The peaceable Benedictine Monks who settled on the banks of the River Dart thought the place quite perfect – like many a modern day monk (who Gildas? perish the thought) they were none too fond of the taste of water, and so they stuck to wine – with added caffeine. Gave them extra enthusiasm for all those early mornings in quiet contemplation. By 1890 they had perfected the recipe and were selling it to the general public with the slogan “Three small glasses a day, for good health and lively blood”.
The firm of J Chandler & co still sell Buckfast Tonic wine to this day, across the UK. However, their sales in Strathclyde, Scotland have attracted particular attention after BBC Scotland published a report showing that ‘ in a three year period 5,638 crime reports had mentioned the use of this one brand of drink’. The usual suspects climbed aboard the bandwagon – Helen Liddell and Cathy Jamieson were two politicians who joined the fashionable clamour to ban Buckfast Tonic wine, resulting in lawyer’s letters going out to at least one of them.
Now the Police are also under the impression that if you can’t buy Buckfast Tonic Wine you will stay sober and not commit any crimes, a curious theory, but there you go. They have issued special stickers to shopkeepers in Strathclyde so that they can trace sales of Buckfast Tonic Wine back to the shop where it was bought in the event of it showing up in a crime incident or being consumed by underage drinkers.
Lawyers for J Chandler & Co will ask a judge to find that Strathclyde Police has unlawfully encouraged retailers to label bottles of Buckfast or withdraw the product from sale.
No, I’m not sure how knowing where a bottle was bought is going to prevent crime either, but I can see this idea spreading:
Apparently black cars are the most likely to be involved in road traffic accidents – so will they have a sticker attached to them by the police?
You are allegedly more likely to be burgled by someone wearing denim jeans – so another anti-crime sticker on Levi’s – or Nike trainers?
Any other products you can think of deserving of a special police sticker?
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
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Do MPs travel First Class, and didn’t they have a bit of a rep for imaginative expenses claims?
Anti-crime sticker on first class! I like it!
Rather, an Anti-crime Sticker on each MP.
Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise should be regarded with deep suspicion. They take far too much of our money and place it in the ‘care’ of our Politicians who then ‘entrust’ it to our glorious Civil Service who then fritter it all away on asinine projects and internal empire building and then demand more of the same.
Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise are no more – they were merged with the Inland Revenue to form one giant, unwieldy organisation called HM Revenue & Customs.
I seem to recall “Stella Artois” was colloquially known as “Wifebeater” amongst the proles, back when strong beer from Europe was first being imported….
It was ‘Stellar Fartois’ when I was a student…
*apologies to the Landlady for lowering the tone*
Always rely on Tom Watson for a giggle………
“Stella Artois has been nicknamed “Wife Beater” in the United Kingdom, due to a perception that excessive consumption causes violent behaviour. In January 2012, British MP Tom Watson discovered that a public relations firm, Portland Communications, hired by Stella Artois, had been removing this fact from Wikipedia.”
Its not cheap either. Buckie – as its affectionately known here in the Buckfast Triangle – is quite drinkable, if an acquired taste. Banning it would only result in higher sales of White Lightning or some other inferior brew. We used to do QC British Sherry when we were young, but we did live in the more upmarket Airdrie as opposed to Coatbridge – the spiritual centre of the triangle. Readers may wish to follow this informative link for background research http://www.bebo.com/BlogView.jsp?MemberId=2276624889&BlogId=2448313307
Anyway, the police don’t need to put a sticker on the obvious criminals. They usually have the word “Bank” in their title.
Whatever happened to Sanatogen?
Still readily available:
Multivitamin & minerals including GINKGO BILOBA and GINSENG.
Multivitamin multimineral food supplement, 90 tablets.
WHY TAKE SANATOGEN VITAL 50+?
Sanatogen Vital 50+ is a complete formulation with 25 essential vitamins and minerals, plus Ginko and Ginseng, specially designed for adults 50 years old and over to help maintain health and vitality. As you get older, your daily nutritional needs change. That’s why Sanatogen Vital 50+ contains Ginkgo Biloba, Ginseng, plus Iron and Calcium to help you stay on top form.
Allergy Information
Free From: Gluten, Lactose
Other Information
Additives: Free From Yeast
Additives: Free From Artificial Sweeteners
Additives: Free From Artificial Flavours
Additives: Free From Artificial Preservatives
Ingredients
Dicalcium Phosphate,Cellulose ,Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) ,Magnesium Oxide ,Potassium Chloride ,Ferrous Fumarate ,Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose ,Zinc Oxide ,Niacin (Nicotinamide) ,Vitamin E (DL-Alpha-Tocopherol Acetate) ,Magnesium Stearate ,Modified Maize Starch ,Cross-Linked Sodium Carboxymethylcellulose ,Silicon Dioxide ,Colours (Titanium Dioxide, Iron Oxide) ,Maltodextrin ,Sugar (Sucrose) ,Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine Hydrochloride) ,Manganese Sulphate ,Glycerol ,Maize Starch ,Mannitol ,Korean Ginseng Extract ,Copper Sulphate ,Thiamin (Thiamine Mononitrate) ,Riboflavin ,Vitamin A (Retinyl Acetate) ,Acacia ,Hydroxypropyl Cellulose ,Folic Acid (Folacin) ,Antioxidant (Tocopherol) ,Triglycerides ,Biotin ,Sodium Selenite ,Ginkgo Biloba Extract ,Chromium Chloride ,Sodium Molybdate ,Potassium Iodide ,Vitamin D (Cholecalciferol) ,Vitamin B12 (Cyanocobalamin)
Horlicks abuse? Are there any recorded cases?
