For Law, Against New Laws

As the News International scandal rumbles on in a way that increasingly resembles an endless car journey (what’s that? Rupert Murdoch is still a cunt? What a ground-breaking story!) we hear, in amidst the faux outrage from rival media outlets and the shameless vengeance of that uber-twat Gordon Brown, occasional calls for new laws and/or public inquiries. And for the life of me I can’t work out why.

It should be clear to everybody now other than the terminally stupid and Rebekah Brooks that something went badly wrong not just within News International, but in the initial police investigation into the phone hacking. And it is hardly controversial to say that hacking into the phone of a missing schoolgirl or the phones of dead soldiers is a bad thing. But does this warrant a new law to prevent it happening again? Does it require some sort of public enquiry in order to prevent a repetition? Of course it doesn’t. Why? Because phone hacking is already illegal. The same goes for blagging. So rather than calling for further regulation and for a public flaying of News International, perhaps we could all call for the existing laws to be enforced. And if the initial police investigation was ineffective in doing that, well, there are laws about perverting the course of justice that could apply to that neutered attempt to look into the misdeeds of the Murdoch empire. There are laws against what the NI journalists did; if they are enforced, then there is no need for further laws.

And this really rather obvious, yet curiously ignored, idea can be applied elsewhere. For example, rather than having ever more imaginative ways to stigmatise drinkers and smokers in the name of protecting the children, perhaps the existing laws – which have been in place for as long as I can remember – could be enforced. It is illegal for children to drink and smoke. Further legislation around this is irrelevant if the existing laws are enforced.

It would be wrong to say that every aspect of British life is regulated through the government, although it increasingly feels that way. But there are a plethora of often repetitious laws on the statute books, yet still our leaders feel the need to add to those laws. Why do this? Well, part of it is the naked desire of the ruling class to be seen to be doing something. It is easier for them to say that they are going to introduce a raft of new laws to deal with a problem than it is for them to say that the existing laws just need to be enforced and the people need to be patient. It is the mindset of “shiny new thing make it all better” – a new law will definitely stop xyz from happening in the future… despite the fact that other laws have not done so. One of the things the people need to do is to call their rulers on what could best be described as their total bullshit when it comes to new laws, but the increasingly bovine population hardly seems capable of that.

Ever since Obama was elected to the White House using slogans consisting of largely meaningless, yet positive, sounding slogans (“Hope”, “Change” etc) it has been the desire of all parties in this country to paint themselves as the party of change. So I’d like to suggest a way in which those parties could actually offer real change. Why don’t you commit to implementing no new laws where existing laws are already in place? Why not commit to making the existing legal system work rather than clogging it up with repetitious and pointless legislation? Yeah, I know that will remove a lot of the busy work that you like to have as legislators, but it would also be an example of leadership. And surely it hasn’t become too utopian to expect our leaders to actually lead?

So let’s try to engage our critical faculties, in as much as they still exist, when it comes to legislative proposals from our MPs. Let’s make sure that they only go off on their legislative adventures if it is absolutely necessary. Let’s reward those who are wise when it comes to the rule of law, and punish those who believe that legislation is about getting a good headline rather than making life better for the people of this country. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a whole host of laws that need to be repealed in order to enhance life in this country, and I would love to see that happen. But before it does, we need to stop the fuckers in Parliament adding to the sum total of legislative bollocks in this country. And as our starting point, suggesting that new restrictions on the press and public inquiries into the alleged misdeeds of News International are fucking pointless when what they did is already illegal.

Budget Day Drinking Game

Simple. Drink a pint of any liquid BEFORE more duty goes on it.

Sent to me via e-mail by the Moai.

Merry Christmas, Everybody

In part to aggravate Jackart, and in part to say "Merry Christmas", here's Slade's Christmas anthem (it's an anthem in that it is overplayed at Christmas). Enjoy.

Rather like the Queen's Christmas Address, this is a pre-prepared announcement - I'm not actually blogging on Christmas Day as I have better things to do; such as binge-eating, binge-drinking and the Doctor Who Christmas Special. So if you're reading this on Christmas Day, I urge you to stop and go do something fun. Because Christmas really shouldn't be about blogs like this one.

Anyway, laters all. Have a grand ol' Christmas Day.

On Miliband Major's Championing of the Pub

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present David Miliband - Bananaman and champion of the pub! Or at least that's what he's vying to be with this press release. Let's break down the "actual words" of Miliband Major as they appear in this communiqué:

“Last orders are being called for good at around 40 pubs a week as they come under pressure from supermarkets selling cheaper beer.

