Sorry ...
...was minimum alcohol pricing intended to reduced drinking? I thought it was a intended to be a stimulus package for smuggling.
Economists at the Office of Fair Trading have quietly demolished the UK government's case for minimum alcohol pricing. Minimum pricing regulations are likely to see more booze sold than ever, they predict, contrary to the government's desire to curtail alcohol consumption. Profiteering is also likely, with higher alcohol …
The minimum pricing policy is a done deal in Scotland. I expect when the policy is enacted, there will be stories about evil gangs smuggling cans of lager from England to Scotland, and we will hear about the 'devastating impact' this has on booze retailers in Scotland. Was the cost of trying (laughably) to police the England-Scotland border taken into account?
There is already a problem in Scotland...
If you buy your booze for home delivery from, for example, tesco.com (although given Troy Hunt's revelations, who would), then you are buying your booze in England, and won't be subject to the Scottish minimum price.
The trouble with all these "theories" about the impact of minimum pricing is that you won't actually know the outcome until you try it. Only through experiment can you objectively observe the results and draw an conclusion. That is what science is about, unlike religion and politics which are about who can shout the loudest about their doctrine.
(In proper reply to Irongut, while there may be an increase in "cars full of average people" driving two hours across the border, I doubt the cost of petrol for a four hour round drive would offset the difference in price of the alcohol. Vanloads, maybe, but not cars).
Its just as amusing for smokers, we can fly to an EU country and buy back the same tobacco made in the for less then we pay over here. If we travel over and buy our full entitlement the amount saved from tax pays for the trip and leaves you with a bit of spending money to have a weekend away, this is why the gov are so pi**ed about it. They receive no money at all and whats worse for them is we're spending our left over money abroad and not home!
Why can't we go back to the good ol' days. The days where only a dedicated offlicense could sell cheap plonk, rather than every supermarket in the country.
And then they could apply the "minimum price" to these places, which wouldn't make a huge difference since an offlicense generally seems to cost more than a supermarket offlicense anyway, and keep it to no minimum for pubs and clubs.
Then again I also wish they'd do something about drinking in public. Sick and tired of going through town on a saturday lunchtime and seeing groups of idiots walking round with cans of carling. Sure drink at home, drink in a club, drink in designated drinking zones. But don't drink in public for the love of god.
"Then again I also wish they'd do something about drinking in public."
They are: They're making it worse by making it too expensive to drink in pubs.
Many cities now have a 'no open containers' ban in the central areas. Walking through town here with a can in hand invites a ticking off by a Plastic Plod.
The days where only a dedicated offlicense could sell cheap plonk, rather than every supermarket in the country.
Don't forget petrol stations, cornershops, chip shops, in fact pretty much anywhere.
And why not raise the offence for selling to under age kids?
Sell and lose license for 1 month, 3 times and iyour banned for a year. Far more effective than a fine. How can they protect themselves, be like when I was in the states, unless your clearly over about 50, you get id'd. They'll be a lot of bitching and moaning for a few months, but then if everywhere does it, it becomes the norm and people accept it.
"Sell and lose license for 1 month, 3 times and iyour banned for a year. Far more effective than a fine. How can they protect themselves, be like when I was in the states, unless your clearly over about 50, you get id'd. They'll be a lot of bitching and moaning for a few months, but then if everywhere does it, it becomes the norm and people accept it."
Problem is that a lot of people go about without their ID cards (because they're in high-theft neighborhoods where pickpocketing is a given) or wear pocketless clothes (and no lanyards) that leave no place for their cards. Some people CAN'T get cards because their licenses were taken away by the courts (usually for DUIs) and since most DMVs also issue the non-driver ID cards, they won't issue non-driver IDs to drivers for security reasons (before and after 9/11, masquerading using an extra ID was a known issue).
> Sell and lose license for 1 month, 3 times and iyour banned for a year
Or alternatively "Don't sell and have the Chavs break your shop windows every week until you can no longer get insurance and go out of business anyway".
Spot on.
Telling them it won't help or even make things worse won't make a shit of difference because they don't care about the problem they care about being seen as caring.
Doing nothing makes it look like you don't care which nowadays is a bigger sin than making things worse. Doing something which makes the problem worse earns them a pat on the head because at least they tried.
