They will have forced our hand
Posted on | December 8, 2009 | 31 Comments
When the budget arrives tomorrow and the price of booze goes up what choice will us dedicated drinkers have? We have three choices.
1 – Continue drinking the booze you can buy in pubs and off-licences/supermarkets here. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see some kind of ’0ff-licence levy’ applied so it’s more expensive for them, leaving the publicans alone in an attempt to ‘level the playing field’ a bit. It’s still beyond any kind of good reason to go into town and spend €5+ on a drink that costs you €1 or less at home. Socialability? Fuck that shit. If I go into town from now on I’m gonna be Johnny Hipflask, holstered up with rum and whiskey. And I’ll ask for splash cola too.
2 – Smuggle booze from elsewhere. So trips to the north will become a more regular occurence, especially when it comes to spirits. Last time I flew from London to Dublin you could get 2 x Gordon’s gin for £14.99. I have recently spent time in a place where a bottle of Smirnoff costs €8 in a supermarket. A bottle of Jameson €12. And here we have to pay through the nose for spirits. As dedicated drinkers our first loyalty is to our cabinet, not the government one, the one which holds all our hooch. Smuggling is going to become a very attractive option for many people.
3 – Make your own. Despite the outrageous pub prices this is probably the least attractive option as making your own booze is generally for twats who think home wine kits produce a palatable liquid and not something that tastes like the top of a battery mixed with the spunk of a moose with a smeg infection. However, I predict a rise in the availability of poitín as people are no longer prepared to swell government coffers by buying the real deal. Home made whiskeys and gins and vodkas will flood the market and kill many due to lethal combinations of chemicals and such. But all it will take is for somebody to make the Sodastream equivalent of home made grog and it’s well and truly on.
Sodastream made soft drinks which tasted similar to regular brand name soft drinks (but only after the brand name ones had gone out of date, been opened and left in the sun for a week). They were popular though so a cunning entrepeneur could have quite the thriving business if he comes up with an easy way to add some concentrate to a bottle to make ones own creme de menthe and so forth. Don’t say I don’t give you good ideas.
So tomorrow we’ll see what Lenihan does. At a time when the country needs to drink more to cope with how fucked things are he’ll put up the price of booze so we’ll have to drink more to cope with the price increase. Now that I think about it, it’s genius.
Lenihan has realised what we’re good at and how to make things better. We’ll guzzle the grape, the extra duty on all the extra stuff sold will go straight into the govt till and soon we’ll be back on track. We’re going to drink ourselves out of the recession.
Bottoms up!
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31 Responses to “They will have forced our hand”
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December 8th, 2009 @ 11:04 am
increase on booze? Is it crazy you are… there will be no increase on booze or cigarettes… we are experiencing deflation are we not?
I did laugh at your soda stream description though…
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:05 am
I recommend those anti-Swine Flu alcohol-based hand rubs they leave in office toilets for supplies of free all-you-can-drink brew.
They have the added advantage of coming with a built-in straw, and if you freeze them, you have your own boozy makes-you-blinder-than-Ray-Charles ice lolly.
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:08 am
Do they come in excellent Wkd and Aftershock colours, Scary?
SAm, the old reliables. Smokes, booze and air all going up.
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:12 am
They come in two flavours:
– Ribena
– Urinal cube
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:14 am
Home brew?…yechh pass the bucket pls
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:17 am
Some people can make nice homebrew . . . some can’t.
You should have voted for that young fella with the slogan “session through the recession”
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:22 am
Mmmm, urinal cake.
You should have voted for that young fella with the slogan “session through the recession”
I was thinking about it but it would have required moving house and that seemed a little too much effort.
And I refuse to accept that any homebrew is nice.
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:26 am
My grandad’s homebrew was legend. Barnes Wallace bought a job lot and used it in the bouncing bombs.
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:26 am
Home made beer is better than store-bought (if done properly and not from a kit) in exactly the same way as home cooked food is better than a microwaved ready-meal (if done properly and not from a packet). Dipso facto.
And it’s not smuggling, it’s free movement of goods and services with the European Union.
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:34 am
Methinks there’ll be some sort of bail-out for the drink trade in the budget, perhaps as part of a vat reduction. They successfully battered the government on the alcoholic driving issue and Jackie Healy Rae’s vote has to be kept onside.
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:34 am
I hope you’re speculating, you’ve just ruined my day
December 8th, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
Beer nut – really? I thought homebrew was sad blokes in sheds who make stuff that’s just un-ghastly enough to drink. You’re the nut though, so I’ll defer to your wisdom.
Conan – me too. The ‘off licence levy’ wouldn’t surprise me. Instead of making pubs more competitive they’ll nobble the opposition.
December 8th, 2009 @ 12:27 pm
“I recommend those anti-Swine Flu alcohol-based hand rubs they leave in office toilets for supplies of free all-you-can-drink brew.”
