Cheap Beer
 

Just reminding those interested in paying only Dhs21 per pint this weekend...

THE BIG WEEKEND AT THE IRISH VILLAGE THURSDAY 28TH & FRIDAY 29TH APRIL BIG BASH... LESS CASH! NOW IS OUR TURN TO GIVE BACK! At The Irish Village, The Big Weekend – in its 3rd consecutive year! - is packed with fun, good food, excellent music... And the best is that you get to pay less... The 2-day festival will have live music from 6 different bands. On Thursday entertainment starts at 6.00 p.m. while Friday the live music is on from 4.00 p.m. onwards. Entertainment and fun for the kids are on the programme too: supervised bouncy castle area and face painting. And the best is that over the 2 days, a wide selection of your favourite beverages is priced at AED 21 only per glass. Free entry. For more information, please call 04 2824122

Re: Cheap Beer
 

It's not that cheap.

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The best brunch type deal including alcohol for maximum skintflintedness yet with surprisingly good food - is Dubliners. 75dhs for 3 drinks and a meal. 25dhs per pint & a free good meal if you look at it that way....

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Disagree. For 85dhs, Waxys provide a cooked Irish breakfast, five beverages and a roast dinner. Avoid the downstairs cesspit, but their upstairs lounge is the business.

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Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the delights of Waxy's.... I challenge you that the food quality at Dubliners is better... but hey - if you like Waxy's....

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GBP 3.40 for a pint in the "cheap" places in Dubai...the average pint cost in the UK is around GBP 2.80 (lots of variety depending on region of course).

N.

Re: Cheap Beer
 

It's even less in Nairobi. What's your point, Norm? We all know that Dubai is a rip off.

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Dubliners wins hands down , the foods great quality and it's a great hotel . Waxy's a cesspit , upstairs and down . . I'm not that desperate for a bargain in any case .

Another hole is Double Deckers , the grubs better than Waxy's but the women are fatter , i'v never seen so many fat birds in one place .

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*they make their own beer / lager in the UK*

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But there are not that many places I would want to go to in Nairobi at night.... ;)

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Good Fellas still does it for me.......... although the full English all-you-can-eat plus 5 pints has gone from AED 59 to 99 in the last couple of years.

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My point is that it's a rip off as you rightly stated. So where should we be going when we visit Nairobi?;)

Indeed...and we make some very fine Ales too which we don't export half as much as we probably could. Every beer drinker from different countries I know has good things to say about British Ales and Beers.

N.

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Uh...generally after they browbeat us about why we serve it 'warm.'

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Real ale is a fresh product and not suitable for exporting, lager can be pasteurised and still taste ok (though fresh unpasteurised lager is a completely different and extremely good drink)

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Is it really that much off a rip off? 20% more?

From what I can see beer prices in AED have been pretty much unchanged since 2008. Sterling has devalued by more than 20% in the same period. So you could argue that there is your difference.

Anyway, it's not surprising that it's more expensive - there is nowhere nearby that makes it, it's essentially illegal and the customers (on salaries that are 30-50% higher than they would be in their home markets) can afford it. You would do the same. No one forces you to drink it.

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Yeah. I'm paying between 3-4 quid for a pint of decent beer in London.

I'm of the opinion that alcohol should be just as expensive in the UK as in the UAE. It might solve the yob problem.

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If you strip out duty and taxation it is still really a rip-off.

After you knock off VAT and duty from an average pint in the UK it's around GBP 2.00 for the beer itself.

In the UAE, alcohol tax is 33%, assuming Dubai there's also 20% luxury hotel tax and service to pay, so an AED 35 pint is around 3.50, or about 75% more.

At the IV's AED 21 a pint it's in fact pretty much equivalent to UK prices

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Exactly.

I was going to write that arguably alcohol in the UK is too cheap. I didn't due to my three line post rule and I wasn't going to let Norm make me break it again.

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There is no evidence whatsoever that increasing the price will ever make any difference. Beer is way more expensive in Scandinavia and they have an alcohol/yob problem, yet way cheaper in southern Europe and they don't. It's an attitude problem.

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The Scandinavian yob problem is much smaller than the UK's.

Culture certainly plays a role. Attitudes towards alcohol certainly does. The UK's always had a streak of drunkiness throughout its history and no other European country celebrates being hungover as much as the UK does, but it's really grown out of hand for a large sector of the population due to too much alcohol too readily available at too cheap prices.

Take New Zealand. NZ used to have one of the most stringent sets of alcohol laws in the anglo world, right up to the late 1980s. The laws were liberalised in the 1990s to the point that's hardly any restriction on the sale of booze. The result? Public drunkiness, binge drinking and alcohol related incidents soared.

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That's an odd rule and seems to be self-limiting, especially when you have something interesting to say (and let's face it...few things are as interesting as beer ;)).

Be free - write what you need to. I only force you as much as alcohol forces me to drink it :p

N.

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It's ok - alcohol forces me too... but only after I give into one.

As for the three line rule... it's probably really because I have nothing meaningful to say... that said, it's a discipline I try and maintain at work too - I always find people draft amazing emails that are works of art but I struggle to read them.

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I couldn't agree more.

It's not even about how much people drink. I know people who drink massive, unhealthy amounts of booze who are very well behaved and wouldn't dream of bothering anyone.

Conversely I know people who have a glass of beer or wine and turn into the bane of humanity...you're right about attitude being the problem. And I also think the yobs are not representative of the majority of drinkers - they just make for more interesting news.

N.

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Gavin Henson, professional Welshman and one of dozens who have shagged Charlotte Church, comes into the latter category...........

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I saw far stronger drinks on sale for far lower prices almost everywhere when I was in China and yet didn't see anyone fighting (saw plenty of pissed people though) or causing trouble. I think the issue is how we are raised to view drink as a culture or society.

In the West we still seem to think taking absolutist and puritanical views towards booze will solve the problem (just like prohibition which really helped didn't it? :sneaky:).

Far better to promote a drinking culture where the highest ideal is to behave and enjoy than to keep raising prices, banning it or trying to stop people...all that does is punish the majority of responsible drinkers.

N.