Price of a pint !

You would need hundreds of thousands of people to boycott to make even a tiny dent. If you boycott the Diageo you also boycott Heineken. Do you agree with that? Any boycott would have to be done at the bar not at the brewer so the only way to do that is to stop buying their products. A large part of my job is selling those products and I also supervise about 30 people who's job is also to sell those products. If everyone boycotts Diageo they don't suffer I lose my job because of the boycott. Also the 30 people I supervise lose their jobs because there is hardly any customers due to said boycott. Is boycotting those companies more important than the likes of me and my colleagues having a living?

It was sold as being a tool to prevent harmful drinking, and the publicans saw it as a way to make home drinking dearer so supported it full throttle.

Weed has replaced alcohol for younger people. Is that an upgrade?

You need to understand that it's not just Diageo that needs to have their cough softened. Heineken are at the same price gouging too, and so are others. The average price of a pint of larger in town now is eye watering. You'll be looking at well over 7 euro (8 in some places) for a pint Heineken. A bloody Heineken!

Simply targeting Guinness won't really have any effect. Diageo are a global corporation. Guinness is a worldwide drink. It's not just the cheaper pint of stout that auld lads drink in Irish locals any more. If we "boycott" Guinness in Ireland, they'll likely not give a damn because they'll make their sales elsewhere.

They made billions in profit last year and do so year on year. Not millions…BILLIONS. They can more than afford any hit taken in a temporary boycott.

Diageo won't give a damn about any kind of boycott and they know that Guinness drinkers are not going to switch to something even more expensive just to give them a dig in the balls either.

Frankly, I'd love to see total boycott of all drinking by punters for a month. Nobody buying anything at all and see how that hits these companies. But that isn't going to be happening any time soon either.

What will happen is that more and more people will hit their own endpoint as far as going out is concerned. 1000's have already reached that point. Neither I or any of my mates are going to town any more and the two locals I frequent near me have seen a drop off in custom. There have been three closures of restaurants and one pub closure in the last year too because of a lack of footfall.

But these breweries make obscene profits so they don't really care about that.

You can see the rise since the 2000s in any longitudinal studies. These generally only go up to age 24, sometimes 35. This one shows a startling rise in the 2010s but a bit of a reduction by 2019 for instance.

https://alcoholforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Factsheet-Young-people-drugs-and-alcohol-The-Irish-Situation-_August_2021.pdf

Interestingly, AAI claimed only last week the the reduction in youth drinking had stopped and indeed reversed, so the argument becomes a bit pointless if that is so.

Studies showing MUP as effective for harmful drinkers or youth drinkers - the only two things it was claimed to be done for - in any way are a masterclass in data cherrypicking. Academically very interesting in showing how devious you can be with data!

I am not looking for anyone to lose their jobs. Simply want Guinness down to a reasonable price that’s fair for the consumer.

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Your 2003 example was based on one anecdote of buying what was then a super premium product in a very expensive pub, compared to prevailing pricing now.

Also, picking a wage cost comparison and ignoring inflation because it makes your figures look better is bad science.

I know, cause I've recently seen a receipt for it, that a pint of lager in my then local was €3.85 in February 2005. That's €5.50 on a CPI inflation basis. It's now €7.

Both roughly half an hour at the minimum wage, but the minimum wage is not what most people are on, so is not a useful thing to compare to for affordability; and has been undergoing a process to increase it faster than CPI to ensure its actually liveable.

Where are you getting your stats from? And are you using mean or median?

I can't find - quickly, at least - any source giving 555/week for 2005; and pretty much everything gives higher figures for then, with most giving lower figures for now, particularly median wages which are a lot lower.

Mean wages are extremely distorted by C-suite, finance and tech earnings covering a very small amount of the population. Median wages are not. If you are talking about 'the average person' you must use median, not mean

Links won't properly embed, keep getting "gateway time-out" error.

So in your opinion it's always been a rip off then?

Then we're at a complete impasse in discussion.

I am fine with paying €6.50 for a pint, makes no difference if it was €6 or €7, over a night out it'll equal about €3 in the difference either way, not something I'll think about for even a minute.

As long as my wages are going up it has little to no effect.

It's been a rip off for at least three decades, possibly longer. Mature market with no real competition and an ability to keep out new entrants, and consumers that won't stop consuming.

Your personal wages to pints ratio is not everyones, and is not even the average persons either.

They haven't kept out new entrants. The customers have had more than enough chances to ditch the major brands.

@thesandeman what would you normally drink and why is Tuborg 🤮 ?

I would normally be a craft beer person but it's nonexistent in the pubs here. I was drinking Carling until Diageo swooped just because it was a reasonable price and I found it as good, if not better, than the expensive overly promoted Diageo and Heineken products.

I attempted to like Tuborg but I find it tastes like a shandy topped up with water.