The cider drinkers are rebelling. Within minutes of Alistair Darling announcing in the Budget that cider duty will rise by 10 per cent from midnight on Sunday, a Facebook group was set up attacking the measure.
The group, Leave Our Cider Alone!, already has 80 members, despite Darling’s insistence that the change was designed to address a “long-standing anomaly”.
But others take a more pragmatic view. On Twitter, the radio presenter Richard Bacon tweeted: “Help bring down the deficit. Drink lots of cider.”
Given that the deficit is still forecast to be £167bn, we’d better get drinking.