Finally some sense from the Press

Published by Brian Hennigan in the Edinburgh Evening News. I could not agree more!

Booze hypocrisy
Maybe you've heard of Tokyo, a blow-your-pants-off 12 per cent strength Scottish beer. Naturally, the drink-sodden state of modern Scotland means that the Usual Handwringers have to stand on the street corner wailing about the imminent destruction of the nation by the Fraserburgh-based brewery, Brewdog.

Their crime is - apparently - to have created a bottle-based alcohol product that costs four quid for 330ml. That is to say, a product that costs more than any number of cheap wines available from Asda, Thresher or your local corner shop, while delivering almost half the alcohol of that bottle of wine. If Brewdog is being strung up in the press for its bottled crime spree, then presumably as I write there are trucks on the way to round up all those who man the tills at Tesco.

A word to the supposedly wise, particularly those arch-pontificators such as politicians and public health administrators; blaming a small company for your failure to educate people not to abuse alcohol is nothing less than hypocritical and just short of disgusting. While some products, such as Buckfast, have little place other than as the fast route to oblivion, others, such as Tokyo ale, can genuinely claim to be about something else. Belgium as a small country is packed full of equally potent products. Perhaps we should import their health legislators and civil servants to tackle a problem that is obviously beyond our bureaucratic numpties.