Rip-Off Britain at the King’s Arms, All Cannings
Rip-off Britain is alive and well and preying on tourists in the little village of All Cannings near Devizes in Wiltshire. We paused there one day last week during a canal holiday on the beautiful Kennet & Avon canal. A fingerpost beside the canal points the half-mile or so walk to the King’s Arms public house. There I ordered a pint of Wadworth’s 6X (an excellent beer brewed just a few miles away in Devizes) for myself, a small glass of red wine for Louise, and a glass of Coke and another of lemonade for the children. The price asked was exactly £10 which took me by surprise; we were in rural Wiltshire, not London where higher property prices and wage costs might push prices up. Ten pounds for one beer, a glass of house wine and two children’s soft drinks? I asked how the £10 was calculated and it worked out as follows:
- Pint of 6X beer - £2.70
- Small (125ml) red wine - £2.90
- Glass of lemonade made from syrup concentrate - £2.20
- Glass of Coke made from syrup concentrate - £2.20
I expressed surprise at the high cost of the soft drinks and the landlord responded that he made little profit on it because the syrup is so expensive. In fact he even asserted that his price was cheap because his competitors charge £3 for a Coke. So now we know that the landlord of the King’s Arms is not only greedy, he must think all his customers are idiots if they believe such rubbish. I could show him many pubs where a glass of Coke or lemonade made with syrup is under a pound.
Something is wrong somewhere. The Wadworth beer had to be brewed with pride and transported whole in special containers, not as a syrup that could be diluted with tap water, and presumably the beer needs to be handled with greater care than Coca Cola syrup so arguably its transport costs would be higher. The beer price includes VAT and government excise duty; Having failed to find this information on the website of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs I wrote to Wadworth’s to enquire if they could explain how it is calculated.
I received a prompt and informative reply from Brian Yorston, Wadworth’s Head Brewer. Apparently the excise duty on beer is based on the percentage of alcohol in the beer by volume. The current rate of beer duty is £13.71 per hectalitre percent ABV. With cask conditioned beer such as 6X they can deduct the sediment caused by the yeast. Mr Yorston calculates that by making allowance for this sediment the duty on a pint of 6X is 36 pence. In addition 17.5% VAT is levied on the purchase price of the beer which for a retail price of £2.70 would be 47 pence. Note that VAT is levied on the excise duty, so we pay tax on the tax!
Therefore I paid a total of 83 pence in tax on that pint of beer. Clearly this is a sore topic with Mr Yorston because he points out that the tax being 31% of the retail price of the beer is three times the EU average. Only the Finns and Irish pay more for their alcohol.
Let us assume that the measure of Coke and lemonade we were served was half a pint and that the £4.40 per pint retail price includes 17.5% VAT. We can therefore say that the retail price of the beer net of tax was £1.87 per pint and the retail price of the Coca Cola net of tax was £3.75 per pint. That makes Coke and lemonade twice as expensive as 4.3% ABV beer per unit volume at the King’s Arms!
This should be a matter of concern to the brewery. In our case last week having walked to the pub I was expecting to stay for several pints. Instead, faced with these rip-off soft drink prices, we decided to go back to the canal boat and open our own wine and beer, purchased in a supermarket for considerably less than the pub prices. Paradoxically it wasn’t the prices of the alcoholic drinks that caused this decision (although they weren’t a bargain either), it was the soft drinks. Wadworth’s lost the opportunity to sell me several more pints of their delicious beer because the greedy licensee of the King’s Arms in All Cannings was charging rip-off prices for children’s drinks.
I’m not against the licensed trade making a profit. I realise that they incur numerous expenses in serving a drink. But is it really necessary for a child’s soft drink to cost twice as much as an adult’s alcoholic drink does? When I meet visitors to our country who express surprise at the rip-off prices they have been charged I am embarrassed and ashamed. What a pity that the landlord of the King’s Arms in All Cannings has no shame.
