English drinkers to be fleeced too

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.

No laughing matter

No doubt yesterday many of you will have made a contribution towards Comic Relief, thinking it would all go to good causes. You know, like this:

Comic Relief is funding Alcohol Concern to identify and submit alcohol projects and initiatives for young people.

Hmm, I don’t want any of my donations to go to an organisation dedicated to jacking up alcohol taxes and closing pubs down, thank you very much.

On the bench

I have great respect for Wetherspoons’ success as a pub operator, but somehow I struggle to warm to their pubs. Thinking about this, I reached the conclusion that one of the key reasons is that they largely eschew bench-type seating in favour of individual tables and chairs.

Traditionally, pubs have always tended to have benches fixed around the walls. This design was used because it works. It's flexible, as you can spread out coats and papers, or huddle close together, it's sociable, as everyone faces in towards the centre of the room, it's adaptable to different-sized groups of people, and it gives a room a distinctive quality of “pubbiness”. It's no coincidence that all of what are regarded as the finest pub rooms have fixed wall seating, whereas one of the most depressing rooms I have ever seen in a pub had plain white walls and nothing but about eight round tables each surrounded by four stools.

So why is it that modern pub designers so often go for having individual loose chairs grouped around tables instead? These may give a place the atmosphere of a gentlemen's club, or a Continental bistro, (or, at worst, a works canteen) but they certainly aren't right for pubs. They mean that people tend to cluster around tables in inward-facing groups rather than talking to each other, and make the place less sociable. They make the person who's just popped in on their own for a pint and a quick read of the paper feel ill at ease, and they're awkward too for groups of more than four.

The only conclusion is that they’re trying to make pubs look and feel less like pubs and more like restaurants.