The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #142078 Message #3272966
Posted By: Geoff the Duck
13-Dec-11 - 03:37 AM
Thread Name: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
The 95% ruling was introduced some time around the mid 1990s, when the then Tory Government decided they would make it legal for breweries pub owning companies to rob drinkers of 5% of what they had paid for. It meant that Trading Standards were not allowed to prosecute pubs for selling short measure unless it was over 5% missing.
At the time CAMRA the Campaign for Real Ale campaigned against the ruling, on the grounds that it was straight forward robbery, and for any other food item it would be regarded as unacceptable and illegal to give a customer ANYTHING less than the advertised weight or volume paid for. You wouldn't expect to go into a shop, buy a pack of biscuits and the shopkeeper open the pack, take out two biscuits and say "Oh! It's all right, the government says I can keep these two and sell them to the next customer."
Of course the problem of breweries (and later on, "Pub Owning Chains") using short measure to rip-off customers is nothing new. Whitbread pioneered the idea of a "Big Head" so they could serve a pint glass with only 3/4 of a pint of liquid in it. That is why the Trading Standards needed to prosecute for short measure in the first place, but many British governments have been "in the pockets" of the brewing industry, so customers have always come last, behind the profits of big business.
Quack!
GtD.