UK.gov's minimum booze price dream demolished

So...

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.

The politician's lemma

1) Something must be done.

2) This is something.

3) Therefore it must be done.

So, it may have health and social benefits, whilst paradoxically creating higher sales of alcohol and profiteering by retailers, even though many people don't have the money to afford it.

I wonder who was lobbying to get that report?

Minimum pricing

I worked out in only effected the cheapo stuff and not the decent stuff.

Homebrew

for the win.

C2H5OH makes governments stupid

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...

The best thing the government can do

... 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.

The important reason for a minimum price...

...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.

Question

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.