Well bless 'em. 'No changes in duty on alcohol'...should have sounded more like we're going to rip you off even more again but not tell you about it'. Yesterday's budget saw the Con-Dem government pay no regard at all to the drinks industry by keeping in place the duty escalator that was put in place by the last government.

Effectively, an increase of 15p was added to a bottle of wine and 18p to a bottle of fizz. On a normal bottle of wine, this now takes the duty to roughly £1.75 (still checking this!). And then you pay VAT on top of this - a tax on a tax. Lovely.

By the time you take in to account bottling costs, shipping and distribution (with VAT on the whole lot) it now costs the best part of £3 just to get a bottle of wine in to the UK. 

Just tought you might like to know...