Won't get any better until we start valuing competence more than touchy-feely what place is their heart in shit.
Premium brands - I'm happy with Westons and Healeys, however would like to see Strongbow banned and a complete ban on importing cider into the main cider producing country on Earth.
BTH most of the premium brand cider is over priced crap and the best stuff is smaller producer
Having seen and lived through the desperate anti-drinking measures of the pre-Perestroika Soviet government I know that they just don't work.
Price rises, artificial reduction of supply, trade hours restrictions, drinking age increases - all backfire spectacularly, actually increasing binge drinking and deaths from drinking poor quality and counterfeit products.
At the height of Gorbachev's rule they have actually introduced all of these "measures" simultaneously. They also used results from "research" conducted by pet "scientists" as justification for the new policy.
The whole nation happily turned to moonshining (which immediately led to sugar shortages and nearly caused riots) and home wine making. Black market boomed. Methanol poisoning cases sky-rocketed.
I was below legal drinking age then - never stopped us from getting drinks when we wanted.
Longer term consequences included the loss of valuable vineyards and the know how in the industry. After a couple of years of this madness the government quietly back-pedaled and dropped all that nonsense. But by then they had much more serious problems to think about...
... is leave people alone.
Sure, there's a role to play in moderating individuals' behaviour where it affects other people and you can argue a good point that it should provide some sort of safety net for people who fall out of society.
However for everyone else, who makes a conscious decision to do (or not to do) something that doesn't impact on the wellbeing of others, they should just be allowed to get on with it. By all means educate people into the consequences of their actions (whether those actions are drinking, smoking, voting or anything else) but if people are to be trusted with the power to elect governments, the same principle should be applied to how they conduct their personal lives.
This post has been deleted by its author
...is to make it harder for supermarkets to under-cut pubs and drive more of them out of business.
Now whether I actually WANT to share my local with the sort of person who currently slobs out in front of the TV with a cheap slab of Stella, then gives his wife a kicking before falling asleep, is another question. But if it brings the price of his "lager"[1] nearer to what a nearby boozer that I don't use is selling it at, he might just go there instead.
And taking away the ability to use irresponsible loss-leaders from the supermarkets might just cut their profits a bit, which is no bad thing either.
[1] As opposed to PROPER lager, which actually DOES have some flavour and isn't just there to get you pissed as quickly as possible.
I sympathise; the cost of beer in pubs is too high. However raising the cost of beer outside pubs is no proper way to solve that problem.
Minimum prices only really affect the low end of the market as the better stuff is priced higher anyway. And that better stuff will probably be cheaper in a large supermarket chain with economies of scale, hundreds of customers per staff member and loss-leading sales strategies (which will still be above minimum price) than a local boozer with personal service and limited purchasing power. No, your "proper lager" will remain expensive and no-one will be better off, except perhaps the supermarkets who can sell the cheap crap for more than they would have gotten away with before.
I never got how this was supposed to work - do Tesco simply add £2 on the cost of a £2.50 bottle of wine and take the extra? Or are they forced to give the money to charity/government/manufacturers? Do ALL booze prices go up or only those that fall under the legal threshold... if the latter then this would surely just destroy companies who create budget booze since people would just buy more expensive variants which are no longer more expensive.
If they really want to be radical, ration alcohol sales :) They do this in Dubai actually, it's a rather weird experience buying booze there.
One consequence I've noticed, (in Scotland, even though minimum pricing hasn't even come in yet) is that instead of filling three shelves with boring £4 - £4.50 plonk and half a shelf of more expensive stuff, my local co-op now stocks a wider range of more interesting stuff spread across the £5 - £10 range. Not that wine is the real target, but presumably they realise that no-one is going to buy something that used to cost £3.50 for £4.69 when they can get something that used to cost £4.69 for the same price.
(or maybe they are just upping the prices in advance so we forget what things used to cost).
I think much or all of the Co-op shop's wines are "Fair Trade" now, which means that it's made by little enclaves of socialists all around the world. That isn't necessarily the main point, and it may add to the price as well as to the diversity, but it's nice to know that the grape farmers aren't downtrodden along with their product.
Its a very rich coming from MP's who don't have to pay taxes on the 'cheap' beer they get in the house of commons bar where they also occasionally get into drunken brawls. Its their typical thinking though.... put the price up and that will solve everything!
