Just as you thought minimum alcohol pricing had been kicked into the long grass in Scotland, the idea now raises its ugly head again in England. The clinically obese Sir Liam Donaldson, “Chief Medical Officer” for England, is demanding that a minimum price of 50p per unit should be set in England. No matter that this will greatly increase costs for ordinary families who enjoy the occasional tipple, it will supposedly improve public health.
What a load of bollocks. Most people use alcohol entirely responsibly, and this proposal will simply increase their costs. But it will do nothing to curb problem drinkers, who are the least price-conscious of all. This is snobbish, prohibitionist nonsense and Sir Liam should be sacked from his official position immediately. It won’t affect Sir Liam and his claret-swigging mates, so what right do they have to impose this on the poor?
The government may have dismissed this for the time being, but we should be under no illusions that it will keep coming back. Not for the first time, something first mooted in Scotland will eventually be inflicted on England – just look at the poll tax and the smoking ban. And watch out for plans to severely curtail the amount of booze and fags people are allowed to bring in across the Channel.
This idea is superbly dismissed here by the ever-eloquent Raedwald:
If these cloistered fools ever once asked themselves why people drink to excess they might just find that it's the escape that many have from the suffocating, cloying, overweening, intrusive, impertinent and unwelcome interference of Labour's Nanny State in the minutae of their lives rather than the cost per unit that's the more important factor. But that's a lesson these idiots will never learn.