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| calum |
Whisky taxesWhisky taxes are apparently nearly £20 per litre. This seems to be Westminster's doing, mostly. I wonder who would be a good target for a campaign? Alastair Darling? Is there any group actively campaigning on this issue?Maybe they're scared of the power of the medical lobby. Can't see quality malts affecting our national health greatly though it may be a boost for our economy and give more Scots the chance to drink their world-famous national bevy. Slilghty tongie in cheek poll here at Tocasaid blog: http://tocasaid.blogspot.com/ |
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| azzuri |
....just as well the majority is exported then. | ||||||||||||
| babykitten |
Re: Whisky taxes
Yes, imagine what Edinburgh could do with all the taxes and duties from alcohol production in Scotland. It's the forgotten 'oil' in the economic part of the independence argument. Of course, I would hope that an independent Scotland would lower the taxation on alcohol because I think it is far too high and simply impoverishes drinkers rather than solve the drunkeness problem. |
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| Aventinian |
Re: Whisky taxes
Considering one can buy a litre of whisky, retail, for under £20 in total I find it hard not to dismiss that statistic as utter rubbish.
Entirely.
Alas, the Nats are puritans in the same vein as Labour if their minimum drinks prices campaign is anything to go by. |
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| babykitten |
Re: Whisky taxes
Aventinian, I think the statistic is based on pure alcohol, i.e. 100%. Since whisky is 40% alcohol, then that would make it £8 per litre bottle or £5.60 per 70cl bottle. This seems about right, because even the cheapest supermarket no label grain whisky is about £8 per bottle. I think the statistic is probably correct.
I agree with you. I am strongly opposed to the SNP's alcohol crusade and have written to them to make my feelings known. I also pointed out that I felt it was not right that Kenny MacAskill was behind a lot of this, given his arrest for suspicion of drunk and disorderly behaviour. I don't see why responsible drinkers should be punished by or lectured to by someone who MAY have or have had an alcohol problem. |
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| Holebender |
How many examples are there of the wounded healer, or the poacher tuned gamekeeper? Perhaps Kenny MacAskill's personal experience is useful in this case.
I think it's ridiculous that the Roman Catholic church expects parishoners to accept relationship advice from celibate single men, so someone with some "history" with alcohol strikes me as more likely to know what he's talking about. |
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| babykitten |
Perhaps, but Kenny MacAskill has a certain arrogance about him, an "I know best" attitude, which I don't like. I don't like being lectured to by politicians, especially when most of them are simplistic in their approach to issues. I'm sure Kenny MacAskill is a likeable guy if you get to know him, but I think it's wrong that he should be preaching to responsible drinkers. If he can't handle his alcohol (or has had problems in the past) then that's his problem. Sure, his input could be useful, as you say, but I don't think it's appropriate for him to be calling the shots. There's a distinct air of authoritarianism from Kenny. Perhaps that's just the nature of his justice role. Either way, it has been noted. Cue Aventinian coming along and saying "What else would you expect of nationalists other than authoritarianism?". |
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| Stevie |
I think a minimum price and age being required for a bottle of hard liquor is a very good move.
The reason I say this (as I've said on another thread) is that the last time I was in Scotland, my wife and I saw on sale 2 bottles of vodka for £5. I couldn't believe my eyes. This is simply aimed at alcoholics and encouraging binge drinking. Alcohol is used by young men and women as a drug rather than as a pleasure. Getting pissed is the aim, bad cultural education really. As far as K McCaskil is concerned, I don't know what he said but if it's making it harder for people to booze irresponsibly then is that a bad thing? All this stuff about condescension depends upon who says it to whoever is listening and their political allegiences usually, not suggesting that's the case here though. |
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| Aventinian |
Re: Whisky taxes
Excellent.
If you're looking for someone who is whiter than white on the alcohol issue, I don't think you'll find them. Drinking underage seemed almost universal in my days - particularly at university when a lot of us, myself included, trundled off aged 16 or 17 - those few who didn't drink certainly didn't do so out of respect for the law or because regulation prevented them from doing so. Politicians will be no different, and that's just one example of the behaviour they're all condemning from on-high now which they will most probably have practised in the past. This is perhaps what is so galling about their sanctimonious bullshit. I remember there was a bit of amusement over Aileen Campbell MSP removing a few pissed photos of herself from her website when it became an issue. I mean really...
To an extent. Once you start using the state for social and cultural issues, it becomes a slippery slope. ----------------------------------------
How is that encouraging anything? It is reducing prices so that people buy something at that shop instead of another - it is a simple and straightforward example of competition. The fact that unbranded aspirin is cheap does not encourage suicide either!
