Alcohol Price Control

Well, that didn't take long, did it? The Con-Dems have only be on power for a couple of weeks, and already they've happened upon the dubious charms of bansturbation:

The UK's coalition government has pledged to ban the sale of alcohol below cost price in an effort to cut binge drinking in England and Wales.

The plan is likely to ban retailers from running loss leader promotions on lager, wine and alcopops.

Just for old time's sake, let's rehearse the reasons why this policy is both wrong and pointless. It won't stop binge drinking - that will continue, but people will just have to spend a little more on getting arseholed. It is an impingement on the freedom of business during a feeble recovery from a deep recession. Laws already exist that allow for the refusal to sell/serve alcohol to those who are drunk, and laws already exist that can deal with the anti-social behavior of those who are wasted. We should enforce those laws, rather than creating a new, illiberal rule to punish everyone in society who might want to buy alcohol at a cheap price. I don't think there is anything liberal, democratic or even particularly conservative about this policy - other than the fact that the Con-Dem coalition has jumped on it with unseemly haste.

And it is that unseemly that bothers me. This is blatantly the sort of policy designed to make the tabloids happy. It is Daily Mail friendly politics - the sort of thing that Nu Labour would propose when there was a dip in their approval ratings on when they wanted to get a decent write-up from the right-wing press. It is, in short, the sort of desperate policy that a government should only consider as a short-term way of getting a positive headline. It's the sort of thing that governments normally only consider when their popularity is on the wane.

So it is very worrying that the Con-Dem's have chosen to do this so early. I'd far rather they did what was absolute essential - the rolling back of the intrusive and bloated British state after 13 years of profligate Labour misrule - rather than chasing good press from largely bad newspapers. Get a grip, ladies and gents - you are in government to replace Nu Labour, not to adopt and ape their idiotic PR-obsessed policies.