Become a fan of h2g2
Camra1 and the BLRA2 published some figures this week. And with these two bodies involved it's no surprise to learn that the figures are to do with beer.
What is a surprise, though, is what the figures show.
In a nutshell, Gordon Brown, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, takes a third of the cost of your pint.
When you add the VAT3 and the Duty4 together, you find that he is responsible for a third of the cost of our beer.
Each day in the UK we buy and consume 27 million pints of beer. So when you do the maths you realise that Mr.Brown takes 9 million pints a day in tax.
That works out to 3.2 billion pints a year. Enough beer to fill one and a half Domes, just over three Wembley Stadiums or 21 Royal Albert Halls. A lot of beer.
So that's the percentage figures which were released, but what about in financial terms?
It works out that the Government takes £5 billion a year in tax on beer. Yup, £5 billion. Sort of pales into significance the £200 million to the NHS that Mr Blair fobs us off with each time we complain about high taxes.
It works out that the Government receives £14 million a day from beer tax.
So why do they receive so much money? The Duty alone in the UK is 34 pence per pint, compared to 5 pence in France and just 3 pence in both Germany and Spain.
There are approximatly 15 million beer drinkers in the UK, so it figures out that every year each drinker hands over £228 to Mr.Brown in beer tax.
It's not just the direct financial drain that the high rate of tax causes. Because beer in England is not as cheap as it is on the Continent, there has evolved a culture of boot-legging. Groups hire a van to go over to France, fill up the back with crates of beer then return to England and sell them on, under-cutting the shops who loose trade, which subsequentially hits the Brewers and the farmers. To combat this boot-legging and loss of revenue, the Government in their infinite wisdom draw more money from the tax payers to pay for extra Customs Officials. Why they don't just drop the tax and make it unprofitable for boot-leggers is beyond me.
This is just the beer we're on about here, not touching the wines and spirits.
So what can we do about it? The BLRA have organised an e-petition over at www.blra.co.uk where you can put your name to the campaign to drive down the tax rate.