Oi, Dave...leave the booze alone!

Unsurprisingly, Dave has kicked the lager can far down the road.

 
But he vows to return to his addlepated notion of minimum alcohol pricing later.

 
We have to ask ourselves cui bono?

 
The simple answer is Diageo and the other booze producers. It would be a burden on ordinary responsible drinkers, but not on the target group, the binge-drinkers who would merely spend more of their disposal income (e.g. benefit money) on getting rat-faced at week-ends.

 
Neither would it be of any perceptible benefit to the Treasury; if it had its intended effect there could well be a tax-revenue loss.

 
So why would he put his weight behind a proposal that is a blatant interference with the operation of the free market that Tories are supposed to support, and, much more importantly for him, one which is a certain vote loser?

 
The government says that excess drinking costs the economy £20 billion a year.

 
We don’t believe it. It says that this figure is made up of lost productivity and costs to the NHS. How do they know? They said that there was a ‘report’. My guess is that a conclusion was reached and the figures massaged to give the required result. Statistics can be tortured to say anything you wish to hear. As Goebbels said ‘The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed’.

 
The real villains are the supermarkets which charge more for bottled water than for alcohol, deliberately targeting the teenage market with alcopops and cheap six-packs of strong lager, who get boozed-up before going to the pub and then cause mayhem. Our locals suffer because they can’t buy their stock wholesale cheaper than the supermarkets sell it retail. Some landlords will buy from supermarkets because it is cheaper than buying from the brewery.

 
The solution to the problem, if there really is one?

 

 

Increase the VAT on off-sales of beer and spirits by an amount that would make supermarket prices uncompetitive against pubs.

 
Reintroduce the 11 p.m. closing time for pubs.

 
Ban Happy Hour, and require pubs to charge the published prices.

 
Ban drinking in the street and other public places.

 
Be ruthless in closing pubs with a record of under-age drinking and violence.

 
Charge drunks for treatment at A&E.

 
Enforce existing laws on drunk-and-disorderly and drunk-and-incapable, starting with a night in the cells.

 
And stop listening to focus groups.