Heh. Well, supermarkets may be part of the problem, but they certainly are the problem in its entirety, but more on this later. What I would point out now is that Miliband is printing something that has been happening for years, if not for the best part of a decade, as if it is breaking news. Pubs have been closing at a rate of knots throughout the Nu Labour years. If Miliband doesn't know this, then he is either highly unobservant or a bit dumb. And neither is ideal in a prospective Prime Minister.

This is not just bad news for those who enjoy a pint at their local – in many villages and towns across Britain pubs are the life and soul of the community.

What a wonderfully quaint view Miliband Major seems to have of British pubs. Sure, some of them are the life and soul of their community - the one in my parent's tiny village could be an example of that. But they are also places where people go to get arseholed or laid (or both) - like many of those in central Nottingham. That's not to say that we shouldn't support both types of pub, mind, since they both make a contribution to the economy. But it does leave me wondering when Miliband Major last actually went to the pub. I suspect he's more used to supping a glass of tax-payer subsidised Sancerre in the Commons bar.

“As we enter the holiday season its important we stand up for British tourism and the importance of pubs to our tourist industry.

Yeah, we should only stand up for British pubs as we are entering the holiday season. We don't have to bother to stand up for them for the rest of the year now, do we? What a wanker.

For too long we have tolerated this decline as the result of inevitable market forces.

This, ladies and gentleman, is what we call bollocks. I have not come across anyone else arguing that the decline in pubs is down to market forces. Rather, I'd argue that the decline in pubs is down to government intervention in that particular market, particularly in the form of the smoking ban. You want to know why pubs are going out of business? Because smokers now find that there habit has been criminalised by the Nu Labour government in their local. You want to help save the pubs, Mr Miliband? Argue for the repeal of the smoking ban. But I reckon Miliband's ersatz support for our pubs is not quite going to go that far...

And finally:

But we can and should stand up for the local pub – and the community links and civic life they sustain. Local pubs are great British institutions – and as Labour leader I would stand up for them.”

Unfortunately, the sole reason why Miliband Major is standing up for the British pub now is because he is desperately trying to distinguish himself from the other non-entities running for Labour leader. He doesn't give a fuck about pubs. If he did, he would have done something about it when he was a senior government minister with some influence over actual practical politics. The fact that he has discovered his "stand" for the great British pub as he is running for election as leader of the opposition speaks volumes about his actual lack of commitment to this cause.

The BBC writes that people are both drinking more than they thought they were, and more than they should.

I would like to remind people that guidelines 'on safe alcohol consumption limits that have shaped health policy in Britain for 20 years were “plucked out of the air".'

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.

Frickin' awesome:

Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests.

And:

For those drinking little - less than a shot of vodka a day for instance - the risk was reduced by 35%. And for those who drank anything from three shots to more than 11 shots each day, the risk worked out an average of 50% less.

I'd write more, but I'm off to get hammered.

RIP Keith Floyd

Whilst I can't say I ever really watched him a lot, but let's be honest, a hard-drinking, eloquent TV Chef filled with a certain zest for life is a hell of a lot better than the fucking dross we have to put up with these days. Yes, Jamie Oliver, I'm talking about you.

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.

The Tories Fighting the Booze

I've often claimed that the Tories will drift towards mindless social conservatism as soon as they win the next election. It seems that they have already started that drift before a single vote is cast. Let's take a look at some of the most recent pronouncements from the Tories - in this case, on booze. 

From David Cameron - a man, lest we forget, who is likely to be Prime Minister this time next year:

"We need to look at the unbelievable availability of very cheap drink, getting three litres of cider for £1.99, at all hours of day and night."

Now I know that Mr Cameron -  whose conception of cheap cider is probably a bottle of Magners in his local wine bar - probably doesn't know this, but any cider that costs £1.99 for three litres is most likely to be liquid filth. Much respect to anyone who can actually drink the stuff; the concept of it makes my stomach turn and body wince. Let's be honest, cider like that is going to appeal to just two types of people. Kids and tramps. 

So how can we stop those two types of people getting hold of the sort of cider that could probably be also used as battery acid? Well, firstly, kids shouldn't be buying it anyway. There are laws to stop that. So let's try enforcing those laws rather than just looking at the problem. Which leaves us with tramps. 

