The Budget is likely to crank up the price of my favourite tipple considerably. This will, of course, have absolutely no effect on the amount of cheap booze smuggled in from overseas just as the huge tax on cigarettes (to pay for all those no-smoking signs and ASH) has had no effect on the amount of cheap baccy available in every pub in the land. What a bunch of idiots.
Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is under strong pressure from 10 Downing Street to "make an example" of whisky, gin and vodka drinkers when he makes his Commons statement next month.
Well, drinkers, don't say the smokers didn't warn you. You are to be made an example of. Quite how that works, well, don't ask me. I haven't figured out how 'making an example' of smokers was supposed to work. All it's done is annoy us.
Thing is, most of the tanked-up trash staggering about the place on a Saturday night have reached that level of oblivion on beer, lager, alcopops and that weird fluorescent stuff they drink as shots. I've never tried those. I don't want to drink something that looks radioactive.
There are very few who go out for the evening, hit the malt whisky and then go and smash a shop window. It's not guzzling stuff. There's no point paying those prices when you can't taste it any more and most of the names are hard enough to pronounce sober.
Likewise, gin tends to be associated with business suits and tonic. Not T-shirts with 'Brits on the Piss' stretched over beer guts so large that every summer, when they all go to Spain, the planet tilts a little.
Vodka, well, maybe. It's seen as a 'hard man's drink' although it tastes like paint stripper to me.
Most of the people drinking these things are not at all associated with brawling and spewing and screaming in the street. Most of them don't vote Labour either. Is there a connection?
Under the "nuclear option" plan for increasing duty – designed to appease the health lobby and show that ministers are serious about tackling the problems caused by binge drinking – the cost of a bottle of spirits would rocket, along with the cost of spirit-based alcopops favoured by young drinkers.
Designed to appease the Righteous puritans. Not one jot of concern for the people who vote for them. Just their big pals in their Soviet-style quangos and fakecharities. You and me, voters, we don't count. We just have to do as we are told. Pay freeze? Out of work? Income diminishing? Tough. You must pay more and more so that the Brown Gorgon and all his laughing pals can have cheap booze in their own bars. What's that you say? Why are they laughing? Ask not at whom the MPs laugh. They are laughing at you.
Let those bloody puritans vote Labour. I never have and never will. Any Labour canvasser at my door will hear two words and a slam. That goes for any party that wants to decide for me how much I smoke and drink and what I eat. Yes, Oily Al, you too. And you, Cameroid. I am a smoker and I like malt whiskies. You hate me. You absolutely despise me and you charge me for the privilege. You cannot possibly expect me to vote for you.
A bottle of Bells whisky could rise from £14.79 to £23.73 while Gordon's gin, another favourite of middle-class drinkers, would increase from £12.79 to £21.17.
Wait till this hits the smoky-drinky place. We generally go for whiskies that cost £25 or more a bottle now. Bells is going to cost that much. Bells. It's drain cleaner. What the hell will this do to the price of the Singleton, the Ardbeg, the Laphroaig? They are already at the £30 mark.
I haven't been to the smoky-drinky this weekend. Too much work. I have more samples arriving next week and have to keep up with reporting because I don't get paid until the reports are in. There will be an emergency meeting midweek.
At which I will hand out printouts of this. (found in Dick Puddlecote's roundup).
No, it's not tinfoil hattery, it's a matter of historical record. When the American Righteous found that the people didn't want prohibition after all, they poisoned the alcohol and caused ten thousand deaths. Even after the link was demonstrated, even though it was clearly deliberate poisoning inflicted by the government on its people, they continued. You must die. It's for your own good.
How long before ASH add poisons to tobacco? A good enough reason to source an overseas supply, I'd say. A far more important reason than the cost. How long before this government decide that the only way to stop us drinking is to poison it all?
These people don't care about the voters, only about their Righteous friends. Would you put it past this government to kill people 'for the greater good'? Would you put it past the Dreaded Arnott or Dumb Shenker to do this? I wouldn't. They are certainly evil enough. Kill a few smokers and drinkers? Oh, why not? They are killing themselves anyway and think how many second-hand smokers/drinkers we'd save.
Never happen? It happened during prohibition in America. Who was prosecuted? Nobody. Who gets to face disciplinary action in this country when a photographer is arrested? Nobody. Who went to jail when an innocent man was shot on the underground? In this country, if you are a Labour Lord who kills someone, you go to jail for a couple of weeks. If you let someone smoke on your premises, you go to jail for six months.
In this country, if you are accused of being a paedophile by a shop worker, you have to face the police who will make up laws to suit themselves. Who gets sacked or disciplined for calling you a paedo or for inventing non-existent laws? Nobody. Authority without responsibility. None of these Gestapo clones are ever held to account. That's why they keep doing it. Nothing will happen to them and they know it.
So if the Dreadful Arnott laced every tobacco supply with strychnine, what would happen to her? Nothing.
If Dumb Shenker laced all the booze on sale with antifreeze, what would happen to him? Nothing.
They know it.
I'm going to have to stock up on some decent malts before the budget. The Cameroids won't reverse this because they can afford those prices and so can all their mates. They have shown that they are anti-enjoyment too. None of those parties show any interest at all in tackling problem drinkers, all they want to do is punish everyone for the actions of a few. Dumb Shenker must be wetting himself with girlish glee at the news and stocking up on antifreeze at the same time. Expect to hear this revolting little man declare that cranking booze prices up to a range only lottery winners can afford will have no effect on pub closures. Expect to have to travel further and further to find a pub that's still open. I'll see you in the last one, just before it closes.