Alcohol is a drug and without the 'getting high' effect no-one would ever drink it.
That 'well surely if it's doing ______, it can't be bad' argument irks me. Quite simply because it's so obviously fallacious that one really has to question why someone did not engage their mind for a moment before saying it. It is a bad thing, yes. Penalising the vast majority of decent people simply because the government is too useless to tackle the actual issues surrounding the minority of trouble makers is wrong. As is the presumption behind this proposal that it is young people and the poor who are some sort of criminal underclass who must be protected from themselves: how much money someone has does not relate to their ability to drink responsibly. |
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| babykitten |
But there is a minimum price for alcohol already, set by the duty. The HMRC states that duty is £22.64 per litre of pure alcohol. Since spirits are normally 40% and a bottle is 0.7l that means that the duty is £6.34 per bottle. Add 15% VAT (I'm assuming VAT is added) and that makes £7.29 per bottle. That's for taxation alone. There's the cost of production, distribution and profit too. The cheapest I've seen a normally priced bottle of spirits these days is about £8. I'm finding it a bit hard to believe that you saw two bottles of vodka for sale for £5. Were these normal 70cl bottles of 40% proper vodka? The only explanation I can give is that it was stolen stuff, or stuff imported on the black/grey market. But this is the problem of over-taxing things. Eventually, criminals make inroads and it is made very much worthwhile to undercut the government, either by stealing the product from trucks or bonded warehouses, or by illegally importing from lower taxed countries. Minimum pricing will do nothing to stop this kind of activity. Therefore, all it will do is penalise responsible and law-abiding drinkers. The attitude of "if it is stopping people drinking irresponsibly then is that a bad thing?" is seriously flawed. It is also stopping people drinking RESPONSIBLY and could well encourage people to drink IRRESPONSIBLY by buying illegally imported spirits. This attitude is similar to the "if it saves one person then it's worth it" mantra. No. There has to be a line drawn somewhere. This is demonstrated through going to extremes. All rapes of women by men could be prevented by jailing every man in the UK tomorrow. Is this an acceptable price to pay for eradication of rape? Likewise we could spend 100% of the tax-take on finding a cure for cancer. Is this an acceptable price to pay for curing cancer? No. We have to draw lines somewhere. Everyone can agree with that. The disagreement comes with where to draw the line. Comments like "it if saves one person" are simplistic and not helpful to this argument. There has to be a cost/benefit analysis, and I mean cost in the wider context, not just financial. I argue that alcohol is already too expensive, as are cigarettes and I am strongly opposed to smoking and am glad that we have the smoking ban in public places at the moment to protect non-smokers (not to nanny smokers, as is often misunderstood to be the reason). Social problems such as drunkeness and smoking related illnesses cannot be solved by price alone, although I do accept that it has a role to play. I would not advocate selling these at cost price, because that would result in a bottle of vodka at £1 or less and cigarettes at pennies, but likewise I would not advocate making them any more expensive. They are expensive enough already, to the extent of impoverishing those who are 'addicted' at the moment. |
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| azzuri |
Indeed. I was in Sweden earlier this year, where the sale of alcohol is highly taxed and regulated. Bar prices are ridiculous, to the point where I ended up drinking with a Swedish-based friend in a rugby club changing rooms which was being run as an illegal 'pub'. Needless to say, the place was packed and you could hardly move for ex-pats getting their 'cheap' booze. |
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| Holebender |
Supermarkets often run loss leaders to lure in the punters in the hope they'll buy other stuff while they're in the shop. |
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| babykitten |
Yeah, of course, but two bottles of vodka for £5? I have never seen an offer like that in any 'reputable' shop/supermarket and would be queuing up to take advantage of it if ever there was one. This two bottles for £5 sounds like some dodgy corner shop that has been sourcing stolen or illegally imported spirits. In which case, minimum alcohol pricing would have zero effect. It would be interesting to hear the specifics of this 2 for £5 deal. Was it two full bottles (i.e. 2 x 70cl) or two half bottles? Was it a 'reputable' store or some dodgy outfit? Seriously, there is nowhere in the country that you can legitimately buy two bottles of vodka for £5, even taking into account loss leaders. Only some dodgy goings-on or some catastrophic over-ordering error would result in such a deal. Two bottles of vodka for £5 is not the norm by any stretch of the imagination. The very cheapest full-strength spirits you can buy are at least £8 for one bottle, i.e. £16 for two, or more than three times this apparent deal. |
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| babykitten |
Incidentally, I've just been researching the duty rates on spirits across the EU, and find that the UK is in 4th place behind, Sweden, Ireland and Finland. These four countries are substantially ahead of the rest in terms of duty on spirits. See pages 19-21 of this PDF.
