Tuesday 18 January 2011

Didn't we have a General Election eight months ago, with a new Prime Minister and everything?

From the BBC:

Plans for a minimum price for alcohol in England and Wales are to be announced by ministers. Shops and bars will be prevented from selling drinks for less than the tax they pay on them.

The minimum pricing would work out at 38p for a can of weak lager and £10.71 for a litre bottle of vodka. The aim is to prevent binge drinking, but campaigners say the proposed new rules do not go far enough...

The government is planning to ban the sale of alcohol below "cost price", which is defined as the tax drinkers pay - duty plus VAT...


How is that any different to the sort of shite that Labour came out with, year in year out? As a flourish, they are even proposing a measure that is nigh unenforceable on an administrative level, rather than something nice and simple like increasing alcohol duty (not that I'm recommending this, I'm just saying).

The BBC being the BBC, it has rent-a-quotes from the usual subjects, the BMA, Alcohol Concern, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and Drinkaware, and no doubt the major supermarkets are cheering to the rafters.
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UPDATE: FormerTory in the comments links us to this vox pop:

Tom Logan, a trainee accountant from Peterborough, said: "So what you're saying is, they've fucked up the economy, forced the country to the point of bankruptcy and put my job and my home in jeopardy while at the same time paying themselves a hundred grand a year in expenses and are now telling me I shouldn't be allowed to buy a couple of cheap bottles of wine on a Friday night so I can forget my troubles for a few hours instead of hunting them down and roasting them on a spit like the shit-caked, trough-guzzling pigs that they are?

"Interesting."

13 comments:

Jackart said...

To be honest, the Tories were making these shit noises about alcohol before the election. Though disallowing loss leaders might help pubs and smaller off-licenses, it's still a shit idea.

Anonymous said...

Another tax on the poor.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Your headline was my exact reaction seeing the story this morning.

The BBC are dredging the barrel again by pulling out the now discredited Sheffield University study.

{sigh}

formertory said...

The Perfesser of Public Health from Sheffield Uni was on the radio just now saying that they have "calculated" these proposals will save 21 lives a year. I'm happy to report that even while driving my mental arithmetic is still up to the task of calculating that 21 lives *per year* is 12.5% fewer lives than the famously "second-rate" NHS kills every day through HAIs.

But we can't talk about that, oh no.

formertory said...

Unfortunately I can't so far find the Daily Mash piece about doctors being in favour of minimum alcohol pricing because it means they don't have to rub shoulders with the poor and unpleasant when they're stocking up in Tesco's, but this is a reasonable stand-in...

Bayard said...

There doesn't have to be any logic in this: some influential neo-puritan organisation has jogged the Gov't elbow and said "something must be done" and the Gov't is doing something. Nothing that will have any effect, mind you, but something nonetheless. They can now tell this particular bunch to bugger off, you've had your half-kilogram of flesh, and deal with the next lot who's given them money or to whom they owe a favour.

Anonymous said...

Probably true but to elaborate ,how can a puritan organisation be influencial when the vast majority of us are not puritans ?
Oh hang on that wingnut Gilmore again.

The Cowboy Online said...

It is easy for a government to ignore the cries of "something must be done", when it's revenue neutral or, even worse, when it reduces the tax take, but when a "something must be done" also stands to increase the tax take, even if this isn't borne out in reality, there's a much higher probability of something being done.

View from the Solent said...

To be followed with minimum price for bacon, burgers, salt, ....

btw The Mash has an update

Mark Wadsworth said...

VFTS, it's nice to see that Tom Logan has progressed from being a 'trainee accountant' to being 'chief economist'.

Steven_L said...

Have you noticed the deafening silence from the TUC and their anti-poverty friends on this one?

Deniro said...

In a simple analysis, if alcohol consumption were related to its expense then the rich would be stereotipically drunk
and the poor stereotipically sober. Rab C. Nesbitt would be a millionaire, Donald Trump would be Drunk and
Andy Capp would be tea total.

Dr Evil said...

The government must stop interfering in the lives of people in this country with authoritarian measures (ho ho) such as this! It should be up to us what we buy and the seller who sets the price. Isn't minimum pricing illegal under EU competition rules? Also those people spouting about minimum price per unit are talking utter bollocks as a unit is quite arbitrary and gets shrunk for political reasons any way.