Our government is taking money from us by force and using it to pay witchfinders to criminalise everything we do. They will not balk at poisoning us. They don't even see us as people. We are just economic units.
Are the Tories any different? I don't see it.
I will vote for whoever has this at the top of their list.
Stop. Funding. Witchfinders. All of them. Right now.
13 comments:
Sod 'em, Leg-Iron. I like a good Hine, but I'm b*ggered if I'm paying those prices.
Triple Stills do a still, yeast, carbon and flavourings for any kind of spirit. I've tried it up to the end-of-fermentation stage (so far) and it's pretty impressive. No doubt, you could rig up a still within an hour, with your skills and kit.
There's a great video on youtube, taking you through the entire process - right through to the finished whisky. Can't find it right now, though!
Why give the government all that dosh? It'll only empower them to take away more of your freedoms.
Starve the b@stards.
They want to make 'an example' of everyone rather than make an example of the people who cause the trouble - people who can't hold their drink and think a good night out is leathering someone else.
To deal with that does not need any increase in alchol duties but better enforcement of existing laws (including licencing ones).
That brand of exciting nightlife is just an excuse to try and nanny us into a grey and boring life. But not them. They will be untouched. The lobby groups will be untouched too as taxpayers meet their expenses as well.
The Slate article makes me shudder. We've seen how keen the Westminster bubble is to arrest our economic development to satisfy the green lobby. They are trying to make life very expensive for many of us. Even so, I suspect some of what drives their potty ideas is a fear of a revenue shortage - they're looking for every penny they can grab but we have probably passed the zenith of the laffer curve. These kinds of articles about large increases in duties never suggest anything else will be decreased to compensate.
I thank the God I don't believe in that I'm only 45 mins from Dover and cheap French booze.
There are people in towns all over Scotland dying due to anthrax in heroin. How has the anthrax got into the heroin supply ? The question hasn't been asked yet as far as I know. Nobody in the Scottish government cares.
The SNP are trying to make alcohol too expensive for the poor. Alex and Nicola can enjoy their malts etc as they aren't affected. But it will only make things worse. I worked in the middle east most of my adult life and with alcohol banned we just made our own. The result was 40 yr olds casevaced home with liver failure. 3rd world cleaners doing the brewing as there were no inspections and the brewers only cost about a pound an hour. When alcohol becomes too dear then stills will become more common.
mad SNP, the US allegedly poisoned alcohol during prohibition, as a deterrent. They're said to be doing the same thing with other drugs nowadays, including pot.
Fausty,
The US definitely added poisons to make industrial ethanol dangerous to drink, during Prohibition. They definitely had a go at Mexican pot, although were forced to stop. They have recently had a go at poppy eradication in Afghanistan.
Although I doubt the CIA are adulterating the finished or intermediate product. But your conspiracy theory may vary ...
"Any Labour canvasser at my door will hear two words and a slam."
I doubt I'll have the pleasure of getting any in my area, but anyone who does knock is likely to not be able to hear anything for a while...
"They want to make 'an example' of everyone rather than make an example of the people who cause the trouble...."
Indeed.
Coming soon, dog licenses for all.
Because Mrs Miggin's arthritic Peke and Stabby McChav's pitbull/alligator cross? Exactly the same...
They are already poisoning cigarettes in the USA:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Fire-Safe-Cigarettes
Great article, LI, especially this:
"Not one jot of concern for the people who vote for them. Just their big pals in their Soviet-style quangos and fakecharities. You and me, voters, we don't count. We just have to do as we are told."
I can see that quote popping up at mine at some point. Perhaps very soon, as it goes.
Which reminds me, thanks for the links. In the current righteous environment, that Prohibition story is particularly chilling, is it not?
How long before ASH add poisons to tobacco?
They have already started trials to do this.
Remember a few weeks back, the anthrax in Heroin?
"How long before ASH add poisons to tobacco?"
There's already poisons added in tobacco. Modern cigarettes have a cocktail of poisons in that weren't added back in the day - Testing tailormades with a home chemistry set will show they have rat poison in, which causes thinning of the blood, amongst other carcigenics.
Whether this is by Big Tobacco or the state, I do not know.
Julia,
Re your link - I have had dogs as pets, and for a long time, way before any of the recent nasty stories about dog attacks, I’ve said that there should be some regulation on dog ownership, because done properly it really is a big responsibility, and done badly – well – it just shouldn’t be done at all.
So, it’s probably a massive indication of my own total, complete and utter lack of confidence in anything that this (or any future) Government does that my heart sinks hopelessly into my boots when, even though in principle it’s something I’ve said for a long time, I hear that “ministers” (who have probably never owned a dog in their life apart from the family Labrador when they were 10 years old) are “considering” this matter. Worse still in the article is the dreaded word “Defra” – you know, that bungling Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs who clearly know absolutely nothing about – well – the environment, farming or rural affairs. God only knows what appallingly heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all rules and regulations they’ll come out with. I foresee many cherished, well cared-for, happy dogs being whipped into miserable Council dog pounds, or worse, for minor infringements of the “regulations” and absolutely no reduction in trophy dogs, dog attacks or dog neglect whatsoever.
For all the difficulties in this country which need sorting out, these days I just find myself wishing, constantly, that politicians, their friends, cohorts and associates would, quite simply, do nothing. I’d rather live with the problems which we have in our society today than live with the worse ones which I know they will create through their meddling and inept interference. It seems that 18 years of Tory rule followed by 13 years of NuLabour rule have finally taken their toll on me. My belief in their ability to do anything with any semblance of rationality, common sense or consideration is at less than zero. Please God, why can’t they just leave us alone for a while????
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