David Cameron’s standing in the eyes of the British electorate has gone up steeply recently, mainly due to his definitive NON und NEIN to the Merkozy plan to tax the City of London out of existence.
No sooner has this happened, than he immediately starts adopting the pink Wavy Davy image again. This time, he is proposing that there should be a “minimum price” on alcohol, either by having a minimum price per unit or a certain tax per unit, a typical socialist response to the acknowledged alcohol problem in the UK. Instead of punishing those who abuse the stuff, he intends to punish those who do not abuse it, in case they might. Those who do abuse it will just give up something else instead, or start mugging to pay the extra.
At least it will drum up extra business for the Eurotunnel and cross channel ferries as booze cruising starts in earnest again!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Unfortunately, the idea of the ‘Nanny State’ has been adopted by all political parties.
As far as I can see this latest move by Davy is just another ploy to get more money in the UK’s depleted coffers.
David Cameron is a prat!
Perhaps Cameron should decriminalise drugs at the same time. Could solve several problems.
This latest nonsense ignores the fundamental truth that addicts don’t care about prices. It’s the same with booze as with fags, and no doubt with other substances that they crave for.
Of course, higher pricing for alcohol will lead to the same result as for fags – boozing incidence will remain unaltered while, as feeg notes the booze cruises will pick up again – and smuggling will fill the demand for cheap booze at the bottom end of the market. Smuggled booze, as are smuggled gaspers, will be outside the quality control mechanisms. When that nice Mr Putin tried to put up the tax on vodka in Russia to address a real social problem, he quickly had to do a u-turn as the number of deaths from imbibing illicit alcohol soared into the tens of thousands.
What’s next, Prohibition?
LW – Probably, and what a good idea that turned out to be. 🙂
OZ
Never mind – it’ll expand my business 🙂
OZ: This year Ken Burns produced a television series here about the period between the 18th and the 21st amendments (also laughingly known as Prohibition). During the first year liquor consumption rose by an estimated 300%, the number of drinking establishments rose by 1000% (totally uncontrolled, no minimum age or licensing requirements) and best of all the legal importation of cocktail shakers rose by 2500%. It got worse during the next twenty years.
Will politicians of any stripe, from Marxist to Nazi ever learn that they do not control the market?
LW – I have often wondered why politicians opposed to drugs learned nothing from recent history. Legalise the lot I say, even tax them and then let Darwin cull the losers.
Sorry, I was just having a ‘Christina’ moment there. 🙂
OZ
Oz, great! At least my way gets rid of the dross, parasites and numskulls!
If #9 comes to your TVs it is well worth looking at, v interesting and some incredible old footage of film.
Cameron is a total tosser, Conservative my arse!
Aarrrggghhh!
Phew!
OZ
You’re right, OZ and Christina. We should buy in the Afghan poppy crop for medical use, thereby cutting out profits for the warlords but giving the farmers a decent living. Then we should decriminalise drugs, thereby eradicating quite a few problems.
I was talking to a lady who lives in one of the ‘coloured townships’ of Cape Town. She was telling me how rife was drug abuse there. Her 18 year old sister is an addict, which is particularly tragic seeing how decent a woman she is. I asked her if the drug of choice was ‘tik’ the local name for methamphetamine. It is so widespread and there are thousands of Tik Labs across the country. I was stunned when she told me that heroin was what many were taking and that it was even cheaper than tik. It costs as little as R25 or about £2/ or $3 for a high. Of course people like her sister do not have even that money so they turn to prostitution and crime, which is everywhere; gunshots ring out most evenings. One morning she was late for work and she explained that there was a body on the railway track. She saw the head separated from the torso. She was unfazed by the experience as she said this sort of thing happened regularly. Usually it was suicide.
Reading about Cameron’s little scheme on the DT’s main pages, yesterday, I was drawn to a reference of Hogarth and the ‘Gin Problem’ of the 18th century. I was familiar with his engraving ‘ Gin Lane’ so I googled further and was lead to this page on Wikipedia. If one suspends one’s skepticism about that source for a moment, I think it provides a very interesting insight to the issues of the day. It discusses how the problem arose, what happened next, what the government tried to do and failed and what the consequences were. Interestingly, though, while one might assume from studying ‘Gin Lane’ alone, that Hogarth was anti alcohol consumption, his subsequent engraving, ‘Beer Street’, shows the opposite to be true.
Take a look here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane
One would have thought that the government would be delighted if a portion of the population were to remove itself from the gene pool for any reason. I have never been able to understand why they get so exercised over untimely death when the world is so hideously overpopulated.
It has always been a total mystery to me.
CO #16. Hear hear!
Christina – rest assured that when you eventually take your place as World Dominatrix, I shall be cheering from my waterlogged Aussie shack. 😆
Gold star for crack Bearsy!
As Feeg says, back to the booze cruise for us in Kent.