A very pleasant surprise for beer drinkers and pub goers

I am gobsmacked!

The lobbying to scrap the beer duty escalator has worked even better than most of us could only dare to dream.

Not only has the hated inflation busting duty increase been scrapped but Georgeous George had cut a penny off beer tax for the coming year.

The last beer duty cut was in 1959 when Chancellor David Heathcote Amory cut beer tax in an effort to boost sales.

Whilst Anthony Barber did cut beer duty in 1973, this was only because he was also introducing VAT (at 10%, later reduced to 8.0%)   as  a measure when the UK joined the Common Market.

So 54 years since the last proper cut in beer tax.

In 1959 the cut in beer duty saw the average price of a pint fall from the equivalent 6.8p to 6.0p.

We have already seen that Enterprise and Timothy Taylor intend to cut beer prices in their pubs. let us hope others follow.  But more importantly hopefully more people will now use their local pub rather than stocking up with slabs of cans from the supermarket and drinking at home.

So I'm off down the pub this evening for a pint or three of real ale and toast George Osborne and more importantly the British pub , British brewers and all the people who worked so hard to persuade the Government to get off the beer duty escalator.