Cameron devolves the tricky issue of alcohol pricing

PayDirt

Better off restricting access to alcohol to the under-21's. 18 year-olds just cannot handle the stuff. I know I've got one, they think it a lark to get zonked and then sick all over the place. Downright dangerous, but heh we seem to think 18 year-olds are adults, but that's just wishful thinking all round.

Bob Dixon

Booze cruise to Yorkshire!

2trueblue

Pricing has nothing to do with use or misuse of most substances. Education has everything to do with it. The acceptability of our young drunk and vomiting in public should not be a given. Those who foul the area should be made to clean it up. We have let it happen, Liebore encouraged it. Raising the age might be a step in the right direction, but to do nothing is wrong. It has now become part of the culture for the young, another legacy from Liebore. Cheers.

Taxing is an issue as it is an easy hit for governments whilst appearing to tackle the problem of 'bingers'. 24hr drinking has proven to be a disaster and a blight for all of us.

Alcohol is cheaper abroad and they also have their problems despite belief that they do not.

Richard of York

I see so the Nanny state is alive and well in this coalition.
Evidence suggests that those with the biggest problem with alchohol are not the poor but the middle class and women are more effected than men.
Look back at history and you will find the drink issues has always been there just like child abuse and murder its endemic.
In states in Arabia it's illegal to buy sell and consume alchohol yet they still have clinics for alchoholics.....so ask yourself if a few pence on a bottle of smirnoff ice will change anything.

strapworld

Not a very attractive photograph of you, Mr Hoskins!

It is right that local councils should have the powers to make their locality safe and local bye laws should be issued.

It fits in, rightly, with the conservative party and coalition policy of power to the people, surely.

It will fail. As your story highlights the EU will block it.

The EU is an issue that this coalition just cannot ignore. They have to tell us exactly where they stand. Will they, for example,accept the EU proposal for them to tax us all directly or not. Perhaps you should be asking them that question.

BrianSJ

The question of supermarket pricing is part of the problem. The prices the brewers charge pubs is a separate matter that needs to be examined at the same time. We need to get people back into pubs.

Nicholas

Hmm. I wonder what's worse, the tyranny of nanny numpties in Westminster, or the tyranny of nanny numpties in the local, re-furbished and opulent council palaces?

The British, despite their traditions of freedom, do seem set on continuing multi-tiered government control - local councils, regions (or have they been canned now?), Westminster (official and quangocracy) and Europe, all sponging taxes as they broaden their scope of control over our lives.

And Box Dixon makes an excellent point. Displacement - as pernicious as devolution in bringing inconsistency, unfairness and injustice.

denis cooper

"... the Times notes how the European Union put the kybosh on a similar scheme to introduce minimum pricing for cigarettes in Ireland."

But the last I heard the Scottish Executive thought that the EU's Court of Justice would still allow them to set minimum prices for alcohol sold in Scotland.

Last November:

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/east-central/135074-msps-clash-over-legality-of-minimum-booze-pricing/

"Nicola Sturgeon says EU rules are one "hurdle to cross" but do not prohibit alcohol price hikes."

Personally I think it would be a damn sight simpler if we just asked the EU judges to set uniform prices for alcohol across the whole of the EU, as they always seem to know best about everything.

There's really little point wasting time and money pretending to have a democratic system of government, when a consortium of foreign lawyers can do it so much better.

David Booth

If you drive up the price of any product in one area you simply displace the transaction to an area where the product is cheaper, this is a simple law of economics.
When alcohol is expensive in the UK people go over to the Continent to buy it in large quantities for consumption (legal) or selling on to others (illegal.)
If people are prepared to do this by crossing the channel what makes politicians, who hypocritically have access to subsidised alcohol in the Palace of Westminster and Holyrood, think that people will not drive five mile down the road to purchase their favourite tipple.
Can I suggest that if politicians are serious about ready access to alcohol being a problem, for us great unwashed but not them, that they should close down the bars in their own place of work.
Does anyone know of any other place of work that has cosy little bars attached to the premises for for use by the staff during working hours?

EyeSee

There isn't a tricky issue over alcohol pricing. In fact, there is no issue at all. Binge drinking (which is the actual problem here, is it not) is a cultural phenomenon not economic. A bit like crime isn't caused by poverty. Binge drinking is very much based on the 'me' society of Tony Blair. It shows total disrespect for others and is entirely self-indulgent. Just as crime will occur where certain people have no restraint placed on them by self-discipline, societal pressure (peer pressure) or an effective law and order system.

The middle class have always been the real engine of an industrialised society and when we get the society destroying left-liberals off the country's back and start rewarding effort, then we might start to see a turnaround in the nation's fortunes at every level, including the self respect needed to make binge drinking a thing of the past. What Blair really did to Britain with all his madcap schemes and perversions, was remove hope and that is the most destructive thing you can do to an individual or a society. And that too, drives binge drinking.

munich15040

Lets start with the bars in the HOC. Make MPs pay the full price for their drinks instead of sponging off the taxpayer.

