Cats in a sack

Chris Snowdon is suitably scathing about the ludicrous proposal by the Scottish Licensed Trade Association to impose a £1 per unit minimum alcohol price – more than twice that planned by the Scottish Government.

As I have often argued before, there is no guarantee that simply increasing the price of off-trade alcohol will do anything to help the pub trade, when it won’t make drinks any cheaper in pubs, and there are many reasons beyond price why at-home drinking has increased relative to pubs. I have also said that the anti-drink lobby must be laughing into their sarsaparilla at the sight of different parts of the drinks industry trying to scratch each others’ eyes out in the hope of gaining a short-term advantage.

Chris’ conclusion is well worth reading:

Is there any aspect of the pub debate that is not a cess-pool of cant and hypocrisy? If I see one more politician who voted for the smoking ban crying crocodile tears about the state of the pub industry, I may throw up. CAMRA are no better, climbing into bed with both the anti-smoking brigade and the temperance lobby in their crusade against any pleasure that doesn’t appeal to overweight, middle-aged Jethro Tull fans. Alcohol Concern are, it goes without saying, paid shills and neo-prohibitionists whose world would fall apart if they told the truth for one day. The pub industry, almost to a man, switched sides on the smoking ban as soon as they realised that exemptions for private members' clubs would adversely affect their business. And the SLTA, one of the few groups to have taken a consistent stand against the ban, now wants to torment their customers until they take their rightful place standing outside empty pubs in the rain.

A plague on all their houses. It's got to the stage where I'm now officially on the side of Tesco’s. How the hell did that happen?

Mind you, I think he’s a bit unfair on overweight, middle-aged Jethro Tull fans... cough...

(Also mentioned by Dick Puddlecote and Freedom2Choose Scotland)