Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 4:48 pm  

Andy Gilder wrote:

It's targeted squarely at those on low incomes (benefits/tax credit claimants?) to prevent them from spending any of the money the state gives them on alcohol. It's another piece of ideology dressed up as being "for our own good".

Even if that is the actual case, which is another debate, there are many, many doctors who see large numbers of the people you describe destroying their lives and those of their family by killing themselves on ultra cheap alcohol that they would have little or no access to if it was priced higher.
As someone said this morning, give it a try, if it doesn't work then drop the policy. There are pockets of the population who are simply being destroyed by cheap booze and perhaps pricing it beyond their reach in the first place might work. I haven't seen anyone even hint that this is a way of stiffing the poor again.
I'd also argue that with the financial stresses on the middle classes (one for the groups shown to be increasing in alcohol consumption), increasing the price will have an effect. Coming home from work can I really afford 10 quid a night on a bottle of wine? Maybe I can stretch to a fiver but at a certain price point you start to think, not tonight.
Again as someone said this morning, why can't supermarkets discount vegetables or household essentials instead of alcohol?

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 4:55 pm  

DHM wrote:

... ...I'd also argue that with the financial stresses on the middle classes (one for the groups shown to be increasing in alcohol consumption), increasing the price will have an effect. Coming home from work can I really afford 10 quid a night on a bottle of wine? Maybe I can stretch to a fiver but at a certain price point you start to think, not tonight...

The minimum price for a bottle of wine at 12%abv would be under a fiver.

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 4:58 pm  

Big Graeme wrote:

"With the Uturn on minimum pricing on alcohol, just what can the PM do in a brewery?"

They're usually really lame in PMQs but that's not a bad one at all.

Couldn't organise a brew-up in a patisserie.

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:23 pm  

Another important factor but one which seems to pass the government by is that, just as in the case of fags, the higher the price of booze, the greater the profits for criminals to bootleg it. It is well known that the trade in counterfeit baccy and booze is worth many billions, and the more you put up the price, the more people will be driven into buying potentially very dodgy stuff, much of which the avergae punter wouldn't even readily know was dodgy - there are loads of off-licences etc who sell fake bottles of vodka and whisky and not all of them even know it, although I suspect many either do, or turn a blind eye to the provenance.

Maybe they could sell all spirits in plain bottles, like fags in brown paper. That would cut down on fake booze, wouldn't it?

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:40 pm  

We already have laws banning the serving to people who have already had too much and the offence of being drunk and disorderly ... do we need to enforce this better and make the penalties greater?

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:45 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

We already have laws banning the serving to people who have already had too much and the offence of being drunk and disorderly ... do we need to enforce this better and make the penalties greater?

Neither have any effect of someone drinking a skin full of Ace "cider" at home every night.

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:51 pm  

Big Graeme wrote:

Neither have any effect of someone drinking a skin full of Ace "cider" at home every night.

Yes.
I took the educated decision to stop my 10 year homely stint of supping vast amounts of 2 litre bottles of White Lightning.
I believe my liver is in remission.

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:54 pm  

Big Graeme wrote:

Neither have any effect of someone drinking a skin full of Ace "cider" at home every night.

No, but could enforcement and penalties have an effect on public drukenness?

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 6:02 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

No, but could enforcement and penalties have an effect on public drukenness?

Are you druke EB?

Re: Alcohol (minimum price etc) : Wed Mar 13, 2013 6:19 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

No, but could enforcement and penalties have an effect on public drukenness?

Absolutely. Try pissing in the gutter and giving a rozzer abuse in your average town in Poland and see how you go on. Or even Spain, even if the police in the main resorts do hold back a little bit in deference to the tourist dollar.