When will the health busybodies learn to just f*** off and leave us alone?

Also see Guido's story on how this "initiative" is being financed and promoted.

http://order-order.com/2010/08/12/public-funded-lobbying-of-dave-pays-off/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+guidofawkes+%28Guy+Fawkes%27+blog+of+parliamentary+plots%2C+rumours+and+conspiracy%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Jonathan Bagley

Further to the above: back in the seventies, when alcohol was more expensive, home brewing and wine making were very popular. Boots had a large section devoted to the necessary paraphernalia. When minimum pricing was first proposed, and it was suggested that a minimum £4.75 for a bottle of wine would add only pennies to my weekly drinks bill, I visited a home brew shop and found that I could make a very acceptable wine for £1.20 a bottle. Consequently I became intensely relaxed about the whole business and continued my purchase of £3.29 Valdepenas from Lidl without worrying what the future may hold.
I suggest that the Government risks creating an enormous amount of criminal activity, both smuggling and selling home brew, if wine is not legitimately available for less than £4.75 a bottle. I've read that less than half of handrolling tobacco smoked in the UK is duty paid. This is without the possibility of growing ones own tobacco plants.

Richard of York

this is madness. Ask any prison officer and he will tell you they tolerate drugs because it keeps the inmates quite. Same with booze, keep the people sozzled and they wont notice the cuts.

TomTom

Like the USSR life in Britain is only made tolerable by copious quantities of alcohol. Raise the price and it will be illicit distilled potatoes people use to make life here bearable

yank

Good God, man... you mean to tell me you lot pay for the honorables to slop up at WORK ?!

And right there... in the People's HOUSE ?!

And then we all wonder why the political class views themselves as a ruling class. It seems we allow them to act so, so why wouldn't they think that way?

None of us would get away with this at our workplace. I value tradition as much as anybody, but here's one that might be dumped, and for many good reasons.

Tarka the Rotter

Heard some officious bandsturbator from Greater Manchester Council on the radio saying the council had a duty to promote healthy lifestyles. Do they buggery! They have a duty to collect the bins and don't do that very well... why can't government (both local and national) just LEAVE PEOPLE ALONE (sorry for shouting, won't do it again...promise).

Marcher Baron

It isn't the booze, it's the boozer - or, more correctly, the binge boozer. Alcohol is cheap on the continent, but they don't have the problem of out of control drunkards that we have in city centres. It'd be far better to restrict opening hours, raise the legal age to 21 and ENFORCE IT! Also, let's see all those drunk and disorderly types banged up overnight before going up before the beak the morning after, without a change of clothes, to be fined heavily. Personally, I'd like to see persistent drunkards put in the stocks for half a day so they can contemplate the inapropriateness of their behaviour. Once upon a time it was a point of honour to be able to hold one's liquor. Given the Anglo-Saxon propensity to knock it back, it must be time to resurrect that way of thinking, surely.

Bob roberts

PayDirt has this 100% wrong. Let 18 or for that matter 16 year olds drink. Idealy let them drink in pubs where thay can be supervised. Restricking access to drink just pushes them to drugs and dealers.

TGF UKIP

Pete Hoskin, you really should look at Guido at order-order.com to find out what's actually going on. If you did, you would find that behind this move from the ten councils is intensive lobbying by a typically nanny, prissy, intrusive gang of "health" preachers who are taxpayer funded. CHers, like Pete, should visit Guido for the full story.

Meanwhile the whole thing is, of course, right up the street of prissy, priggish, preachy, chocolate orange Dave, the Heir to the vicarship of St. Albion's.

Fergus Pickering

I don't care about the poor. I don't care about young drunkards. But keep your greasy hands off my gin.

William Boyd

A little arithmetic based on published figures shows that adults in Scotland are already on average drinkling more than the BMA recommended limit with the rest of the UK lagging not far behind.

With that limit (for men) hardly more than the equivalent of a single pint of lager an evening isn't it time the BMA stopped its charade of pretending drinking 'in moderation' is good for you?

A return to the traditions of the temperance movements of old by no means a bad thing imho.

Meanwhile we need to return supermarket prices back to pub prices if we are not to put all our pubs out of business (a pint of supermarket Stella, even when not 'on offer', is a mere third of its price at the tap).

Just stating the bleeding obvious but apparently it does need stating.

David Booth

Yank. Yes, not only have politicians over here managed to arrange subsidised drinking dens in Westminster and Holyrood for themselves, but also the public purse pays for their chauffeur driven cars and taxi's to transport the little pissheads back to their homes.