Heh…….
http://tinyurl.com/bob2rn
December 8th, 2009 @ 1:04 pm
We got bored with the sodastream after a coulpe of hours of making fizzy Miwadi and started carbonating the milk.
December 8th, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
I’ll happily admin the homebrew stuff I make is horrible shit. Does the job though, 35 pints of 7.5% cider for 1 days work spread over 4 weeks, €25. 70c a pint. Of piss admittedly, but after the third or fourth, you don’t care anymore.
I might start trying to make it nice though, actually use real apples and proper sugar, etc.
December 8th, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
Lidl Cloudy Apple Juice, a pot of cold tea and Young’s Cider Yeast is the way to go with cider: 90 minutes’ work; 50-odd cents a pint; and damn tasty with it.
December 8th, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
Maybe prices on ciggies and booze will fall ?
They do make concentrates for pure alcohol twenty. Back in the 70s and 80s when I was involved in Lab Parties at university the Vet Med department would slaughter and butcher a steer for the Christmas party and the Path lab would provide a gallon of pure alcohol (100 ethanol) which was magicked into whiskey, rum and brandy. Quite palatable though the girls preferred the punch.
December 8th, 2009 @ 2:02 pm
@Twenty. Yes really. The whole beards and sheds thing went out with Pajo and the Cortina. We’re craftspeople now, dontcher know. And the beer is usually seriously good.
December 8th, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
>>Lidl Cloudy Apple Juice, a pot of cold tea and >>Young’s Cider Yeast
Tea? Why the tea?
I’ll give the apple juice a lash though. I’ve used Youngs apple concentrate before, not pleasant.
December 8th, 2009 @ 2:13 pm
Apparently the tea adds body from the tannins, so it doesn’t finish up thin and totally dry. Mine definitely kept a nice appley sweetness, though I can’t be sure if that was down to the tea.
December 8th, 2009 @ 2:22 pm
There was a brewer in Guinness’s years ago who could turn wine into whiskey. There’s machine called a ‘taste profiler’ used to check the consistency of Guinness. Using that gadget, whiskey could be profiled and, using that profile, the necessary chemicals added to wine to make it taste exactly like whiskey… or rum… or whatever you fancy.
You just need one of those machines, loads of chemicals and a degree in whatever. Simple.
December 8th, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
And, of course, turning wine into whiskey is way more impressive than turning water into wine. Sure any cunt can do that (and ride an altar boy at the same time).
December 8th, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
They sell pure alcohol off the shelf in supermarkets in Italy. It’s only about 9 euro a litre too, so do the maths.
(we should live in Italy).
December 8th, 2009 @ 3:22 pm
All you have to do is get rid of the purple additive and you’re sorted.
http://www.getprice.com.au/KCB-Methylated-Spirits-1-Litre-Purple-Gpnc_647–41511933.htm
December 8th, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
They sell pure alcohol off the shelf in supermarkets in Italy. It’s only about 9 euro a litre too, so do the maths.
..some sort of free UB40/ASLAN gig where we give out free pure alchohol and get rid of a portion of the knacker population,or am I off the right track?
December 8th, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
Im already Johnny hip flask. Works a treat. Although I was so pissed 2 weeks ago I was supping it at the bar. In fairness the barman said feck all to me.
December 8th, 2009 @ 5:36 pm
Well the stupid bitch with the mental shrill voice was on the radio over the last week or so with the binge drinking is bad shite. Pople binging at home etc,etc.
So an increase in price could happen.
Mind you if increasing the price of cigarettes is anything to go by as a means of getting people to alter their behavior. Its a busted strategy.
December 9th, 2009 @ 9:10 am
“Path lab would provide a gallon of pure alcohol (100 ethanol) which was magicked into whiskey, rum and brandy. Quite palatable though the girls preferred the punch.”
A word of warning to our younger readers. You can use medical alcohol but not the typical laboratory alcohol when spicing up your concoctions. They put pyridine and other unpleasant substances into lab. alc. just so stop us chemists from brewing booze with it. As if we would do such a despicable thing.
You didn’t go to Limerick University did you, maggot? I always thought the girls there preferred the old backhand.
December 9th, 2009 @ 10:45 am
This was pure ethanol Lung, the lab staff had a vested interest as they too were getting slaughtered on it. This was a Scottish university.
Those really were the days. Smoking and drinking in the staff room.
December 9th, 2009 @ 11:16 am
“..some sort of free UB40/ASLAN gig where we give out free pure alchohol and get rid of a portion of the knacker population,or am I off the right track?”
I’m convinced. If you run in the next election fill3rup, I’ll vote for you!
December 9th, 2009 @ 5:27 pm
Maybe prices on ciggies and booze will fall ?
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1209/breaking66.htm