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This is the link to the e-petition demanding an end to the beer duty escalator which automatically increases beer duty by inflation plus 2% every year allowing slippery politicians to claim "the Chancellor has imposed no additional beer duty this year".
Please consider signing it and tell all your friends to do the same,
https://submissions.epetitions.direc...etitions/29664
Done...
Done.
Likewise.
Sneaky fecking feckers... Done
Done and passed on to non-PuGgers
Signed, sealed and delivered.
Done. And shared the link on Facebook.
Thanks for posting the link oldboots,I'm signed up.
Done
And me. :pray:
Me to
And me.
Me as well.
Yeah.
Done and passed on to a few others.
finally got round to signing this :cool:
done and dusted
At last...... The e-petiton finally reached 100,000 signatures around 10am yesterday. Thanks to everyone who signed.
The next step is for a motion to be presented to the back bench committee that will decide if we can have a debate, a debate is not automatically guaranteed. You can write to your MP and try to get them to support the call for a debate and of course freezing or abolishing the escalator, Melissa Cole has this idea - check the first comment as well.
Sadly the Treasury has already said it won't scrap the escalator but there's no harm in trying.
The next public step is a mass lobby of MPs on the 12th December see here
Is it not possible to get the 38 Degrees people in on this? It seems to have taken an age to get the 100,000 signatures.
i see the anti badger cull petition got 100,000 signatures in about 2 weeksQuote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38257
Yep and Branson has now got 174,000 for his carp train service, I think it tells you a lot about the British and what they value.Quote:
Originally Posted by hondo
The time taken to get to the magic number certainly undermines the petition's credibility with politicians, I'm not holding my breath that we'll even get a debate but I'm going to badger :D my MP to get it.
We have got the debate :cheers:
Andrew Griffiths MP @agriffithsmp tweeted this afternoon,
"It is official. We have been granted a 3 hr debate on the floor of the House of Commons on scrapping the Beer Duty Escalator on 1st Nov. "
I wonder what effect that date has on CAMRA's mass lobby on 12/12/12?
I do know we won't get a lot of positive coverage on the BBC:D
I do hope that something positive comes from this although I am not holding my breath. What annoys me most is the line the supporters of the escalator come up with claiming that it will help cut down on binge drinking. This is total rubbish as so-called binge drinkers (ie, younger people who fall out of night clubs causing all sorts of grief) are not beer drinkers. they drink spirits or alco-pops (if they still exist).
If you feel that the BBC aren't giving any coverage to this why not complain? I complained about the Olympic news coverage ( especially in the London news ) earlier this year and did get fobbed off, but I knew I wasn't on a winning cause.
Wine, spirits and cider are also subject to an escalator but the method of applying the duty is different. The health lobby will point to falling sales (when and only when it suits their case) as proof that increasing prices reduces consumption. However there is no information breaking down the reduction by income/age group etc and also nobody really knows the extent of the consumption of smuggled, VAT fraud, counterfeit or home made alcohol.
The BBC has an obvious built in bias against drink but mainly beer. Wine of course presents them with a dilemma;
it's a lovely middle class drink that we at the BBC all enjoy, it's the only drink that goes with food and it doesn't do us any harm
against
we must join in the "Binge Britain" moral panic so the Daily Mail doesn't get upset and of course we can use those great telly pictures of drunk youngsters fighting and vomiting while we tut tut about "alcohol".
They seem to get round this dilemma by thinking wine isn't "alcohol", much in the way a lot of people think alcohol isn't a drug or maybe isn't "drugs". So as with the Olympics not a whole lot of point complaining.
I detect a cynicism almost equal to my own, and I thought I was the only one like that!!!
Cynicism but unfortunately justified.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
This is the point where cynicism and realism meet.
Indeed, almost every story they run about alcohol has the same stock photos of beer / someone drinking a pint.Quote:
Originally Posted by oldboots
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-19715002
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19490952
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-n...wales-18725195
Good research Quinno, and the last one is a joke. When have you heard of anyone under 18 drinking real ale?Quote:
Originally Posted by Quinno
I saw plenty of under age drinkers in an unnamed Northampton venue on Tuesday evening and like me they were drinking cheap shots of vodka...
Not sure if you mean nowadays - but certainly my school friends and I were almost brought up on the stuff!Quote:
Originally Posted by Spinko
Just going off my mates, the earliest most people get into real ale these days is mid-20s...that's with a lot of persuasion and usually by pointing out they can get a 5% pint for under £2 in Wethers...Quote:
Originally Posted by ETA
Our son (20) drinks real ale and appreciates it, but finds it difficult to get his mates into the pub-in York of all places...Quote:
Originally Posted by Spinko
You can just imagine several fathers thinking What! you're in York and you're drinking WKDs / Stella / Magners. :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittenden
"increase taxes on beer by 160%"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...?newsfeed=true
The last time I went to France (20 years ago now) the price of beer in a bar was the same as London (not Spoons) prices but the supermarket prices were very cheap. The same applied in Belgium I seem to recall.
By "France" I don't mean Paris or any other major City but Brittany. If this goes ahead in France the French will just drink the House Red rather than beer resulting in diminishing returns of duty.
Presumably it will hit booze cruises if they still occur.