Thread by @DanielLambert29

People outside my industry have been asking why the strong reaction to the dead cat story of pint bottles. It’s not really about the pint bottles it’s about the continuous effects of government interference and Brexit.

Brexit was in their own words “removing unwanted red tape and having seamless trade on a global basis” sounds great and something many voted for (on an advisory basis you understand).

The reality is very different. People get confused with a Free Trade agreement and Barriers to trade. Whilst we have an FTA with the EU the governments deal with the EU is so bad that all the barriers to trade are directly responsible for UK inflation and cause endless problems.

But what about the wine trade, well it’s an important part of the UK economy. Wine is the most consumed alcoholic drink with over 1,700,000,000 bottles consumed per year in the UK. Thats 6 bottles every second of every day.

Moreover at 6 bottles every second that means the government is earning £16.08 per second from the wine industry. Or an hourly rate of £964.80. Plus VAT of course!!! So you would think the government would want to look after this goose, and make it easy for the importers?

Well no, the last three years of Brexit in terms of importation have been a nightmare due to self inflicted government fuckwittery. Let’s have a little recap of all the shitty things they have done to increase paperwork and red tape. The inverse as voted for.

To maintain status quo, still be able to move stock and then sell it of course without the broker cartels you need to have the following licences now.

Port Badges just RORO (£1000 PA), GBWK, GBRC, CDS/CHIEF Access (£250 per month), Derferment Account, Vat Reg, UK EMCS, Account with Hauliers that can access GVMS, AWRS, organic certificates and import approval, WOWGR for non wine products, & of course staff to run this.

So that’s just to stand still, quite a list. But was the government satisfied with this, no why not change and complicate things further, so firstly we had Vi1 circus, which after 9 months of pretty fierce lobbying even the government worked out is was a bad idea & scrapped it.

Then we’ve had @RishiSunak terrible Alcohol Reform excise plans. So dreadful that they were opposed in the HOC & they haven’t fully implemented them yet, it’s made the excise system so complicated that in the over 15.5% alc level Port & Sherry sector has collapsed effectively.

Then we have the organic laws of importation again something they know is bad laws so keep pushing back the date of implementation. Next we have the importer labelling fiasco where England made its mind up on the 18th December with a live date of tomorrow.

Wales and Scotland and NI still have not decided what to do as this comes down to regional governments to decide…

So once again technically the UK will be breaking world trade organisation rules with trade within the UK Union. We have DRS waiting in the wings but this is so toxic nobody wants to open that can of worms again especially in Scotland.

Then in the summer we had the largest excise increase in 50 years which not only changed buying habits for good it totally changed how many individual wines performed because the increase was so large. This messed up forecast flows for everyone.

So for this government to announce that it cares about the wine trade and it wants more choice with a bottle format nobody asked for and isn’t produced anywhere is quite something.

Even the research the government did into this came back with an approval rating of 1.8%. In other words 98.2% told government it was a shit idea. But there doing it anyway.

So as said the reaction about pint bottles for the wine trade is a case of straw camel back. This government is so seriously out of touch and so desperate to find anything to make Brexit look good they come up with pint bottles. They’re just embarrassing for the country.

Finally I have personally spoken to to the head of buying of a number of big companies in the UK since this news came out. None of these people will be buying or even asking their suppliers for pints bottles. Behind the scenes they are just as frustrated with government as I am.

The truth is this government continues to do nothing good to help the wine trade, the wine industry would normally be supporting a Tory government, but these days I can confirm I don’t know many that still do. Quite the opposite in fact.