RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29239, 24 June 1960, Page 23

RANDOM REMINDER

EXTRACT OF STATISTICS

It really has the makings of a wonderful year. There are subdued whispers about the prospects of reduced taxation,. the

M.E.D. is proposing to give consumers back some of the money they have been spending, Mr Nash has had a satisfactory increase in mileage, and the annual beer consumption stands at 21 gallons a head. This is, indeed, prosperity. It can not be argued that national consumption of beer is as accurate a

barometer as the totalisator when one wishes to measure the state of the public pocket. Beer consumption is practical!} immune to the various economic ailments which play havoc with the New

Zealand sales of plaster cast models of Khrushchev, second-hand copies of “Eric, or Little by Little” and old football socks.

But in its own right, a figure of 21 gallons a head commends attention. It may be assumed that no more than four people in 10 drink beer at all. The other six consist of women, children, and a small minority of strange, inexplicable, slightly repulsive males. They are not very interesting. The other four are.

Without any positive evidence on the matter, group behaviour studies make it clear that these four do not account for the 210 gallons in their group of 10 in even amounts. There is the

occasional drinker, the more than occasional drinker, the regular drinker, and the steady drinker. As a rough basis of comparison, it can be assumed that the first of these four men accounts for 5 per cent, of his group’s total, the second 10, the third 25, the fourth 60. This means that the Falstaffian character at the end of the line (see graph) gets through 126 gallons a year, all by himself. In it flows, at the rate of three pints a day and the chances are that if a woefully under - nourished child beats on the bar door with a puny fist and begged father dear father to come home with her now, she would not even be heard.