Whats next another attempt at prohibition? Or are we going to start seeing how much obesity costs the NHS and put minimum prices on Mc'Donalds, KFC and Burger King. Of course when people stop eating out they'll target the supermarkets again with minimum prices on your favorite cook at home junk food. We've already got a pasty tax!
"Its a very rich coming from MP's who don't have to pay taxes on the 'cheap' beer they get in the house of commons bar where they also occasionally get into drunken brawls. Its their typical thinking though.... put the price up and that will solve everything!"
That or they're drinking expensive wines and brandy that will remain unaffected.
This 'safety measure' only 'protects' poor people. Rich alcohlics remain utterly unaffected.
"This 'safety measure' only 'protects' poor people. Rich alcohlics remain utterly unaffected."
That's the problem with targetting any such issue by price: If you are rich enough you bypass it.
Take an example I have been arguing for: Cars.
If you take a (standard) motorbike test, you are restricted to the power output of the bike you can ride for 2 years. Yet someone could take their test in a 1l Corsa, having only ever driven that car, then go out and legally drive a Bugatti Veyron the same day. As a more realistic example, their parents could put them on their insurance and let them drive their 3l family estate.
I believe there should be a restriction on the car a person can drive for the first couple of years or so after passing their test.
This is the most common argument I hear: "But there is already a restriction. They can't afford insurance on bigger cars." But this does not apply to the 'rich'. So why is it OK to do it if you are 'rich' and not if you are 'poor'?
If you are trying to stop something for real reasons, raising prices is not the way to do it as those who can afford it will continue to do so. It will also encourage (not cause) more crime from the less well off to get round it, and will hurt people who it was not targetted at (e.g. in this case responsible drinkers will have to pay more, even though the regs are not targetted at them).
"Or are we going to start seeing how much obesity costs the NHS and put minimum prices on Mc'Donalds, KFC and Burger King. Of course when people stop eating out they'll target the supermarkets again with minimum prices on your favourite cook at home junk food." -- I think you've nailed it.
Once the drinking "problem" is "solved", then they'll be looking for something else. And taxing food would be the absolute holy grail, because everybody has to eat. It will begin as a tax on the unhealthiest foods, which almost nobody will object to (not least because objectors will be shouted down as tantamount to condoning child murder). Once such a tax is established, it will then gradually creep in scope, budget by budget ("we're going to start taxing potatoes, because they can be made into chips"); until eventually you won't be able to buy an oil-free, salt-free, egg-free, vinegar-free, taste-free organic rocket salad without paying tax on it.
"Once the drinking "problem" is "solved", then they'll be looking for something else. And taxing food would be the absolute holy grail, because everybody has to eat. It will begin as a tax on the unhealthiest foods"
You already pay tax on luxury foods. You have for years.
Also: If rocket salad doesn't taste of anything to you, you've clearly screwed your tastebuds somewhere. It's the McDonald's salt-burgers that are bland.
I have absolutely no evidence to support my hunch that the report which Andrew finds so convincing is in some way sponsored by the retailers.
And the "Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)" does not sound like a body interested in public health or anti-social behaviour. It sounds like a body that wants us to buy as much stuff as possible. Wikipedia first sentence: "...founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...". Prime policy: "to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth..."
Oh, and what I don't understand is why "Temperance" really means "Abstinence". To me, being 'temperate' is 'moderation', (Like, a can of beer in the Sauna on a Friday night) but the Temperance Society requires total abstinence...Corrections greatfully received.
Not really classy - there's reckoned to be one sauna for every three people in Finland. (Found a floating one the other day, outboard motor, rooftop barbecue, outboard motor to pootle down the river, and it's for hire, FFS!!)
Last 4 apartments I lived in, each had its own sauna in the bathroom, including the current place. (Others were communal in the basement, just book a time) Bit of a waste of space, really, we use it only once or twice a month because it's a serious power-hog (60 amp. fuse), and it's not much smaller than the bathroom. Grief, if you want to be REALLY clean, can't be beaten. Follow 95 deg. Celcius, loads of steam with running outside to jump through a hole in the ice in the adjacent lake, wash, rinse, repeat a couple of times. You've never felt better in your entire life!
