The beleaguered UK drinks industry is to suggest a new personality-based duty scheme to the government, saying that it is ‘far more workable’ than what they’re planning to introduce over the next few months.
Brexit bonus
Under the new scheme, products will not attract a duty according to alcohol level, but instead be subject to a ‘personality tax’ that will vary depending on the nature of whoever is making or selling them.
‘No-one’s ever tried a system like this before,’ said Sir Edmund Dopey-Toff of Le Corduroy Rouge wine-merchants. ‘But desperate times call for desperate measures.
‘And one of the joys of post Brexit Britain is that we can dare to be different and bypass things we don’t like.
‘Such as common sense, international norms and the truth.’
Which group are you?
Drab Forecast of the trade body, the Wine and Spirit Trade Executive (WASTE) helped to draft the proposals and explained the theory to Fake Booze.
‘The drinks trade can basically be divided into six main categories,’ he said. ‘Sceptics, Cassandras and Miseries will attract the highest rate of duty, with the Guardedly Positive, Inexplicably Optimistic and Mindlessly Cheerful paying less.’
It was, he admitted, a big shift in thinking, but one that ‘still made more sense than having 27 different duty bands for wine.’
Trebles all round!
Economists believe that the proposed system could be great news for the public – and for the trade as well.
‘Whether they’re after Pinot Grigio or shit vodka, the great unwashed will love shopping around to find the cheapest place for their favourite filthy booze,’ said Polly Prolix of the research group Boozalysis.
‘And since those places will be owned by cheerful people, before long all of the miserable bastards who’ve been ruining the industry for years will go out of business. Ironically proving that they were right all along.’
Mindlessly cheerful
At Le Corduroy Rouge, Dopey-Toff said he was very much looking forward to the new regulations.
‘I’d be firmly in the Mindlessly Cheerful duty band,’ he said. ‘So I’ll be the cheapest venue for miles.’
His optimism, he said, came ‘partly from an inherently sunny nature, and lack of self-awareness.
‘But mainly from the fact that I’m sitting on a vast pile of inherited wealth and don’t care whether the business makes a profit or not.’
Under consideration
Fake Booze contacted the government to find out which category it would be in – but was told that the suggested proposals don’t yet extend as far down the personality scale as ‘relentlessly joyless black hole of bile’.
However, a spokesman did say they were considering the pros and cons of the new duty scheme for everyone else.
‘Our first impression is that it’s illogical, random and impossible to quantify, as well as being expensive to implement and open to massive abuse,’ they said.
‘We absolutely love it.’
Read here about why the drinks industry wants a return to the ‘good old days’ that they hated.