The Streisand Effect strikes again.
I’ve just finished filtering and bottling a batch of my home-made sloe gin which was mis-filed at Christmas. I might have a go at a limoncello version but not now as I’m not safe with a potato peeler for the moment. Looking up the wiki reciepie reciitpp – thingy – for Bucky, I notice that it is fortified so it’s not wine so much as kick-ass with an added shot of attitude, which can happen with caffieineenee. So if you want to make something of it, go ahead, who knew they grew grapes in Scotland. Labels, I’ll give ‘em labels, if I can just unstick this one which has got stuc k and I was trying to write something on it but I can’t remember what oh well, it’s Dad’s Army soon
I can see how the stickers might help the police in that if an underage drinker is caught with a bottle of Buckfast they can trace the shop it was bought from and either give them a rap on the knuckles or ask them to help identify who might have bought it for them (might not be so easy if it’s a big shop), or, if they stole it, it would help make theifs easier to identify too.
But if they think banning Buckfast will stop crime or stop people drinking, they are living in cloud cuckoo land. You’d just by another brand of tonic wine, wouldn’t you? And if tonic wine is unavailable, what about cider? Super lager? Or table wine?
And of couse, if all alcohol is band, did prohibition in America reduce crime…?
…hmm, not that I heard, lol…
Apparently Buckfast contains as much caffeine as eight cans of coke. Ever helpful, Auntie Beeb shows us innumerates what eight looks like:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47122000/jpg/_47122261_caffinecontent226.jpg.
The only time most of us criminals come into contact with the police is when we commit, sorry, get caught committing a motoring offence. Is that why car dealers put stickers on the windscreens of the cars they sell? I didn’t realise.How do the police use this information? “Hello, is that Bristol Street Motors? We’ve just clocked another one of your cars doing 80 on the M1. That’s the 20th this month. If you don’t start taking more care over who you sell cars to we’re going to have to send the boys round and somebody might accidentally fall down the stairs.”
I found the caffeine claim (1 bottle = EIGHT cans of cola “The drink also has a very high caffeine content, with each 750ml bottle containing the equivalent of eight cans of cola.” as per the original 2010 article at http://www.scotsman.com/news/crime-link-as-buckfast-revealed-to-have-as-much-caffeine-as-eight-colas-1-786644 ) interesting since they seem to be using that figure to demonize it. I wondered why they picked cola instead of the more commonly thought of caffeine source: coffee. Perhaps the figure for coffee wouldn’t have looked so scary?
So I Googled, and the first figures that pop up on screen for caffeine content of coffee and cola are incredible:
Cola: .000008g/100g
Coffee: .04g/100g
Those figures compute out to coffee being 500 times as “strong” in caffeine as cola. Which would certainly support my point, but which I didn’t believe… it was too extreme. So I googled a bit deeper, and at the mayo clinic site at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caffeine/AN01211 I found figures that were a bit more reasonable: coffee being about 5 times as strong as cola. (That double research shows a valuable lesson: never take your first answers as golden, even if they support your case nicely!)
So the bottle of wine actually has the caffeine content of about two 10oz cups of coffee. Not quite as extreme sounding as “eight cans of cola,” eh? And the original article talked about kids being hyped up from drinking two bottles of Buckfast per day. That’s 1.5 liters of 30 proof wine per day or about 5 liters of beer per day. Somehow, even with a lot of caffeine, I don’t think a whole lot of kids are “bouncing around all over the place because the anxiety levels, the adrenalin, will be running around … feeling very anxious, very aggressive.” if they’re putting away five liters of beer a day.
I don’t know just why Google starts out with that “500 times” figure. Maybe they averaged the top ten brands and nine of them happened to be “caffeine free” varieties which thereby led to an absurdly low estimate for the “average” amount of caffeine in a cola drink? Dunno. But it shows why you’ve always got to double-check statistical claims: they’re often wrong and they’re easy for fanatics to lie with. And then you throw in a fancy professor making a quote like the one about the kids “bouncing around” without reference to how realistic the consumption estimate is, and you’ve got nicely full-blown propaganda — same sorta game the Antismokers play.
- MJM
Correction: I *knew* that 500x figure looked too low: those initial google numbers actually show coffee to be FIVE THOUSAND times as “strong” as cola in terms of caffeine!
- MJM
Whoops…. my initial post is in moderation because it had two links in it. The 500 or 5,000 figure was shown to actually simply be “5″ … so no one needs to get too excited, OK? Wait till the post is there and you’ll see. – MJM
It makes little or no difference – after all X times FA is still FA!