@JDX
While I accept that on one level the two aren't comparable (we're more dependent on transport than we are on a supply of beer, unless you're taking "quality of life" metrics very seriously) there are some circumstances where they can be compared.
A lot of the rationalisation for increasing fuel duty has been that drivers should be encouraged to seek out alternative transport. Which, you know, is great if you're in London and have an easy tube/overground route. Not so much if you either have no public transport option or are limited to the still-wallet-fistingly-expensive train companies as an alternative.
For those in the latter scenario, the notional justification does not apply and therefore the net result is an increase in tax paid.
A minimum price strategy by itself primarily suits the retailers as it allows them to increase the profitability per unit of all units sold. To achieve real social change (whether benevolent or otherwise!) requires a more sophisticated and ambitious strategy as it will require modification of social behaviours, and will have impacts on a number of people.
is your Friday night puker on the pavement drinker actually an alcoholic in the addiction sense of the word? The question is more about people who allegedly front load on cheap supermarket booze before going out on the town. Might help the pub trade a bit too if there's less of a difference between pub and supermarket prices.
Personally I reckon high alcohol prices encourage binge drinking.
Can't afford to go out for a quiet drink after work regularly? Just save it all up for one massive bender a month instead. When drinking is expensive it becomes more of a rare social event that you may feel you can overindulge on.
Wow... finally. Someone tells the government the sodding obvious.
It's a tax on the poor. £25 bottles of wine will remain unaffected. All the rich dickheads telling me that binge drinking is three pints of bitter on a Friday night will still sit at dinner parties and get slaughtered just as much, for the same amount of money.
Those who drink cheaply at home before going out will simply have one less in the pub (further screwing over our pubs), and one more at home, in order to spend the same amount. Or they'll stand around in the street with a can making the place look untidy. I'd rather people went into pubs than harassed passers by, thanks.
Those addicted and on the breadline will simply make sacrifices and go without in other areas: Their kids will have less, they'll spend less on food, whatever it takes. Serious addicts don't quit due to price hikes.
This was always the most fucking stupid idea since "we won't give pilots parachutes, because then they'll jump out of their planes rather than fight the Germans."
Mines a pint. At a sensible price. I need it to help me cope with all the other moronic shit our governments keep piling on us.
What are you on about?
1)People getting sloshed at a dinner party don't then run amok at closing time, or ruin the town centre for those wanting a nice dinner or a pint out.
2)It's the home-bought booze which is the whole target of this idea in the first place, so people are if anything going to see the pub seem cheaper in comparison since pubs charge massively over the minimum prices already.
"1)People getting sloshed at a dinner party don't then run amok at closing time, or ruin the town centre for those wanting a nice dinner or a pint out."
1a) That might be true if these measures were about reducing crime and noise, but we're being told that it's about 'health'. So are you saying that we are being lied to in order to get legislation through under false pretence? That's not a good thing.
1b) People who buy cheap drink from an offie aren't the ones running amok at *closing time*, because they are unaffected by it! The people running amok at closing time are the ones who've been in the pubs and clubs, paying through the nose and are thus *not the ones affected by this, either*.
If the problem is your eyes is louts pissed in the street then solve it via the correct medium of a) Nicking the bastards. b) Making it illegal to drink in the street in problem areas, as many councils do. c) Make it better to drink either in pubs or at home by keeping prices *lower*.
"2)It's the home-bought booze which is the whole target of this idea in the first place, so people are if anything going to see the pub seem cheaper in comparison since pubs charge massively over the minimum prices already."
Making supermarkets more expensive is not going to make more people go to pubs, when people can't afford pubs anyway. It just means that people will drink a higher ratio outside of the pubs.
If you want more people to drink inside then pubs need to have their tax rates reduced.
And let's not ignore the fact that most of the people standing around in the street with a beer are there because they're being made to stand outside to smoke...
Justifying the increase using health is biggest load of bo**ocks in the world, if they really want to start playing that game are they also going to look at:
industrial accidents and stick charges on a Business Accidents Tax
motoring accidents and increase road tax to cover it
horse riding
extreme sports injuries
smoking (already been done)
pot hole and kerb falls (if they fixed the bloody things in the first place)
obesity
drugs (always the funny one, they have to treat people but since they wont legalise and tax it the whole cost is an expense)
in fact some to think of it, why dont we just get rid of the nhs and pay private. would be cheaper.
