Wine by the pint?

[XFool]

Genuine choice, OK. Continuous proliferation of spurious "more choice" nonsense - I choose "No!"

You object to other people having a choice that you personally have no interest in?

How would you be harmed by that? Scott/Swill ran away when I asked him that question, but perhaps you will not?

OK then. Let's have some real choice of wine sold in bottles on shelves:

5mL
10 mL
25 mL
50 mL
100 mL
250 mL
300 mL
500 mL
600 mL
700 mL
750 mL
854 mL
900 mL
1 L

Half a gill
1 gill
2 gills = 1 chopin
4 gills = 2 chopins = 1 pint
8 gills = 4 chopins = 2 pints = 1 quart
16 gills = 8 chopins = 4 pints = 2 quarts = 1 pottle
32 gills = 16 chopins = 8 pints = 4 quarts = 2 pottles = 1 gallon
etc.
(With thanks to D Knuth, "Seminumerical Algorithms")

Anyone for fluid ounces?

Who could possibly object?

[Lootman]

You object to other people having a choice that you personally have no interest in?

Who could possibly object?

Good point.

[doolally]

Will it actually increase choice? Having more different size bottles of each wine will reduce the choice of different wines since there is limited shelf space in the supermarkets. Unless they take over the shelf space used by cereals, in which case I have a more limited choice of cereals.
doolally

Maybe but I do not need the government to decide that for me by arbitrarily restricting choice. Let the market decide.

Reasonable to some extent, but we are where we are and I don't think we've suffered with the existing rules. Our government and civil service have far more important thing to sort out. Look at all the discussion here and imagine this going through multiple committee readings. I suspect you will consider it a good use of government resources since it will distract them from more important issues which may do you harm.
doolally

[Lootman]

Maybe but I do not need the government to decide that for me by arbitrarily restricting choice. Let the market decide.

Reasonable to some extent, but we are where we are and I don't think we've suffered with the existing rules. Our government and civil service have far more important thing to sort out. Look at all the discussion here and imagine this going through multiple committee readings. I suspect you will consider it a good use of government resources since it will distract them from more important issues which may do you harm.

No, I merely think that if existing legislation achieves nothing useful then it should be repealed.

Unless you can explain to me how forbidding me to buy fluids in pints is somehow in the public interest?

[XFool]

No, I merely think that if existing legislation achieves nothing useful then it should be repealed.

Unless you can explain to me how forbidding me to buy fluids in pints is somehow in the public interest?

Do you think £ s d should also be brought back alongside our current system? If not, why not? Surely we need "choice"?

[Lootman]

No, I merely think that if existing legislation achieves nothing useful then it should be repealed.

Unless you can explain to me how forbidding me to buy fluids in pints is somehow in the public interest?

Do you think £ s d should also be brought back alongside our current system?

Cannot think of any nation that concurrently has two different currencies. China tried it for a while.

But the UK has had two different systems of weights and measures for decades. Problem?

[UncleEbenezer]

No, I merely think that if existing legislation achieves nothing useful then it should be repealed.

Firstly, the proposal doesn't appear to be repeal of anything (and if it were repeal, we surely wouldn't be having this discussion). Just introducing more complexity to an existing rule.
Secondly, we've already found at least one useful purpose:

I suspect the answer lies in historical deceptive practices. A wine bottle might've been 750ml, but it might also have been 700ml and looked just as big, with a bottom shaped to reduce it. And perhaps other short-change tricks.

Unless you can explain to me how forbidding me to buy fluids in pints is somehow in the public interest?

A typical Looty strawman. Unless you can point to any reference to pints in existing legislation?

[Lootman]

Unless you can explain to me how forbidding me to buy fluids in pints is somehow in the public interest?

A typical Looty strawman. Unless you can point to any reference to pints in existing legislation?

My point was simply that I want to understand why some here think a pint bottle of wine should not be allowed by law. That is set to change in 2024 and yet some folks oppose that change for reasons that they seem oddly incapable of articulating.

So again, what public policy imperative is being served by denying me such a choice? Anyone? Anything?

[UncleEbenezer]

A typical Looty strawman. Unless you can point to any reference to pints in existing legislation?

My point was simply that I want to understand why some here think a pint bottle of wine should not be allowed by law. That is set to change in 2024 and yet some folks oppose that change for reasons that they seem oddly incapable of articulating.

So again, what public policy imperative is being served by denying me such a choice? Anyone? Anything?

At the risk of repeating myself ...

There seem to be two sane options:

1. No change - to a situation that works.
2. Repeal the restrictions. Implying either a return to a short-changers' charter, or other legislation we've already discussed in this thread.

The proposal that's been floated is neither of those. It's pure mendacity.

[Lootman]

My point was simply that I want to understand why some here think a pint bottle of wine should not be allowed by law. That is set to change in 2024 and yet some folks oppose that change for reasons that they seem oddly incapable of articulating.

So again, what public policy imperative is being served by denying me such a choice? Anyone? Anything?

At the risk of repeating myself ...

There seem to be two sane options:

1. No change - to a situation that works.
2. Repeal the restrictions. Implying either a return to a short-changers' charter, or other legislation we've already discussed in this thread.

The proposal that's been floated is neither of those. It's pure mendacity.

