[MM-MALTS-L] Save Johnnie Walker Whisky/advert

[Horst Luening]

Hi!

I have some strange thoughts about this Kilmarnock thing. And - please
note - that I am *not* living in Scotland or in the UK.

Uk administration did not help the industry. In contrast, they are throwing
'sticks at their legs' as we are saying here in Germany. They forced the
industry to place expensive duty stamps on the bottles. Even knowing, that
this will not help tax fraud. Italy can tell something about this. But this
were additional costs for the industry.

Next thing was the rise of the alc. tax. Then all whisky plants, without a
single fire in the last decades, were classified as chemical plants and
needed a lot of additional safty equipment. Not to mention all the fine dust
impact on the energy bill. All this resulted in additional costs.

And what happened? Finally people stopped drinking. And they began their
reduction with the relatively high priced well branded whisky names. Johnnie
Walker is one of them. Whyte & Mackay also announced a cut of 15% in
workforce.

The only chance for Diageo to get the boat floating again is selling more
abroad. And you have to divide money with the receiving nations. Otherwise
the will not buy. Why should we work hard abroad and pay for bottling costs
which could increase our own nation balance sheet? Is this fair? We risk our
livers and the money should go in total to other people?

Sorry. I am not able to understand this. The real mess is, that neither the
town of Kilmarnock has looked for diversification in the past nor did the
governments in Edingburgh and London have. If you start messing around with
laws you have to look further if you are able to afford the consequences.
And nobody can say, that Diageo and the others have not opposed all
government actions one after each other. Now the bath tub is empty. Sorry,
everybody in Great britain should have known better.

Kind regards from abroad.

Horst