Aren’t the works’ canteens at Parliament subsidized? How much would those champagne bottles be without the subsidy?
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Yes, they are subsidized.
In Spain a scandal broke when it was made public that the Parliament bar sold Gin-Tonics at 2€ each while while in the rest of the country it cost around 8€-12€ the glass.
So, four to six times cheaper than street price. I expect the same with Champagne and other wines.
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Great God man, be quiet! The damage they could do if they worked ‘normal’ hours would be horrific Please don’t give them ideas like that again…
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Why, the House of Lords bar doesn’t even charge a corkage fee! The scandal!
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Wow, I really cannot imagine paying that much for a gin and tonic, basically ever.
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You probably need to patronize a classier sort of joint. But start slow, and work your way up. Bottle Service isn’t for novices.
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I’m pretty sure that the only way you can pay that much for one in the US is to have very esoteric tastes in gin and/or tonic, or the misfortune of having had the drink prescribed by a doctor for malarial prophylaxis, and thus sucked into the stygian vortex of our medical billing system.
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The problem is that Bars are in it to make money. The comparable cost of a gin and tonic is not what a trendy club charges for it, but the cost of the ingredients plus the cost of labor.
If it turns out that the price charged is still below cost, maybe it’s time to get angry. But if not–maybe it’s a matter of parliament owning the venue, the liquor license, and providing a useful service to its members,
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In the US, it is a common practice for right to run the cafeteria on a federal facility to be put up for bids, and then the highest bidder usually gets the contract. So the profit motive is part of the price…And the people running the facility have some non-appropriated funds…
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As far as I understand it’s not that they knew that the Commons champagne was any worse. It was just that it was logical to assume it was.
What makes the lord’s champagne taste better is the fact that it is the sort of champagne served in the House of Lords. Whatever the commoners drink is by the same definition most certainly going to be piss. English poshos are a predictable bunch.
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Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just run it themselves, at cost? The taxpayer would pay less…
According to this blog the house of lords has a catering operation, which generates a million pounds per annum for the state. Part of those profits are generated by selling House of Lords champagne to outsiders who are smitten with the idea of buying “overpriced”, (but still palatable) bubbly with a certain aristocratic character.
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English poshos are a predictable bunch.
Not many poshos left in the House of Lords, not after most of the hereditary aristos were turfed out in 1999.
Most are now political placemen, like Lord Prescott, former deputy prime minister, trade union official, ship’s steward and amateur boxer, possibly most famous for punching an egg-flinging voter during the 2001 election campaign.
Sorry, but whereas your facts are correct, the general slant of your argument is bollox.
- The term posho is not confined to the aristocracy. As I am sure you well know.
- Ah, Prescott… the card up anyones’s sleeve in any discussion about class. The first time I ever hear the name Prescott was actually in a discussion about the changes in the British class system, bla bla bla… That was in the mid-90s and no fucking way his rise to prominence heralded a new era in UK social relations. Since then the divisions have actually become stronger. So him having reached a position of privilege proves nothing in terms of what chances today’s disadvantaged youngsters have. That it could be done then doesn’t prove it can be just as easily done today.
- I have no certain observations about this, but I sincerely doubt Prescott and other Labour appointees make up the champagne enthusiasts in the lords.
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You haven’t heard of champagne socialists? 
But that would be “socialist”.
There are tons of things the U.S. government could do better than the private sector that are still being run by the private sector because of the U.S.'s neuroses about anything that could possibly be construed as leftist, that’s why we STILL don’t have single-payer health care even though it tends to work better.
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Norman Tebbit is working class as well as Cecil Parkinson and John Major. If any changes were going to happen they would have started before the time John Prescott became Deputy PM.
I know I say this a lot but Westminster is a corrupting influence, no matter how noble your original intentions. By the time you are in a position to make a fix to the class system issues there then you will probably have become part of the problem. If you aren’t then you will slide into obscurity as you won’t be tolerated.
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Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s part of the design of the British government, at this point.
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Bringing the anti-establishment people into the establishment is part of all power structures, I’d have thought.
But at least they still have Dennis Skinner around.
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Probably not…The pay and benefit scales for actual federal employees tends to be much “flatter” than in private industry: the top people in charge make less than in private industry, and the peons make more. At some level, it is more in line with how people think things “should” be. They certainly object to using taxpayer money to pay outsized salaries to agency heads in a way that shareholders in the private world fail to object to…OTOH the government still has pretty good benefits, even at the bottom of the payscale. So employing the cooks and other staff directly would probably cost more in wages and benefits than was saved by eliminating the profit, especially since labor is a big part of the cost of providing this service. Of course the (slight) benefit to the taxpayer and the profits for the contracting company are mostly extracted from lower wages/benefits for poorly paid workers and to a lesser degree from higher prices charged to the government employees than cost alone would justify.
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