If you look at the other tables and graphs for other types of alcohol, you'll find that the UK is still at the upper levels of duty amongst our EU neighbours. Alcohol is expensive enough here already. |
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| Alasdair |
Supermarkets are well known for using alcohol as a loss leader merely as a mechanism for getting people into the shop and then making the cash back elsewhere. Admittedly two bottles of vodka for £5 does sound peculiarly cheap. The point about supermarkets being irresponsible and encouraging drinking is a fair one. They may not do it intentionally but they do sell alcohol often at a loss to get people into their stores and the action does make a powerful and potentially dangerous substance available at ludicrously low prices. |
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| Stevie |
It's not really cool babykitten to suggest I'm lying with no proof. If you look at my posts you'll see I'm not prone to exagerration or innaccurate statements. It was 6 years ago and the shop was the ASDA supermarket in Airdie. Stiil, the point is, alcohol is a dangerous thing to put in the grubby mits of teenage boys. Actually, just about anything is dangerous when put in the hands of teenage boys. |
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| Cymro |
I have to admit I'm struggling to believe the 2 for a fiver claim too. Indeed supermarkets to offer beer as a loss leader but never ever have I even heard of this offer, I've not even seen it as buy 1 get 1 free which would roughly work out as 2 for say £10/15. If anyone was offering this sort of offer I'm certain it would have had a lot of negative publicity. Are you sure you didn't stumble into B+Q and see the White Spirits? 
Would you mind telling me where you saw this offer? It would save us a fortune in vodka! |
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| babykitten |
I'm not saying you're lying. I'm just saying that I have never, ever seen such a deal and am finding difficulty in believing it was 2 x 70cl bottles of 40% vodka for sale for £5. I also stated that if this was the case, then I reckoned it could only have been stolen stuff in a dodgy corner shop or some other mistake in ordering or pricing. You have to agree with me that it is extremely, extremely rare for 2 bottles of 70cl 40% vodka to be on sale for £5, yet they way you mentioned it was as if to suggest it was the norm. If this has indeed ever happened in recent years then it is so rare as to be virtually irrelevant to the argument. However, you have now stated that it was in Asda, but you still haven't confirmed if it was 2 x 70cl bottles of 40% vodka. Can you confirm that this is indeed what the offer was? Are you sure you're not mistaken? Was it perhaps some sort of vodka mixer/vodka alcopop that was 2 bottles for £5? Even if you now come back and confirm that it was 2 x 70cl of 40% vodka for £5, then you have to admit that this offer is so incredibly rare as to be utterly irrelevant to the argument. It is NOT the norm for 2 x 70cl bottles of vodka to be on sale for £5. In fact, the bare minimum price for 2 x 70cl bottles of vodka, even the cheapest of the cheap is £15-16 pounds, or 3 times as much. To believe that 2 70cl bottles of vodka can NORMALLY be purchased for £5 is an utter fallacy. I am not calling you a liar when I say this. I am simply stating a fact. To base legislation, or even an argument promoting legislation on such an anomaly is extremely flawed. EDIT: Even if it WAS six years ago, the duty was not THAT much different 6 years ago. It certainly was NOT the norm, even 6 years ago for 2 x 70cl bottles of 40% vodka to be on sale for £5, and even if it was available at one point 6 years ago, it would STILL have been so incredibly rare as to be utterly irrelevant to the argument. EDIT 2: You end with "actually, just about anything is dangerous in the hands of teenage boys". Which is all the more reason to NOT legislate for morons. We have got to accept that where people are ALREADY breaking the law, be it underage drinking, or causing a disturbance through excessive drinking that these things ARE ALREADY ILLEGAL. Further restricting the availability of alcohol will NOT solve this problem. All it serves to do is penalise responsible drinkers, because the irresponsible will continue as before, but will just be ever more encouraged to source alcohol illegaly. |
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| Stevie |
I'm not getting bogged down in a I did - you didn't see the offer.
I'm not very sure what this thread is aiming at. |
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| babykitten |
Well, it doesn't really matter, because we've established that it is not the norm for 2 x 70cl 40% vodka to be £5, but rather that the bare minimum price for the cheapest possible variety would be around £16. We've also established that the initial post about duty being "nearly £20 a litre" is indeed correct. It is in fact £22.64 per litre of 100% alcohol (the way HMRC choose to express it) which is plenty already and the 4th highest in the EU. |
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| Stevie |
Scottish whisky is the best in the world and the Brit government make a fortune in taxes.
