Friday, August 13, 2010

Drinking in Britain. Wine v. Beer

Data Source: http://www.ias.org.uk/resources/factsheets/drinkinggb.pdf

I think we can all see where this is going...

5 comments:

Rob said...

When you consider that the vast majority of the beer market is made up of the drinkers of mass market commercial brands, and then consider the growth of craft beer, this comes to me as good news. The graph indicates to me that in some way or another consumers are becoming more concerned with quality over quantity.

Jeff Pickthall said...

It's worth being sceptical about the Institute of Alcohol Studies. The neutral academic-sounding name is designed to disguise the organisation's historical identity – The Temperance Society.

Their narrative is, as it always was, "alcohol is an intrinsically bad thing; people are drinking more and more of it and Godly abstinence and Methodist hymn-singing will solve all society's ills." The IAS generates acres of statistics to support their chosen narrative and bombards anyone who will listen (and many who don't) with press releases.

Fortunately the mainstream media gives them little credence – unlike the government quango Alcohol Concern, an organisation that also plays fast and loose with stats.

StringersBeer said...

Jeff, that doesn't mean that I won't let them mash-up the General Household Survey with some other sh*t for me. Be wary of the easy ad hominem.
But whatever, it's why I gave a decent reference, unlike
pubcurmudgeon
http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2010/08/beer-and-wine-consumption.html
who refers us to
Mark Wadsworth’s blog
http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2010/08/changes-in-uk-beer-and-wine-consumption.html
who reports that Joseph Takagi
http://independentramblings.blogspot.com/
"alerts us to these charts over at WolframAlpha:"
Where I'm afraid (and unsurprised that) the chain of chinese whispers breaks.

And anyway, which are you sceptical about? That beer consumption (expressed as alc/capita) has been more-or-less steady since 1980, or that wine is on a steady rise?

StringersBeer said...

P.S. And, plus also, that's a bit of a Straw Man isn't it. I'm afraid we'll never win an argument about a healthy place for alcohol in culture by dissing hymn-singing.
[sings] Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to walk alone,
Dare to pass a public house
and take your money home.

Unknown said...

Can't help agreeing with Rob on that one....