Minimum alcohol pricing has recently been decisively rejected in Scotland, but the Manchester Evening News reports that the ten Greater Manchester local authorities are still pressing ahead with plans to implement a 50p/unit minimum in their local areas via a bylaw. It is also proposed to outlaw various on-trade discounts and promotions such as, from the sound of it, the CAMRA Wetherspoon vouchers.
The article is accompanied by a survey of personal alcohol consumption and attitudes to alcohol, which contains so many tendentious and loaded questions that I declined to fill it in. You’re on a hiding to nothing, really – if you say you only drink two halves a fortnight, then minimum pricing will scarcely affect you, but if you drink two gallons a week then you’ll be portrayed as part of the problem.
The comments on the article are overwhelmingly opposed to the idea. Indeed, you have to wonder exactly whose agenda the MEN is following in continuing to champion such an unpopular (not to mention illegal) plan, when clearly it is not wanted by the general public.
I'm sure they'll be rubbing their hands with glee in supermarkets just outside Greater Manchester.
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ReplyDeletejust another runt in the Guardian/BBC/Trotsky litter
The idiotic rag still blames the
sub prime crisis in the USA mid states for the pub closures.
Non reader (now)
Manchester has a university. Students traditionally like a drink. I'm surprised the university, with all those allegedly clever people in it, haven't made the connection.
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