From the BBC:

Other bills put before the (Scottish) parliament include a minimum pricing strategy aimed at stopping high-strength alcohol being sold for "pocket money prices", without affecting premium products like Scotch whisky.

On face value, this seems to be a clear bid by the SNP for the votes of the middle classes. Maybe it will be a banner in their next election campaign: For The Posh Drinkers, Against The Winos In The Park. Which, I suppose, would be sound politics. After all, the middle class imbibers of Scotch whisky are far more likely to vote SNP than the tramp contingent who are reliant for happiness on cans of Spesh. Not least because those tramps are highly unlikely to vote at all.

Yet the key part of this proposal appears to be in the phrase "pocket money prices". The minimum pricing strategy is "clearly" aimed at those who would spend their pocket money on booze. Kids. Now - and by all means correct me if I am wrong - I'm fairly sure that there are laws, even in Scotland, to stop kids from buying booze. So surely the price of booze would be irrelevant if that law was enforced. After all, kids are legally banned from buying the stuff. Still, why enforce one law when you can weigh down the statute book with another one?

Besides, there is something else at play here. Because this sort of law affects everyone who might buy booze, rather than just kids. If you go into a supermarket or a pub in Scotland if this policy is passed, then you know there will be a minimum amount you have to spend if you want to have a drink with an alcoholic content. On one level, this is typical of the sort of policy pursued by ineffectual teachers - the group punishment, dolled out to all because they cannot control the few. But it is the underlying assumption that is so worrying. Here, we have a government making value judgments about what is good for its citizens. And also what is bad. Booze, it appears, falls resolutely in the latter camp.

It isn't - despite the rhetoric - about protecting kids. Likewise, even if the initial policy doesn't hit the consumer of more premium booze brands, you get bet your bottom dollar that it is a sliding scale towards slapping all drinkers square in the face. Once you've created a law to restrict the sale of drink in one way, you have the precedent to easily apply similar laws to affect it in other ways. And whilst the actions of the Scottish government do not directly affect England, you can be sure that the puritanical prude in charge of this country would have no issue whatsoever with attacking drinkers. Just as his government has had no issue with attacking other groups whose actions it does not approve of.

In an interesting and well-worth reading article at the Kitchen, the Filthy Smoker concludes that:

This is not a coincidence, this is a co-ordinated effort which, I suspect, will come to a head when MPs return to Parliament in October. At every turn there is Don Shenker, Ian bastard Gilmore and all the rest of the tax-it, ban-it, cover-it-up brigade. There is definitely something afoot.

Amen. This proposal from the Scottish Government is yet another in a long line of ongoing attacks in the United Kingdom on those who drink. And I dread to think what the dreadful Brown administration has planned for us next.