This post has been deleted by its author
If we're drinking less alcohol, then more alcohol is available for use as biofuel. Which you hate because it is a measure to prevent global warming.
Alcohol addiction doesn't happen quickly, and if booze is too expensive then people won't be able to afford enough of it to addict themselves. Even journalists. Oh?, maybe -that's- the issue.
But if this bothers you, then, season 3, episode 4 of Channel 4's "SuperScrimpers" TV show - last week's - features prominently a couple of students who have been spending £11,000 a year on booze, presumably keeping receipts so that this fact can be determined; they are challenged to hold an end-of-term party with just £50 to spend on the booze this time. Watching them debate how many potatoes they need to buy didn't actually happen, sadly, as it would have been hilarious, but they do buy supermarket plain-label vodka so it is really the same thing. That's all I remember, it's probably all -they- remember...
"Alcohol addiction doesn't happen quickly, and if booze is too expensive then people won't be able to afford enough of it to addict themselves. Even journalists. Oh?, maybe -that's- the issue."
I once saw a television commercial when two guys had to choose between a six-pack and toilet paper. They took the six-pack and eagerly took the receipt. When it comes to serious vice addiction, nothing matters but the vice. If it's a choice between bread and booze, it's booze any day. It's true with alcohol (Thus why so much effort into evading alcohol restrictions--grandfathered "after-hours" bars, beat-the-clock rushes to the supermarket, across-the-state-line trips just to get those precious 40's) and it's true with tobacco (ask yourself this, "Who most often calls cigarettes 'cancer sticks'?" A: The smokers themselves--they know it'll kill them, but they don't care as they feel they're dead anyway and are just picking their poison).
As for the underage, making it harder to get just makes it all the more alluring. It's not the buzz they're usually seeking but more the fact that the buzz means they're rebelling. Like haters, there's little you can do with rebels: they'll rebel simply because they want to, and trying to stop them is itself a reason to rebel. The only way you can combat this is to remove the "forbidden fruit" effect, but that means letting kids drink legally, which in this age of less parental responsibility, that's not gonna happen.
Enthusiasm isn't the same thing as addiction. I presume that your commercial was to promote a booze brand and not to raise awareness of alcoholism. And do I correctly understand that these drinkers intended to use the store receipt as their toilet paper supply? Shades of the old shiny stuff you used to get in institutions. At least you can wash it clean and re-use it.
And addiction comes with habitual excessive exposure. Putting up the price of booze will restrict excessive drinking and therefore will prevent the development of true addiction.
Also, home brewing is fairly tricky. Your habitual drunk is probably not going to successfully produce any alcohol by hOme brewing because they'll be too pissed, so that is self-limiting too. Of course, once they sober up, they can probably manage the brewing. In between, there may be an equilibrium...
Enthusiasm LEADS TO addiction because these people don't know when to STOP. And like others have said, making it harder for them to get booze just makes them turn to alternative sources which will INEVITABLE crop up (if not from them than from opportunistic entrepreneurs who can smell the money). That's one of the big lessons taught by US Prohibition--some addictions are so deeply rooted in history that they've become SOCIETAL—too big for any one country to control (IOW, they'd sooner go to war with their COUNTRY than go to war with their VICE, the same thing's happening for tobacco). Drinkers gonna drink, smokers gonna smoke, people gonna fill their demands, and there's I dare say very little you can do about it short of descending into an Orwellian-type society given the amount of control it would need to actually pull a prohibition off successfully.
I believe that higher prices will discourage over-enthusiastic drinkers and thus will prevent them becoming addicts. But you make some telling points.
But while there -are- criminals around selling untaxed tobacco (often poor quality counterfeit of respected brands) and indeed untaxed alcohol, the latter isn't a particularly hot busines at the moment. They need to be cheaper to buy than the legal stuff, and at the same time more profitable; this is achieved by including the unpaid tax in your profit (you being the bootleg booze dealer), and by selling low quality stuff with a high quality label on.
"Alcohol addiction doesn't happen quickly, and if booze is too expensive then people won't be able to afford enough of it to addict themselves."
No, poor people won't. Only people who don't buy cheap vodka will be able to be drunk.
