Posts Tagged ‘beer’
UK beer sales rise for the first time since 2006 (but it isn’t all good news)
July 30th, 2010 • 6 Comments
Beers sales are on the up! HURRAY! Unless, of course, they’ve gone up for depressing reasons like, say, everyone in Britain is depressed and started looking into habitual alcoholism. One source of simultaneous glee and gloom – the World Cup – is thought to be one of the reasons that UK beer sales have risen.
The BBC report that the equivalent of more than 2.2 billion pints were sold between April and June, which according to the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), is an increase of 2.9% on last year which means that quarterly sales were up on 12 months ago for the first time in four years. The nice weather probably didn’t do any harm either.
It isn’t all good news for the booze industry. Growth was seen at shops and supermarkets, but sales in Britain’s pubs fell by 6.3%. “The World Cup has certainly been a benefit to Britain’s beer sector and we can now hope that the market is starting to turn a corner,” said BBPA chief executive Brigid Simmonds.
“However, while there is some reason for cheer, it has to be noted that beer sales in pubs are still falling and the nation’s pubs need support.”
The BBPA once again called on the government to freeze the tax on beer and support pubs “recognising the economic and social contribution of these vital community assets”.
SAVE OUR PUBS!
Topless women in beer advert sparks outrage
July 30th, 2010 • 14 CommentsAn advertising campaign featuring three women with no tops on has been criticised for sexism (“What’s wrong with bein’ sexy?” – N. Tufnel, Spinal Tap):
According to Digital Spy, CEN is reporting that some groups have called for the campaign to be suspended.
One protester is quoted as saying: “There is no genuine connection between beer and naked women. The women have just been put there to sexualise beer. The advert is sexist against women.”
In fairness, there probably are links to people getting pissed and taking their clothes off.
Austria’s Hirter brewery spokeswoman Caroline Kroepfl impishly responded: “The poster shows three self-confident beer drinkers.”
Very confident! Of course, we at Bitterwallet don’t stand for this type of rampant objectification of women. DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING!
Thrusting young entrepreneurs have burgers ‘n’ porn van shut down
June 17th, 2010 • 12 Comments
The van at the centre of the investigation. Classy.
It’s the kind of story that would bring a tear to the eye of Sir Alan Sugar – a tale of classic British entrepreneurial spirit being cut away at the knee by needless red tape and regulation.
Two men have been arrested after they allegedly gave away free porn DVDs from their burger van. Customers were offered a free bongo film with their burgers if they spent more than £5 at the van, which was operating out of a garden in Driffield, East Yorkshire.
To help customers make the £5 minimum purchase required to trigger the free porn giveaway, beer was also sold from the van, in spite of the fact that neither of the arrested men had a licence for selling alcohol or hot food.
Police licensing officer PC Carolyn Grundy said: “Porn was being played on a TV inside the caravan when we arrived on Saturday night. It is unbelievable customers were being offered porn DVDs with their beer and burgers at an outlet that did not even have the necessary licences. The operation went well and we are now looking at the evidence to see what offences have been committed.”
We say… is it any wonder Britain is in the state that it’s in when a couple of enterprising young chaps can’t set up a caravan in a garden and incentivise new customers with an offer that they’ll find hard to resist?
Screw you UK PLC, screw you!
Beer for women? What next – manpons?
April 14th, 2010 • 15 Comments
A beer-drinking woman, yesterday
This day just gets more deranged the longer it goes on. First off we’ve had beer for children, then padded bikinis for children – now it’s beer for women! Whatever the sod next?
Molson Coors have said they’ll be launching a clear beer in August in an attempt to increase the number of women lager drinkers. And listen up women – they even want you lot to help come up with a name for it (we reckon it should be called Fat Doris)
Molson recently trialled a clear alcoholic drinking product that was flavoured with (ugh) green tea and dragon fruit – it had a similar taste to an alcopop but they say that the new booze will be more beer-orientated.
Brand Republic are reporting that it will be a bottled, rather than draught beer and that calorific content will be featured heavily on the label, as the ladies are generally put off by the idea that beer can make you fat (that sort of rules out Fat Doris then.)
Ladies (because we KNOW you’re reading) – do you drink beer and if not, why not? Would you be prepared to gorge on this fanciful, clear drink from Molson Coors and can YOU come up with a better name for it than Fat Doris?
Thought not.
Commercial Break: You can’t give a baby booze – but as for older kids…
April 14th, 2010 • 3 CommentsSome of the parents among you are now up to your necks in the Easter holidays, with your children running wild around your home, painting on the walls and doing their number ones, number twos and even number threes all over the floors like feral creatures.
It’ll be over soon enough and they’ll be back at school where they can be tranquilised, restrained in behaviour cages, and er, taught stuff, but that’s precious little consolation to you now, as you rock backwards and forwards, your nerves beyond shredded.
You’re probably tempted to turn to the bottle and immerse yourself in booze. It seems that in Japan, they do things differently – it’s the kids who get the beer…
Fancy buying some of Betty’s Hot Pot from Coronation Street?