My new tipple to wake me up in the late morning will be Buckfast and Red Bull to accompany my usual breakfast of a pack of Capstan Full Strength—-some numerate surfer here can ascertain and compute the caffeine (well its actually its taurine in Red Bull but no difference) and alcohol multiple to my usual morning tipple of a Double Expresso with large brandy chaser —-as always the French are waaaaay ahead of us and Red Bull is unlawful in France so I understand coz its sooooo dangerous in terms caffeine consumption.
Woman On A Raft and Stephen Davies,
Maybe yous would like this then: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani
Red Bull was illegal in France, but they relaxed this as I was buying it at motorway services during the couple of years I was living there.
The DSA and IAM have been issuing warnings about energy drinks making drivers and riders “high”, yet one 250ml can is about the equivalent of a strong cup of coffee.
@ Red Bull is unlawful in France @
Bloody hell!!
This page http://rense.com/general88/bull.htm
makes me realise that Red Bull was the inspiration behind the drug Nuke, in Robocop2 !!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hg-nM3YLnE
Officialdom shuffles the papers on it’s collective clipboards, and leaps unerringly to a daft conclusion once again.
Years ago, there was a proposal raised to register every amateur owner of small lathes. The sheds of Britain were to be searched, and elderly gentlemen happily whiling away their retirements making model steam engines and clocks were to be frog-marched to the nearest cop-shop and vigorously interrogated to see if they had ever had any inclination to use their tools and skills to make knock-off AK47s and tactical nuclear weapons for terrorism purposes. Common sense prevailed in the end, and the proposal was not taken forward. However, that was some years ago before we became so closely enmeshed in the all-enveloping bureaucracy that is the EU. I strongly suspect that somewhere in Whitehall, there is a file sat on a shelf marked ‘pending’, just waiting to be taken down and dusted off if any future terrorist suspect is found to have an unrelated passing interest in model-making. It’s just the way the official mind works.
The whole possibility could of course be cured by issuing every elderly gentleman with a sticker saying, “This lathe must not be used for making knock-off AK47s”. The stickers would have to be signed for, of course. In triplicate.
It’s increasingly the case that the police (who are admittedly understaffed for their role as a result of the lax justice system acting as a revolving door for their frequent flyers) are turning to other methods to prevent crime.
Case in point – lots of drunken late night trouble at a takeaway in Manchester? Get it closed down! Simples!
‘What’s that? You didn’t want a fight, you just wanted a late-night snack after clubbing? Too bad, citizen! Move along, or we’ll ask for a curfew next!’
I know the world’s moved on, and we can’t have Dixon of Dock Green anymore, but we aren’t at Judge Dredd just yet! Are we?
How about a sticker for all civil servants stating “This otherwise unemployable cretin must not be used for making any moronic decisions and issuing diktats of utter stupidity”?
I have always wanted to make a trip to Buckfast Abbey – sadly I havent made it yet. It sounds a heaveny place, and its brews are famous.
Around here, given the prices charged, it is known as Fast Buck Abbey.
Some get a kick from cocaine buck we get a kick out of you.
I seem to recall Buckie and Lannie being widely advertised back in my Springburn days. As an ignorant English I quickly learned they weren’t aimed at the same clientele as Sanatgen.
I also recall that even the hardened factory hand drinkers looked down on wine drinkers. And they shared taxis to the local bar on their half hour shift breaks.
What about the favourite tipple of Ena Sharples’ generation, Dr Collis Browns Mixture. That was before they were obliged to change the formula of course.
Pity that.
Don’t forget the old headbanger – “Barley Wine”, a beer with an alcohol strength of 8 to 12% by volume and is brewed from specific gravities as high as 1.120.
Barley Wine is also (around here, anyway) known as “Old Ale”.
Hence the mixed drink known as a “Mother-in-Law”:- Old & Bitter…
At one time a baby mixture for gastric wind contained alchohol, was sort of aniseed flavoured. Some odd persons became accidentally alchoholic!! A pregnant mum told me me her dad glugged many bottles of cough mixture a week. Apart from being zonked out on the settee with the Daily mirror over his face, he was no real harm. He had not booted anyone in the head. I think it had morphia in it. So many substances affect us humans. The fish are said to change sex due to waterbourne presence of plastics residues. Those small empty Red Bull tins ( sticker?) can be twisted , pulled apart and twisted in someones eye socket. How do I know? I saw the drug fuelled HOODIE (sticker hoodie hoods) challenge the gent for his computer case. Twist the can, take it apart and hold it knifewise in front of him……I scarpered on by, as fast as a lady in her seventies, assisted by her stick, could scuttle. I emailed Red Bull and said my part. Got a very supercilious/patronising reply. I suggest we sticker some police management, who could be addressing more urgent matters.
One amusing though possibly apocryphal story from my days in the law was a barrister who like many found his job a little tedious —-it was said in order to get through the day he would enter court coughing loudly and then ostentatiosly place on the bench before him a large bottle of Owbridges Cough Mixture. Periodically when things got duller than usual he would proceed to cough loudly and reach for the bottle and take a swig and the coughing would cease. Yes all will have guessed that so it came to be said cherry brandy had been substituted for the cough mixture.
100% of criminals consume water, so all taps should be labelled.
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