Does anyone know approximately how much they scoop up in whisky tax? |
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| babykitten |
According to Niall Aslen's analysis of GERS and HMRC reports, HMRC recorded spirits duties (i.e. all spirits, not just whisky) of £2.256bn for the UK as a whole in 2006/2007, with Scotland producing 37.29% of that, which is £839m. The Scotch Whisky Association apparently reported paying £756m in the same period. A lot of vodka is also produced in Scotland, which makes up much of the rest of the amount. I would imagine that that doesn't include the VAT. It's certainly a very useful amount. Interestingly, HMRC also reports that beer alcohol duty for the same period was £3.072bn, with Scotland producing 13.28% of this, which is another £408m. So, Scottish produced beer and spirits for 2006/2007 resulted in around £1.247bn in duties. |
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| calum |
Taxes don't work in all situations. In Finland, alcoholism is still a very obvious problem. People make their own booze. In Sweden they have illegal drinking dens.
High taxes probably do stop me from buying more quality malts but i don't drink them to get wasted. All the whisky taxes do, on malts anyway, is to hinder one of our indigenous and world-famous industries. |
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| calum |
Oh, and funnily enough the Finnish government who runs Alko, the only outlet for alchohol above 5%abv, has higher recommended limits than we do. | ||||||||||||
| azzuri |
Domestic taxes don't hinder our whisky exports though... |
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| Holebender |
No, but... they do set an example. When importers of whisky see it being heavily taxed in its country of origin they are more inclined to do likewise, which can depress demand. | ||||||||||||
| calum |
Agree Holebender. Crippling taxes in it's indigenous country is both a bad example and bewildering. We should support it.
Add to our taxes, those in the Nordic countries and it's a major handicap. |
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| Holebender |
It's also a dilemma; support a major industry or discourage irresponsible drinking. Can the two aims be reconciled? | ||||||||||||
| azzuri |
Discourage irresponsible drinking amongst imported products but encourage it using domestic ones? Surely the mecca of socialist protectionism...
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| calum |
The neds here love their Ardbeg Airigh nam Beist... | ||||||||||||
| babykitten |
I actually think that the drink 'problem' is a symptom of other problems rather than the other way round.
The gangs of neds drinking on street corners is due to a combination of factors, such as lack of policing of what is already illegal (underage drinking and the associated destruction and crime) and lack of parental discipline, breakdown of family etc. The health issues in the general population, who don't stand around street corners but drink themselves to ill-health in the home, are, I would suggest no worse than they have ever been. The binge-drinking young adult problem (not the underage teenage neds above) probably is worse than before, but I would argue is over-stated. I would also argue that a lot of this is down to the hopelessness and lack of opportunities of a generation who have essentially been put on the scrapheap due to unemployment/underemployment, McJobs and the lack of a future due to even the obscene property prices which make a lot of young adults essentially giving up. The blame for this can be squarely put on New Labour and the Tories before them, for encouraging a reckless debt-fuelled 'boom' which has priced virtually everyone out of the prospect of owning their own home and raising a family without being in hock to banks. Except they are in hock to banks as taxpayers now anyway. The New Labour experiment is a thoroughly shameful episode which has a lot to answer for. I think it's obscene that many people are having to work Victorian hours to make ends meet while others can't get work at all. Just as has happened in the past, if technology has really obsoleted a lot of the workforce then the workload needs to be redistributed with shorter working weeks and a more even spread of the 'wealth' of that resulting 'leisure' time. It does nobody any good being idle all week, just as it does nobody any good doing 60 hours a week. Just as the working week fell from 7 days to 6 days to 5 days of 8 hours, it needs to fall further to redress this balance. Of course, opting out of the working time directive has hardly helped in achieving this goal. Solve the unemployment problem and the debt problem and I think many social problems such as alcohol abuse will solve themselves. |
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| calum |
Aye, Finland still has drink problems despite the high taxes but it still lacks the 'hard man' attitude that we have.
I still think that taxes on malt whisky should come down. The social effect would be minimal but the effect on communities with distilleries could be very positive. |
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| Aventinian |
They prefer their Speysides down my way. Still, within all of this minimum drinks pricing crap is an inherent classism. That somehow the poor, the neds, are the ones who can't be trusted with drink - minimum pricing only serves to deny booze to the poorest members of our society. Left-wing paternalism always goes disproportionately for the poor. Personally I prefer the idea of a country where you can be both poor and free, rather than subject to some blunt collective punishment. |
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| Aventinian |
Or you could try liberalism: lock up people who actually commit crimes that harm other people, and leave the rest to be as 'irresponsible' as they see fit. |
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| calum |
Aye, you have a point. We're ruled by fear rather than reason too much. It's the same with cannibis. Is there any logical reason for it to be illegal when compared to booze or tobacco. Same for other drugs, those who want them can still get them.
A good dram does me though. |
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