February 23rd, 2010 • 4 Comments
While Eastenders was tarting about making live shows and cracking open Bradley’s skull like it was a soft boiled egg being hit with a monkey wrench, Coronation Street is going to get you fat and pissed.
Yep, retailers will be able to stock Coronation Street-branded products to mark the 50th anniversary of the ITV soap.
This means you’ll be able to get so drunk that you go blind in your ears on Newton and Ridley ale (made in association with JW Lees) and then soak up your crushing hangover the following morning with a portion of Betty’s Hot Pot.
Holland’s Pies is taking care of the food side of things and will make the range of Corrie grub available in supermarkets.
The products are part of ITV Global Entertainment’s plan to make the anniversary a key marketing, promotional and licensing platform this year.
Of course, this means that all these releases will be promoted through adverts, presumably online and on the television box machine.
That’s not all Corrie will be pushing though. As well as a ‘Best of British Brands’ promotion with Warburtons, Typhoo and Imperial Leather, from next month, fans of Coronation Street will be able to play a Nintendo Wii game featuring their favourite characters.
Rumour has it that the game will be a Mortal Kombat style gore-fest and gamers will be able to play as a host of classic characters from the soap. One clip seen at the Bitterwallet office saw a collective dry-wretch as it appeared to show Bet Lynch hoiking Emily Bishop’s head off with her labia, leaving the veteran actress decapitated with her spine swinging freely from the skull.
Another screengrab appeared to show Rita Fairclough being impaled in a pit of spikes after being torched by a naked Curly Watts. Should be good fun, eh?
Commercial Break: Beer in Rio with Paris
February 16th, 2010 • 5 CommentsAs we were always led to believe, someone who is described as an ‘heiress’ usually has shitloads of money orbiting around them, otherwise they would just be known as a ‘person.’
Why is it then that oddly-popular heiress Paris Hilton seems to be as keen as mustard to do almost anything if there’s some cash to be hauled in at the end of it? We recently watched a documentary (if indeed THAT’s the right word) where the oddly-popular Fearne Cotton accompanied Paris to a job where the monied airhead stood around in a VIP area of some club in exchange for a bag of dough.
Then there’s her shameful attempts to become a pop star, actress, novelist, shoe-seller and smell-maker. She’s THIS close to a needless appearance on The One Show. And now… meet Paris Hilton, peddler of Brazilian booze.
Here she is, fannying about in Rio, waving around cans of a drink we’re pretty sure she’s not a regular imbiber of. How much dosh will she make from this ad? Plenty. How can she justify needing said dosh? We’re not sure.
Ah, it says here that her grandfather, the brilliantly-named Baron Hilton, has pledged almost all of his $3 billion fortune to charity, leaving very little for poor Paris to get her well-manicured mitts on. Ah well, as you were love…
Pubs – is the worst finally over for them?
February 4th, 2010 • 7 Comments
This recession has totally shagged the British pub industry. The big figure has been that 52 pubs have closed per week. That’s a staggering and, quite frankly, shitty amount of boozers to lose.
However, after relentless gloom ladling, here’s something a little more cheerful. Last week, a report came out saying that beer sales are finally getting better. These sales are far from brilliant, but progress is progress. So is it time to be cautiously optimistic for British pubs?
The Publican reported yesterday that pub performance is improving. Naturally, the first lot to show signs of recovery are the big chain pubs. However, this news was followed by new data compiled for the British Beer and Pub Association by CGA Strategy, showing that the second half of 2009 saw 39 pubs closing per week. It’s still crap, but it’s definitely not as crap as it was, meaning that things could be getting better for our ale houses.
A total of 2,365 pubs closed during 2009, leaving us with 52,500 in Britain. What this transpires to is a loss of over £250 million in tax revenues this year, if the current closure level continues. There’s a whole lot of people losing their jobs too, which is something that news outlets seems less keen on reporting.
However, the BBPA is warning the Government that they should be looking at way to help pubs out to avoid intensifying problems. The tax burden remains the biggest issue, and the government is apparently planning another above inflation increase in Beer Tax in the forthcoming Budget.
This increase in the complexity and cost of running a pub is ensuring that our ‘free houses’ are suffering more than any other pub. These closures have lead to a group forming called Back The Pub which is a campaign which hopes to bring together all those with an interest in supporting and promoting the British pub.
While it seems that things are a long way from being sorted, things are certainly looking up for the British pub. Now, who fancies a scoop?
Just what IS beer? Some people from the past explain…
January 14th, 2010 • 4 Comments
Commercial Break: Check out the gas on THAT!
January 12th, 2010 • 7 CommentsOver at Daily Fork, it seems they have more time on their hands than we do here, and they’ve used that time spectacularly by compiling a list of the top six adverts that contain farting. Oh yes.
You can see the whole half dozen over at their site, but we were amused and aroused by this one for Troeg’s Beer that nabbed the top spot. Like the girl says, it’s natural so don’t criticise it.
If you do want to criticise us for showing a video that’s been around for over three years and that has probably already been on Tarrant On TV or whatever it’s called now, you should know that we first saw it in the pages of The London Times in 1863. So screw you.
