Drunks drink spirits yet beer gets the duty rise
SIR – You mention in your leader (“Gin’s in, beer’s better”, June 6) that excise duty from gin has finally exceeded that from beer.
For 10 years Gordon Brown held duty on spirits flat to “protect” the Scotch whisky industry while applying a ratchet to beer duty (as did Philip Hammond this year).
The result is that we have the second-highest rate of beer duty in the EU – four times that of Germany’s – and Hogarth’s truths are plain to see. The drunks in our city streets, so often shown on television, have pre-loaded with supermarket spirits, yet it is pubs – the only source of the traditional pint – that receive the blame. Judith Beeley
Dent, Cumbria
SIR – My father nostalgically recalls how beer was once the “poor man’s drink”, to be drunk liberally, while spirits were for special occasions.
Beer has done itself no favours: prices of ordinary brands creep ever higher, while “craft ales” offer overworked flavours at overworked prices. Time to return to the basics: good beer at sensible prices. Howard Papworth
Watlington, Oxfordshire