Brewdog, the Scotland-based brewery that has exploded into an international business in the last 15 years, is never far from the headlines. It held a competition to brew the world’s strongest beer and created another named Speedball after the drug cocktail of cocaine and heroin. The company has been happy to not so much court controversy as to seek it out.

Playing to the gallery is always a high-risk approach. Take, for example, Brewdog’s opposition to the World Cup being hosted in Qatar in late 2022. The beer company promised that various profits would go to human-rights charities but was criticised when it transpired that they were selling their produce in Doha.

The latest fuss is overblown, however. The company will no longer pay the ‘real living wage’ – a voluntary pledge, cooked up from a charity staffed by smiley types who wouldn’t blink if all their private-sector ‘partners’ went bust tomorrow and had to be nationalised in the name of love and cuddles and fairness.

The ‘real living wage’ is separate from the actual statutory minimum wage for those under 23, and the actual statutory ‘living wage’ as calculated by those callous Scrooges at the ‘Low Pay Commission’ in the Department for Business.

In short, the ‘real’ living wage is not the real living wage. It is a wheeze to try to coerce businesses into paying people more than the market gives them. Like the expanding leviathans of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ in big corporates, this is all well and good in a time of rock-bottom interest rates and fantasy economics.



But today, as war still rages on the European continent, as the Royal Navy is fighting to keep international shipping lanes open against Iranian-backed pirate madmen, as energy costs, high inflation and interest rates are biting, the ‘real’ living wage is facing real life.

Facing

QOSHE - In defence of Brewdog - James Price
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In defence of Brewdog

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13.01.2024

Brewdog, the Scotland-based brewery that has exploded into an international business in the last 15 years, is never far from the headlines. It held a competition to brew the world’s strongest beer and created another named Speedball after the drug cocktail of cocaine and heroin. The company has been happy to not so much court controversy as to seek it out.

Playing to the gallery is always a high-risk approach. Take, for example, Brewdog’s opposition to the World Cup........

© The Spectator


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