Usually it is those of us of a more libertarian bent who rail against regulations that prevent individuals with enterprise creating goods and services which do no harm to others. Growing your own cannabis, picking psilocybin mushrooms for traditional religious festivals or brewing your own moonshine for personal consumption is celebrated by most of us with free market leanings. It is usually interfering nanny staters like the Green Party who want to regulate, ban and tax the voluntary exchange of goods and services between consenting adults…

Natalie is making her own “BlackBerry Whiskey” – sounds like a cracking idea. However it is actually illegal to manufacture spirits in the UK without a distiller’s licence as required under the provisions of Section 12 of the Alcoholic Liquor Duties Act 1979 and this includes manufacture for “own or domestic use”. Public Notice 39 – “Spirits production in the UK” provides details of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs’ requirements – they are quite draconian. If Natalie is brewing whiskey, she has got a distiller’s licence, right?Natalie is a relentless campaigner for tighter regulation of food production, the distilling of spirits has been regulated for centuries – home distillers having a tendency to produce moonshine that blinded consumers or poisoned them. Natalie is in favour of coming down hard food producers who break the law…

UPDATE: Some are suggesting that she is merely infusing blackberries into whiskey. This is a worse crime. Ruins the whiskey.