One of the beer books I got for Christmas this year was Charlie Bamforth's 'Beer is proof god loves us'. It's a rambling collection of writings on beer, brewing, football, politics and spirituality. It's all very readable but I must say I prefer the beer based amusing anecdotes to the politics and god stuff.
In amongst the vast footnotes (which take up almost as much space as the main text) there were some figures on beer tax that really show how much we're screwed over in Britain:
Total revenue from taxing beer in 2004 (Euro):
Austria 202,000,000
Belgium 196,760,000
Finland 415,000,000
France 291,841,950
Germany 787,408
Ireland 457,100,000
Italy 306,714
Lithuania 31,804,000
Netherlands 324,000,000
Portugal 84,000,000
Switzerland 68,393,951
United Kingdom 4,516,000,000
I'm a little suspicious that some of the figures may be wrong, surely British beer drinkers can't pay nearly 6,000 times as much as the Germans! In fact earlier he says the British tax rate is about nine times the rate in Germany. But having said that I don't doubt that we're well ahead of everyone else in how much we pay overall.
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