Профиль

This is such a weird non-story. The regulations relate specifically to the term 'alcohol-free', which should only be applied to drinks below 0.05% ABV. But there is no barrier to making drinks at 0.5% - e.g. Lucky Saint is 0.5% and their sales seem to be fine. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

UK’s alcohol-free beer boom threatened by regulations, trade body warnsBBPA wants content definition for beer to be considered non-alcoholic to be changed from 0.05% to 0.5%www.theguardian.com

For those of you that missed the news that Humphrey Smith, the eccentric autocrat of the Samuel Smith pub empire, had died recently... (and if you've no idea who he was, stop what you are doing and go and read this excellent article now www.theguardian.com/news/2024/de...)

Humphrey’s world: how the Samuel Smith beer baron built Britain’s strangest pub chainSince the 1970s, Humphrey Smith has acquired scores of pubs and historic properties around the UK. But time after time, he has left the buildings empty. Why has he allowed his empire to moulder?www.theguardian.com

This is really interesting work and has some important implications for anyone who cares about the impact of new treatments and interventions on health inequalities. Whether current NHS spending is reducing inequality is crucial to estimating what happens when we divert some of that to new drugs.

ICYMI, here's the most striking finding from our new paper on reformulation in the British off-trade alcohol market: This graph shows the proportion of beer sales which are below 3.5% ABV. The dashed line shows the date that duty rates for 2.8-3.4% beer was cut. 1/4 of beer sold in 2025 was <3.5%!

New paper klaxon: Our analysis of reformulation (when alcohol producers change the strength of their products) in the British alcohol market 2018-2025 has just been published in @apsad-dar.bsky.social. I think some of our findings are pretty striking... doi.org/10.1111/dar....

This is an important piece of work - looking at how alcohol prices in Australia's Northern Territory responded to the repeal of Minimum Unit Pricing last year. Unsurprisingly, they found an immediate increase in the availability of cheap alcohol.

This is a really interesting blog about a curious phenomenon - the rise of high-strength (10%+) pre-mixed cocktails. In absolute terms the price per unit of alcohol on these isn't particularly low, but we might worry about their appeal to younger drinkers.

Also in Lithuania - many cool birds 🦉 Yellow wagtail (with a blue head - ours have yellow heads) White Stork preening on a roof Aquatic warbler singing his little heart out Cranes with a little baby crane

I spent last week in Kaunas in Lithuania at an alcohol policy conference. It was my first visit to Lithuania, and it was marvellous. A beautiful city, great food and an abundant supply of delicious cakes.

It's almost World Cup time (for better or worse), so I've got an excuse to update this silly application of a lexis surface to the England men's football squads for every major tournament ever. R code here: github.com/VictimOfMath...

This (and the other points in the thread) are generally good advice. BUT I think people often get overly prescriptive with this sort of guidance and ignore the fact that a good presentation requires a combination of good slides *and* a good presenter. I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS...

This is such a weird headline to the article, the text of which makes no mention of any 'tax raid' (because there hasn't been one). The changes to the duty system in 2023 mean that there are now tax *cuts* for producers who reformulate to below 3.5%.

Come and join this cool project. You get to work with @ambercopeland.bsky.social and be part of our lovely team of excellent humans.

Urusei Yatsura Mogwai (x2) The National Fugazi Godspeed You! Black Emperor (x3) ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (x2) Lucy Dacus Pixies Deftones (x2) Kathryn Joseph