We already pay absurd amounts for alcohol in the UK. We are taxed to the eyeballs. Community pubs are closing down at unprecedented rates and damage is being done to employment figures.Clearly, this is all about 'stealth taxation' but let us examine Dave's arguments:
Minimum pricing will cut binge drinking and alcoholism.
Poppycock!
(Obviously, figures will be produced next year like a rabbit out of a hat to 'prove' that it has all been a roaring success.)
The FACTS:
1) This is aimed at poorer people.
2) It will cut drinking for the wrong people. Take for example the pensioner who currently can just afford a weekly 4 pack or bottle of sherry as a treat and who may no longer be able to do so.
3) It will have no effect at all on the more expensive alcoholic drinks.
4) It cannot cut alcoholism. Alcoholics will pay what they have to - it may well deprive many spouses and children, though!
5) Whilst drugs are peddled freely in our towns and cities - drug prices may become more attractive as an alternative.
6) Like alcoholics - binge drinkers will continue to disgust us on Friday and Saturday nights across the country because they are not punished adequately for their violent, abusive excesses. They WILL find the cash.
These measures are DOOMED to fail and pandering to the opinions of a handful of government doctors' opinions is a waste of everybody's time.
IT IS A TAX INCREASE concealed under the guise of just being 'Nanny State' again.
Hard to say which is worse.
Some wisdom from Simon Heffer.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2240118/A-nanny-state-dictates-drink-soon-telling-think.html
Oh and furthermore, the irony. Possibly hoist by his own petard?
The Telegraph reports that the European Commission has sent a nine-page legal opinion to the British Government warning that minimum prices are illegal – and that the Treasury should increase duty on alcoholic drinks if it wishes to raise the price.