That's the problem: It doesn't solve the issue at all. It only affects students and those on the breadline.
And if you think either of those groups are going to be deterred just by mere cash getting in the way, you're smoking the same thing as they are in Westminster.
Additionally: Look at -say- Finland and the Middle East. Booze is extortionately expensive, so people just drink cheap, dangerous moonshine... and get even drunker, even cheaper.
Just shows how all these complaints about student fees and wotnot are b***cks - students are obviously rolling in money, pouring booze down their throat every night and - judging by the rubbish piled up every July/September around here - throwing away and repurchasing thousands of pounds-worth of electronic equipment/consumer electronics every year.
If you want to be believed about how poor being a student is, behave that way.
There seem to be two problems that need tackling: effects of excessive drinking on long-term health and public order issues.
The second one is easy to tackle with existing laws - enforce them. It's an offence to sell alcohol to or for someone who is drunk - so just send a plain-clothes copper with a video camera to wander round the town centre pubs at 11.30 on a Friday and then prosecute all the bar staff - £1000 fine each will probably have an effect. And then enforce the various 'drunk and disorderly' offences - stop being nice to drunks who throw up in the street, instead give them all a £80 fixed penalty once they've stopped vomiting - much more effective than charging an extra 25p per drink.
The first problem is harder, as that's back to the problem of an addict, but hopefully stopping people getting totally rat-arsed several times every weekend will have a positive impact on their health.
Couldn't agree more!
I would actually go a stage further and issue people, at 18, with a drinking license, which must be presented every time you purchase alcohol. If you are caught drunk and disorderly, you are suspended from drinking for x weeks/months. Assault etc. while under the influence, or drink driving, get's you a longer ban. Anyone selling to or buying for someone without a license, just as with underage now, gets fined. It would also help with underage drinking.
This post has been deleted by its author
Amazing how many people come on here and bleat about the supposed price increases and claim that a single report claims that increasing prices will increase consumption. Come on! How often have we seen that - price increases usually (though not always) are followed by reduction in consumption. take petrol for example - despite what someone said earlier, car usage IS down and plenty of people blame highest ever petrol prices.
Also, what about tobacco duty? Should we drastically reduce the duty on tobacco in the hope that consumption will also drastically fall? Now that contains a real addictive drug and consumption has been seen to fall due to ever increasing prices, and if we haven't seen an increase in crime due to nicotine addicts doing anything to get their fix then I think we can predict that alcohol price increases (which happen every budget anyway) won't result in a crime spree caused by alcoholics.
"Amazing how many people come on here and bleat about the supposed price increases and claim that a single report claims that increasing prices will increase consumption."
Frankly, raising the price of Stella is not going to reduce the amount of £20 a bottle port I drink.
"Also, what about tobacco duty? Should we drastically reduce the duty on tobacco in the hope that consumption will also drastically fall?"
Since the duty increases, most people I know either have the money not to give a toss and just carried on, or have simply switched to rollies, and buy their tobacco overseas. It's not changed anything. The only thing that has decreased their smoking is getting older and wider, and being made to stand in the rain.
You can't control behaviour through prices. People enjoy luxuries and will sacrifice things for them. Give someone only enough money to feed themselves, and they'll go hungry a couple of times a week in order to do the things that they enjoy. That's the way people work.
If all what you said is true, why did London feel a need to further increase the congestion charge? Why does every city still have traffic issues every day? Why do I still see lots of people smoking? etc etc continue ad-nauseum.
The demand for all things that require a payment is inelastic, as price increases demand decreases. The important point is that it isn't linear. To achieve the stated goal - cutting consumer consumption - would require a significant increase, magnitudes higher than 50p.
As an illustration, think about a pay rise, most people get one annually. If the pay rise is not significant - <5% - the monetary change seems to make no difference; it takes a magnitude change - >10% - before any significant change in circumstances is witnessed. The same is true of penal taxation.
One could argue that the reduction in tobacco consumption is as much or more to do with a change in attitudes and awareness of the health dangers than the pricing. Besides there is a roaring and ever-increasing black market in tobacco now. That complicates health studies, deprives the treasury of income and funds other smuggling activities (some you may approve of but these are not nice people ultimately!).
