No. 27 The Booze Budget

Another day and another bank I’ve never heard of collapses. More chinless wonders face up to the fact that it’s not just the working classes who can lose their livelihoods.

I’m expecting this to have a knock-on effect which will ultimately see me out of pocket, and leaves me wondering how all these high-paid merchant bankers (cockney rhyming slang) find it so easy to lose something that doesn’t exist in the first place. A few zeros on a computer screen shouldn’t be too hard to retrieve. Have any of them actually thought of looking in the recycle bin? I’ll wager a double-click on that little icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen will put a swift end to this economic crisis and we’ll all be back to normal.

But until those merchant bankers (cockney rhyming slang) pull their heads out of their arses and implement Jeffman’s patented financial rescue package, we have to make do with the continued talk of credit crunches, recession, housing market crashes, the cost of petrol, and the end of cheap food. But there’s another major casualty we all seem to have neglected in this time of economic uncertainty. One that doesn’t make the headlines or fill the column inches of the national newspapers. I refer, of course, to Jeffman’s drinking budget.

Now Jeffman doesn’t drive and he doesn’t own property. He is what you might call a free spirit, ready and able to up sticks and ship out at the drop of a trilby. All he needs is an internet connection and access to some hardware and everything is Jim, and indeed, Dandy.

But despite having no direct reliance on petrol, or a worry of house depreciation hanging over him, Jeffman is feeling the pinch too.

An increase in shopping bills, utilities, etc. means a decrease in quality drinking time.

I think fondly back to the very early days of my career as a drinker, debaucherer, and as Fanshawe would have it, ‘an all round bad egg’. These were the days when a man could go out and get royally pissed for less than twenty of the Queen’s own pounds. A two pound pint was a mere concept, something that would never happen on my watch; not while there was still smoke in my lungs, and lead in my pencil.

In fact, these were the days when the only time you’d even entertain a two pound pint were if you were up town, top ranking. Town prices have always been an affront to the drinking man’s pocket and never one to miss up on the chance of ripping off a drunken reveller, continue to be to this day.

But in these enlightened times it’s impossible to get a pint for less than two quid, and nightclub prices are now hovering between the three and four pound mark, for what usually equates to little more than a glass of watery piss.

Beer prices have been on a steady increase for years, and with the amount of duty the government slaps onto the working man’s few remaining pleasures, a two pound plus pint should’ve been seen as inevitable in those halcyon days when the seeds of impending liver failure were still being sewn.

But it isn’t paying between £2.10 and £2.50 at my local dens of iniquity that’s the problem. It’s everything else that dips into the drinking fund, leaving me potless some weekends and unable to binge drink myself into unconsciousness. Instead I’m confined to barracks and eyeing up half a bottle of Buttercup cough mixture as the viable alternative.

If this economic downturn continues then this once proud nation of inebriates will be sunk without trace. The pubs are shutting by the skin-full, and the once proud and upstanding drunk is headed towards extinction.

Jeffman’s out of pocket and he’s not a happy bunny. Can they not see what their monumental ineptitude is doing?

Steer us through this crisis now or something worse lies ahead for us all.

Perpetual sobriety.

A man and his pint should never be parted. That’s when the real trouble starts.

You have been warned!

Similar nonsense:

No. 19 The Death of the Great British Boozer
No. 17 Drunken Recovery Times
No. 4 The Youth of Today Pt. 2 – The Kids Aren’t Alright

Like the cut of my jib? Wanting more? Then subscribe to my RSS Feed.