Calais, here we come

Sir Liam Donaldson: pasty, saggy-faced, fat-arsed cunt.

(nb. I ain't DK)

Christ on a bike, they're actually going to do it.

Plans for minimum alcohol price

The government's top medical adviser has drawn up plans for a minimum price for alcohol which would double the cost of some drinks in England.

Under the proposal from Sir Liam Donaldson...

Oh, not that fucker again.

...it has been reported that no drinks could be sold for less than 50 pence per unit of alcohol they contain.

Why don't you twats just nationalise everything and be done with it? You own half the banks. You've got your eye on the motor industry. You effectively dictate the price of tobacco and petrol. You decide where fags and booze can be sold and, increasingly, where they can be consumed. You also, apparently, want to start dictating what cigarette packets look like even though you won't let people see the fucking things. You want total control so just get on with it and put us out of our misery.

Goddamn it, at least the proper communists had the balls to launch a violent revolution. Enough of the drip, drip, drip. Raise the fucking red flag and give us a chance to fight you in the streets because it seems like that's what you want us do.

The BBC's health correspondent Adam Brimelow said Sir Liam's recommendation would not automatically become government policy.

I think the phrase I'm looking for here is "chinny-reckon".

But he said Sir Liam was influential and had advocated a ban on smoking in public places long before it became law.

Well, exactly. Is there anything this fat fucking Nazi has suggested in the last few years that hasn't made its way into law? There are only two things that could stop this policy from be adopted by the government:

1. Donaldson kicks the bucket before it reaches the White Paper stage which, by the looks of the pasty, saggy-faced, fat-arsed cunt, is a distinct possibility.


2. The government believes that it might actually work (ie. reduce alcohol consumption) and therefore reduce the amount of tax it receives.

Otherwise, if I'm not much mistaken, this is going to end in another pretend Department of Health public consultation, in which 'stake-holders' will have their views heard, unless the DoH doesn't like their views, in which case they will mysteriously disappear from the record.

Stake-holders like Alcohol Concern:

According to its 2007/08 accounts, out of a total income of £903,246, Alcohol Concern received £515,000 (57%) from the Department of Health (£400,000 unrestricted and £115,000 in restricted funds). 

It received just £4,991 in public donations.

Or Addaction:

"Addaction is reliant on government contracts for more than 90% of its funding."

Or the Alliance House Foundation:

According to Foundation's 2007/08 accounts, its single biggest donor is the EU's Bridging the Gap project (£41,138). Public donations for the year amounted to just £70.

Do we even need to guess what these state-funded pricks independent charities will think of this illiberal horseshit? Actually no, because they've been campaigning for this very policy for some time and particularly—funnily enough—in the last few weeks.

"Increase on Alcohol Duty must come with minimum price setting, says Addaction" (Addaction, 12/3/09)

"Introducing a minimum price for alcohol is the only effective way to deter risky and harmful drinkers, who tend to rely on low-cost alcohol." (Alcohol Concern, 2/3/09)

I believe this is called joined up government. But let's get back to the Beeb:

Setting a minimum price could have a particular impact on "own brand" or "value pack" beers and ciders.

Don't be fooled. This isn't just about Tesco lager and White Lightning. The belief that only tramps and students will be affected will probably be enough to persuade the Great British Pleblic to support this grotesque, and probably illegal, piece of state interference, but a quick back of an envelope calculation shows that this will be an across-the-board price hike.

Can of Stella Artois: £1.50

Bottle of wine: £4.50-£5.50

Litre of vodka: £20

And who gets the extra money? Maybe the drinks industry will be allowed to keep it as a bribe to support the law. More likely, it will go to our porcine lords and masters to create a whopping pile of cash to put behind the free bar in Westminster.

Our correspondent added that recent research from the Department of Health had shown that a minimum of 50 pence per unit of alcohol would reduce consumption by almost 7%.

'Bull' and, furthermore, 'shit'. As always with these numbers, they've been plucked out of someone's arse. Only last week, quacks in Scotland were saying that a 30p minimum price would reduce consumption by 30%. A week before that, they were saying that a 40p minimum price would reduce consumption by just 2.6%. Now a 50p price is going to reduce it by 7%. All of this is utter fantasy, dreamt up by a bunch of say-anything, do-anything wankers who should be drowned in a vat of brandy, as the Scottish Whisky Association has (sort of) pointed out:

"The claim by the Scottish Government, backing the Royal College of Physicians, that a 30p unit minimum price will reduce consumption by 30% but boost profits 68% defies belief," said a spokesman for the association.

"Only a week ago, the government's own framework document stated the higher 40p a unit would reduce consumption by just 2.6%, or less than one drink a fortnight.

"Now we are being told a lower unit price will reduce consumption by a third."

Looks like they haven't agreed on a made-up figure yet but they will, and when they do it will be bollocks because no one can possibly guess how much consumption will fall by.

Most likely, it won't fall at all. The evidence of our own eyes tells us that price has very little to do with consumption when it comes to booze. If it did, the UK would have one of the lowest drinking rates in the world.

There's an old Bernard Manning joke that goes something like this:

Man in pub: I shouldn't be drinking with what I've got.

Barman: What have you got?

Man: Fuck all

The point being that if affordability dictated consumption, the poor wouldn't drink at all and the rich would drink all the time. And yet, the country's most 'reassuringly' expensive lager (AKA Wifebeater) is associated with chavs, while the people who have got literally fuck all (tramps) drink constantly. As with the demented chocolate tax, people will find the money, don't you worry about that.

So—aside from the fact that this is beyond the fucking pale as far as liberty goes—the idea almost certainly wouldn't work. And when they realise that it doesn't work, do you think they'll ditch it, or do you think they'll raise the minimum price to 60p, then 75p, then a pound, ad infinitum?

But this isn't even about what might happen in the longer term. We're way past the point of worrying about the slippery slope. We on the fucking slope and are hurtling down it like a greased hamster on ice. The only question is how far we have to fall.