This has absolutely nothing to do with temperance movements which had their roots in a concern regarding the decline of moral standards. To attribute ethics to the uk government is just laughable. With a declining economy people end up paying less income tax so the government is looking at pushing up the price (and tax) of goods with inelastic demand.
Its all about the money, as usual.
This post has been deleted by its author
Whatever else this is, it is not a tax. It simply inreases the retail price that must be charged for alcohol. The money stays with the retailer, although a proportion will also be lost by the retailer due to increased wastage. (Noone will buy any damaged or short-dated stock of items priced at or near the minimum as it cannot be reduced by law to shift it. The customer will have no incentive to buy the less desirable stock so will buy the pristine stock instead. Hence it must simply be binned. No possibility of markdown for any reason will cause quite significant wastage.)
Back to the main point, I'm somewhat ashamed to be a Sheefield Uni grad with the amount of crap they put out about alcohol. I hope they all man up and accept responsibility when the meths deaths start.
I mentioned that in my reply to myself but it's worth noting that VAT is charged on most goods. If consumers increase their expenditure on alcohol then presumably it will replace some of their spending on other goods. Unless those goods were zero-rated like basic food or kids clothes or one of the reduced rate goods then it makes no difference to UK coffers.
Booze if you ask me, is the most dangerous drug in use in this country - the sheer numbers of deaths, assaults, broken homes, abuse, fucked up lives it plays a part in is why I hold this view. Along with first hand experience of what I call "drunk twats" who have done a good job of ruining parts of my life - thanks dad!1
However - I am not someone who wants it banned, blames it for all social evils, wants minimum pricing, or any of that bollocks. I also do like a nice pint or glass of wine, and heck, even occasionally have been known to get sloshed.
I want a sensible approach taken to dealing with problem drinkers, the question of booze advertising, health costs - not yet more ill informed legislation. WTF is up with drink, drug and health policy in this country (well most countries)?
Do something to stop people like my dad killing themselves with drink - upping the price aint guna matter - just means more kids go without food like I did so their alky parents can get their fix!
I don't know what the answer is though - maybe its to kill all politictards with alcohol poisoning.
I'm sure I remember someone telling me that in Turkey committing a crime whilst drunk is an aggravating factor. Here, drunkenness is sometimes offered as an excuse (at least for a lack of recall) and may be a mitigating factor in crimes, in Turkey the logic is that being drunk makes the crime even more irresponsible and the sentence will be even more severe. Even if I was being led up the garden path, this logic makes sense to me. It's fine to drink but drink responsibly, it's even fine to be completely bladdered, just do it quietly. If you look at other countries it's clear to see that most of our problems with alcohol are not with the alcohol per se but are social and relate to our attitudes to and expectations of alcohol, it's our culture that needs to change.
"the logic is that being drunk makes the crime even more irresponsible and the sentence will be even more severe"
Actually this is interesting.
Take, for instance, killing someone by driving drunk. There are 2 ways of looking at it. The first (which is the one taken by our legal system, I think) is that they didn't mean to kill them, it was an accident, but one caused by their actions. This merits a lesser sentence than murder.
OTOH: The person chose to get drunk, and what happened from there on is a consequence of that choice.
They may be totally against drink driving when sober, but once under the influence their compromised judgement told them it was OK. However, they made the choice to get drunk, hence it is a consequence of their own choice and should be punished as a concious descision.
Then they hit someone and killed them. Once again, they may be a great driver sober, but killing that person is a consequence of their descision to drive drunk. It should be prosecuted as if they had made a conscious descision to kill that person, so should be treated as murder.
I am not saying that this is how it should work, nor that it should not be this way. It is just a very interesting thought experiment.
Perhaps, but the most serious murder charges are those where the person PLANS to kill someone (premeditated murder) or does so in the commission of another serious crime (felony murder). Thing is, few people PLAN to run over someone while drunk (if they did, that's premeditated murder right there), and driving under the influence is still generally a misdemeanor unless a "habitual offender" elevation occurs. It's not a black-and-white thing, and they do tend to change gradually as the situation evolves. That said, some jurisdictions do have the ability to file second-degree murder charges on drunk vehicular slayers, which is pretty serious in its own right.