It is simply increasing the range of sizes that can be sold. There is no logical reason to oppose that. How can more choice be wrong? Nobody is being forced to buy or sell in that size. It is just a freedom where formerly there was a restriction.

[RockRabbit]

Really, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

[XFool]

Miles to kilometres

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/miles-to-kilometres/z6y3pg8

By the looks of this, the British public are not impressed at the prospect of switching from miles to kilometres.

"This clip is from Nationwide."

↗ Originally broadcast 3 February 1978

[tjh290633]

Miles to kilometres

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/miles-to-kilometres/z6y3pg8

By the looks of this, the British public are not impressed at the prospect of switching from miles to kilometres.

"This clip is from Nationwide."

↗ Originally broadcast 3 February 1978

I did a tour of factories in the Irish Republic, c.1982, when they were in the throes of switching to km. A bit confusing when the distance to your destination almost halved in a couple of miles.

The highlight was a stay in Tipperary where I ate in the bar of the hotel. A lady barrister was holding court to some solicitor's clerks and the stories were highly amusing. The one which stuck in my mind was an occasion when a defendant was entitled to legal aid. He looked at the panel of available barristers and said "You got me off last time, Mrs Lafferty, I'll have you".

TJH

[Lootman]

Miles to kilometres

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/miles-to-kilometres/z6y3pg8

By the looks of this, the British public are not impressed at the prospect of switching from miles to kilometres.

"This clip is from Nationwide."

↗ Originally broadcast 3 February 1978

I did a tour of factories in the Irish Republic, c.1982, when they were in the throes of switching to km. A bit confusing when the distance to your destination almost halved in a couple of miles.

Drive across the border from the US to Canada and the distances displayed on signs immediately switch from miles to km, which can be disquieting.

It is insidious how much influence the French appear to still have in Canada. All official documents have to be in both English and French, even in the western and northern provinces, where there are basically no French speakers.

[stewamax]

Australians drive on the left but distances (and speed per hour) are metric.
My brain was somewhat confused after getting into a hire car there, but I had just emerged from visiting Stanton & Killeen's winery who, after I had mentioned that I had bought some of their Muscat 'stickies' (like grapey port) in the UK, treated me with munificent hospitality.
Perhaps this had something to do with it.

[CliffEdge]

Prior to the proposed new law change, wine could be sold in bottle sizes of 187ml, 375ml, 500ml, 750ml, 1 litre, and then multiples of 750ml. Seems to cover most needs.
To go to the effort of adding a spurious 568ml size, when there's no demonstrated demand for it, just seems a waste of time and money, pandering to the Brexit loons.

We have a decent home-grown wine industry in the UK now, so the logical development will be that wine can be sold only in pint, half-pint and gill measures.
None of this foreign stuff!!

V8

That's what I was thinking. Ban foreign wine and only allow genuine wine like what's made in England. Obviously it makes more sense to put it in sensible sized bottles like half pints, pints etc.

The English invented wine in the first place and then those dastardly forreners stole the idea. The first wine making in the world was started up in Luton on the Chiltern hills by Arthur Jones in 1623. It was sold in pint bottles to the Duke of Bedford whose great great... grandson still has some in his cellar.

It is highly prized as an exemplar even among the EU oafs.

[XFool]

The English invented wine in the first place and then those dastardly forreners stole the idea. The first wine making in the world was started up in Luton on the Chiltern hills by Arthur Jones in 1623. It was sold in pint bottles to the Duke of Bedford whose great great... grandson still has some in his cellar.

So what have you been drinking?

What did the Georgians ever do for us?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine#History

[scrumpyjack]

The English invented wine in the first place and then those dastardly forreners stole the idea. The first wine making in the world was started up in Luton on the Chiltern hills by Arthur Jones in 1623. It was sold in pint bottles to the Duke of Bedford whose great great... grandson still has some in his cellar.

It is highly prized as an exemplar even among the EU oafs.

NO NO, what have you been drinking? The Romans and Greeks loved wine over 2,000 years ago. Amphoras of wine were shipped all over the Med.

[doolally]

NO NO, what have you been drinking? The Romans and Greeks loved wine over 2,000 years ago. Amphoras of wine were shipped all over the Med.

Amphora.... is that metric or imperial?
doolally

[bungeejumper]

The first wine making in the world was started up in Luton on the Chiltern hills by Arthur Jones in 1623. It was sold in pint bottles to the Duke of Bedford whose great great... grandson still has some in his cellar.

Not so fast. Young Arthur's claim to be the originator of mass-produced wine faced stiff competition from the Rhineland, where a 16th century German nightclub called the Blue Nun had already set up its own bottling operation, using the original metric system which of course was itself based on the Pope's inside leg measurement. Unlike the oafish peasants from Luton, the Germans had long favoured the slimmer and more elegant LiliMarlene bottles, which could hold less.

The Thirty Years War which promptly broke out was finally settled by the Council of Gewürztraminer, which set up a blind tasting panel that everybody agreed was the most interesting thing to have happened since the Diet of Worms. And which unanimously determined that an Arthur pint was better than Nun.

Budge up a bit, CliffEdge, I'm sure there's room for both of us on that pillory bench.

BJ