Well, the theme of minimum pricing/below cost selling has been done to death, so I didn’t see much point in doing yet another post on the subject. But my eyes popped out at the comment by Don Shenker of Alcohol Concern in this report that: “Duty is so low in the UK that it will still be possible to sell very cheap alcohol and be within the law.” Come again, Don? The UK has the highest alcohol duties in Western Europe with the exception of the Irish Republic and the Scandinavian countries. By any international comparison, UK duties are in fact very high, and governments of both complexions have been steadily raising them through the “alcohol duty escalator”.
There was a blog, now sadly dormant it would seem, called Don Shenker is a C**t. It would seem that proposition is all too true. And a lying c**t at that. Indeed it is very striking how much of the neo-Prohibitionist case is built on a foundation of blatant lies – “alcohol consumption is at record levels”, “pubs are open 24 hours a day”, “alcohol is cheaper than it ever has been”, “Britain has the highest alcohol consumption in Europe” etc. Interestingly, that blog is still the first result suggested by Google when you do a search for “Don Shenker”.