...nationalise the off-sales business. Make it so that only government owned businesses can sell alcohol for home consumption; they can then dictate the price level. I know Iceland (the country and not Kerry Katatonic's sponsor) has something similar although I forget whether you can actually buy alcohol in 'ordinary' shops as well.
this is what happens when governments start to meddle in "social policy". It will invariably end up with people with influence regulating other peoples behaviour. Unfortunately, in the UK "people with influence" tends to be a small minority of a small minority.
If you stopped and realised how many laws there are that criminalise harmless behaviour, in the name of morality, you would question the statement the UK is a free country.
I know it's besides the point of the article, but I feel compelled to point out that Economics is not, and never will be, a science, but is instead, at best an art.
Whilst the statistics in question in this article probably do show that increasing the unit price of alcohol has no benefit, and I'm not going to argue the point, economic theories have been screwing us over for a while now, and debacles like the recession we are now in are largely caused by them. This sort of shit gives proper scientists a bad name, who are generally engaged in the acquisition of knowledge which benefits mankind, not the grubbing of money, which benefits only those who treat other people badly.
This post has been deleted by its author
The problem with a minimum price is that it provides an incentive for everyone currently selling something at just over the new minimum price to raise their prices so they don't get mistaken for the cheap stuff.
And even if they didn't deliberately put their prices up in proportion, consider this scenario: a supermarket sells two brands of vodka - call them Cheipstov and Gudenov at rather below and just above the new minimum price respectively. When the minimum price comes in, the price differential drops to next to nothing. At this point, a percentage of the Cheipstov drinkers decide to try Gudenov (we can't, after all, claim that every single drinker of Cheipstov is motivated purely by maximising booze/penny). This means that there'll be less bottles of Gudenov on the shelf for the folk who usually drink it, so they'll either end up drinking the really good stuff (sorry, ran out of fake names), which will cost them more, or the increased demand for Gudenov will mean that the supermarket will put its price up too.
It's a pity that folk like BrewDog, who should know better, don't seem to get this....
For a paytard, you do at least acknowledge the lessons of history. And as far as taxation on alcohol goes I am with you, and John Stuart Mill who condemned the prohibitionist doctrine as:
"A theory of "social rights," the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language: being nothing short of this—that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever"
In Scotland the otherwise populist SNP are pushing forward with minimum pricing, I only hope they founder in the European courts (the Scotch Whisky Assoc. has already moved to challenge it). The SNP point to the infamous Sheffield University study for the touted social benefits but, as we know, that is based on pseudo-science and the original findings have now been reined back. Minimum pricing will simply provide the stimulus to black market booze that we have seen with tobacco market and will end with people simply turning to illicit sources and/or other drugs. I shouldn't care, I like expensive ales and whiskies, but I'm a libertarian and I do.
"Clearly, the Scotch Whisky Assoc. disagrees with the comentariate about the likely effects of the measure."
Clearly thye have a stake...
or not; really... Find me a bottle of anything but unbranded stuff for less than £15 quid a bottle!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
[C.S. Lewis]
Ban the drink? -Another example of agenda-driven pseudo-science! Was Cary Nation cryogenically frozen, reheated by AWG, and is she now working in Whitehall? Next we'll have a German-style tithing law to save religion and promote family values! This is what the Yanks will face if the conservative right gains power.
The list of bad science is long:
"Anthropomorphic Global Warming" (Note: Making drivers type this correctly before their car will start would be a far more effective deterrent to drunk driving than a Methodist tax)
"Wind farms are economic power sources" - Only in Whitehall is there enough hot air to drive them!
" (cows, pigs, chickens) create methane, so let's ban them - See Whitehall comment above!
"Big Bang Theory" - Only Christians would believe their universe actually started!
"The best fix for foot and mouth disease is to kill the animals" - Even though we have a vaccine?
"Warnings on cigarette packs" - Anyone dumb enough to smoke can't read the holy words! Cigs kill - ban them!
While I quite agree with the science, I gently disagree with your tone. The problem, devastating problem actually, of the effects of addiction remain. Yes this is a societal problem. And yes it IS the governments problem. Unfortunately the governments of today, left and right, globally, appear to act to increase profits for private companies. You have outlined this beautifully. And they also act not to build up the individuals and communities in the nation but quite the reverse.
However, the problem remains and peoples lives are wasted as a result. And the progress and development of good society fails as a result.