain organisations do not seem to be supporting this?

Pete Brown has more on the duty escalator over at his place.

Below are some infographics from the British Beer & Pub Association

• 950,000 British jobs depend on the UK beer and pub sector – 34,000 fewer than last year 

• There are now 900 breweries in the UK – a vital part of Britain’s manufacturing mix

• £13 billion is paid in wages in the sector

• Brewing and pubs are worth £19.4 billion to the UK economy (Gross Value Added)

• The beer and pub sector contributes over £11 billion in tax revenues

• 52,000 public houses in the UK
•  2% of GDP is contributed by pubs
• Almost 600,000 people are employed in full and part-time jobs

• Over 80% of pubs (i.e. around 40,000 outlets) are small businesses which are independently managed or run by self-employed licensees. 
• Beer represents 68% of all alcoholic drinks sold in pubs 
• pub food market is currently estimated to be worth in the region of £6 billion per annum