It starts out with wibble and goes on from there…
A minimum price for alcohol is one of those policies that looks so sensible – the only mystery is that it hasn’t already been introduced.
Frankly, we can stop reading right there. No, it does not look reasonable. Not even vaguely reasonable. It is the totalitarian prohibitionist’s wet dream, but reasonable, it ain’t. As for the second part of the question, for flying fuck’s sake where has this woman been for the last four decades? It is illegal under EU competition laws. We are a part of the EU, so therefore we have to abide by the rules. Which part of “it is fucking illegal” does this cretin not understand? There is no mystery here – unless you count the sheer fucking idiocy of the average Guardian columnist.
XX A minimum price for alcohol is one of those policies that looks so sensible – the only mystery is that it hasn’t already been introduced.XX
She’s got shares in “Brasso” right?
At present it is rare to find any large, or medium scale burglars, muggers, or even shop thieves, that “do it for a can of Kestrel super.”
WHY do most of the crims do it?
DRUGS.
And why is that?
Because drugs are EXPENSIVE.
Can she not see the way this is going?
The woman is a bloody idiot. Anyone who can say straight faced that minimum pricing is reasonable is either a cretin or a shill for the health lobby.
Presumably she is also unaware that if you add yeast to any sugary substance and wait a couple of weeks you get an alcoholic drink.
Perhaps, but bear in mind that the “public health” fascists are trying to ban/tax sugar too.
Edit: You both beat me to it!
minimum pricing on booze will never work for the same reason pushing the cost of fags through the roof will never work, the inveterate drinker like the inveterate smoker will always find cash for their habit.
As Furor already intimated of addicts they will do anything for their fix.
Minimum pricing is bollox and another money making taxation scheme and has sod all to do with public health and wellbeing, it is prohibitionist rhetoric and just another excuse to squeeze the lower classes for more money.
They complain about the “poor” and how shoddy their health is but the reason so many “Poor” people take to these addictions is to numb their misery, mostly caused by the rich politicos pointing fingers at them and calling them scum and taxing them further into poverty, after all the people above the breadline don’t have to worry as much, how much booze costs them because they have more disposable income.
Coming from an upper middle class privileged childhood and then having spent all my married life in a working class poor just swimming household, I have seen both sides of this divide and it is a divide.
Perkins previously worked at the BBC covering politics and at Channel 4 News. Says it all really. All hail the new aristocracy.
There’s no let up. There is now a fake charity for fighting the evils of sugar. Another bunch of taxpayer funded zealots.