Commercial Break: It’s New Year’s Eve so get stuck in
December 31st, 2009 • 4 Comments
[BuzzFeed]
Pubs to go on strike?
December 29th, 2009 • 5 Comments
The Great British Pub is an ailing, sickly thing. Pubs are dropping like brides’ nighties leaving us faced with a wall of chain pubs and their fart-smelling pints. The latest figure is that 52 boozers are closing every week.
As our locals shut up shop, we find ourselves increasingly likely to stay in our homes getting rat-arsed, smoking tabs on the flammable couch and pretending to talk to strangers when we go for a slash and standing in our gardens throwing wild punches at an imagined adversary who fingered our girlfriend’s pint.
And things could get a whole lot worse.
You see, pubs are getting priced out of the game and thousands of landlords are set to vote on whether to take industrial action in protest at the amount they must pay in overheads.
Over half of Britain’s pubs are owned by large pub firms – pubcos – and the GMB union says they require landlords to buy beer at a premium rate, as well as being asked to cough up for an up-front fee to and over-the-odds rent.
Apparently, there’s around 25,000 landlords in the UK who run ‘tied pubs’, which are rented from one of seven large property companies who also sell them beer. GMB reckons that the pubs are being charged up to double the wholesale price of beer available on the open market and makes demands of £12,000 of the annual cut in wholesale payments for each pub.
Industrial action looks inevitable but as yet, is not clear in what shape it will take. Should the staff and landlords decide to picket across the doors of their pubs, we could well see pubco reps backed by policemen with their numbers covered taking swipes at busty barmaids whilst alcoholics openly weep stage left as Billy Bragg strikes up a tuneless protest song.
Or, it could be a good time to start getting hammered on cheap ale.
GMB national officer Paul Maloney said: “If members vote for action, pubs will lower prices to customers during the dispute. The aim of the action by the tied tenants is to secure negotiation with pubcos to achieve very substantial cuts in wholesale prices and a resolution to a wide range of grievances experienced by the tied tenants at the hands of the pubcos’ middle managers and their agents.”
MPs from the Business and Enterprise Select Committee have called for the Competition Commission to investigate arrangements that oblige pub tenants to take beer supplies only from their landlords.
[BBC]
HotUKDeals Of The Day – Tuesday 15th December
December 15th, 2009 • No Comments
It’s all going on here at Deals Of The Day, if you believe ‘all going on’ to translate as ‘containing some offers for aquariums, booze and fancy-pants photo frames.’
The people responsible all lurk at HotUKDeals so if you’re going to blame anyone, blame them.
Here’s a mega deal that is spinning HUKD right off its greasy axis today – a seven inch digital photo frame that can be yours for the piffling amount of only £9.49 (with the help of a little code).
It’s mains-powered and will accept a whole host of memory cards. Use it to create a slideshow of your loved ones or to fill with a series of pics of yourself in various angry poses which you can then send to your nemesis as a permanent reminder. Grrrrr….
We’ve all seen Finding Nemo, taken a good look at the film’s eponymous hero and thought, ‘Mmm, he looks delicious’ but that’s wrong. It’s a movie about being lost and getting found again, not a moving menu for someone with a fetish for scoffing tropical fish.
On the other hand, you can get yourself set up with a complete aquarium set for only £44.99, grow your own Nemos, wolf down as many as you can breed and no one would be any the wiser. But that would also be wrong and we cannot condone it. Erm…
Finally, where would we be without a boozy bargain here at Deals Of The Day? Nowhere, that’s where. Or on the brilliant new kid-friendly deal site Playpennies, because as we all know, you can’t give a baby booze.
Thankfully, here’s a real fridge-filler for you. A five litre keg of Heineken for just £10. Which, when we do the sums, works out at a staggering… five litres for just £10. Which is utterly brilliant, and a great way of washing down any brightly-coloured live fish that you might have just eaten. Hmm…
(deals found by HUKD memnbers peskykids, leeparker and crumb666)
In the shops now! The laziest Christmas present ever from Boots?
November 16th, 2009 • 12 CommentsHave Boots produced the ideal present for those with a keen love of world beers, choosing only the most exotic examples to tantalise the palette of a loved one this Christmas – or is it one of the most half-arsed attempts at extracting money from desperate relatives on December 24th? It’s a tough call:
Boots aren’t the only high street brand to roll out unimaginative gifts at this time of year; can you find better examples of even worse store-led Christmas presents? Let us know in the comments, or send them with a glass of milk and a carrot to bitterwallet@gmail.com.
[Twitter]
North Korea looks to be on the slippery slope towards capitalism now that the country’s state TV channel have broadcast their first ever beer commercial. It’s for a brew that is said to relieve stress, but as you soundtrack is almost certainly guaranteed to aggravate you towards the booze.
We think it looks like just the drink you’d need after a long day carrying out nuclear test strikes and executing dissenters. No sign of North Korea’s fruity little dictator Kim Jong-Il though – we reckon he’s a Babycham man on the quiet.
