Budget medicine

The less said about the duty rise in the budget the better.  Bleating from the sidelines the lobbying for the wine trade is hopelessly ineffectual. So, here we go again. The proportion of tax on a bottle increases every year and thus the value of the wine itself decreases. Slaves to their gps, restaurants continue to impose iniquitous price rises, further profiting from a government tax. Supermarkets are the overall winners again, for they can swallow the increases and improve their market share, whereas discriminating wine drinkers are invariably penalised.

There is no philosophical justification for these spiralling duty rises. It is nothing to do with combating drunkenness or improving the health of people in this country – otherwise these taxes would be ring-fenced for education and hospitals. I have written that it is a kind of clumsy prohibitionist gesture, albeit an ineffectual one since those people who want to find cheap booze to drink will simply go on booze cruises.