There is a park opposite where I live; a nice park, except when the winos, tramps and dossers have their occasional drink-offs there. They are cider drinkers - I can tell from the discarded bottles of cider that don't even have a brand name on them. They just say "STRONG WHITE CIDER" on the side. Now, my observation is that these people will buy alcohol no matter what restrictions you place on them. You can only allow the tramp juice to be sold at particular times; they'll be waiting in the off-licence for those times, each and every day. And you can raise the price of the alcohol. This will either piss off the tramps - and they are unpleasant enough at the moment; good God knows what they would be like if they have to pay more for their paint-stripper cider - or the tramps will start making their own drinks. And since they seem to be incapable of going to the toilet without soiling themselves in the process, I rather think that making a safe alcoholic beverage is going to be beyond them. They'll end up dying in parks or clogging up A&E - their strangely bloated bellies full of anti-freeze. Raising the price and restricting the sale of alcohol won't stop these people. Arguably, it will make things worse. 

But that's not going to stop the Tories. Because Iain Duncan Smith - the worst Tory leader in living memory - also has a plan to deal with binge drinking:

Iain Duncan Smith proposed a higher price for alcohol and a higher tax that could be used to pay for more treatments to addicts.

So, Mr and Mrs Williams of Vauxhall Drive are going to have to pay more for their bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon at Waitrose so Mr Wino can get better treatment for his alcohol addiction? Yeah, I can see that idea sitting well with Middle England. They won't resent that idea at all. And if we're going to do that, we may as well introduce a sex tax as well. Every time you get your end away, you have to give the government a couple of quid. So they can pay for the treatment of whores with the clap. 

The vast majority of people in this country use alcohol responsibly. They don't go on the rampage, they don't hurt other people with their drinking, and it is their right to choose to consume alcohol. By introducing taxes and higher prices for all, the Tories would be punishing those responsible people. It isn't fair, it isn't right, it isn't moral. 

Besides, there is no need to introduce further curbs on drinking. Just enforce the laws that already exist. As someone who has held a liquor licence, I know that there are restrictions in place to stop kids, drunk people and alcoholics from being served alcohol. By actually enforcing those laws you might make some headway in dealing with those problems; introducing new taxes and rules will simply punish everyone. 

Dealing With Those Who Appear To Be Drunk And Disorderly

The government sometimes (oh, ok, all the time) seems to forget that there are laws in this country to deal with the anti-social behaviour excessive consumption of alcohol can cause. Taxes, advertising restrictions and minimum prices be damned – they won’t make a blind bit of fucking difference to those who are behaving like arses because they have had too much to drink. The laws of the land are quite clear and offer protection to the public against alleged abusive drinkers.

Maybe there are some people in power who don’t understand what the laws are. So, to clarify, a person who appears to be inebriated can be refused any more alcohol. If that person reacts in a way that others find offensive and threatening, the police can be called and then the apparent drunk can be arrested and charged. Those charges can see the person brought to trial for their actions.

As happened in this case.

And if the Labour government really wants proof that the law can and is enforced they should talk to the defendant in this case. After all, she was a member of that government for eight years…

When binge drinking isn't binge drinking...

There’s an epidemic of middle class binge drinking. Apparently:

A comprehensive survey claims that middle aged, professional Britons are more likely to exceed recommended daily levels of alcohol consumption than the working-classes, with twice as many drinking every night of the week.

Which would be far more concerning if they recommended daily levels weren’t, well, made up:

Mr Smith, a former Editor of the British Medical Journal, said that members of the working party were so concerned by growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking that they felt obliged to produce guidelines. “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee,” he said.

Of course, that doesn’t stop our leaders treating these stats as the gospel truth:

Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health Minister, said: "We are only now beginning a sustained programme to inform people about the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption. However, initial tracking from our Units campaign, launched in May last year, shows more people know how much is safe to drink and know how many units are in their drinks."

Except, Dawn, those limits are still made up. So people may be aware of how many units they should drink based on your pointless yet no doubt expensive campaign, but realistically it is of fuck all use to them. Since the limits are “plucked out of the air”, the government may as well have launched a campaign to convince people of the existence of Santa.

However, there are some people who actually admit to the truth about these limts:

James Le Fanu, a family doctor in south London, said it would not be dangerous for a couple to drink slightly more than the recommended allowance, particularly if they only did so once or twice a week.

He said: "They are arbitrary levels and set low so as to catch as large a section of the population as possible and lecture them about their drinking levels. Mortality levels only begin to climb when you're hitting 50 or 60 units a week."

It is just a shame that James Le Fanu is “just” a family doctor, and therefore is likely to be ignored by the powers that be.

So to summarise, we have politicians complaining that middle class drinkers – private citizens with the right to chose how they live their lives – are exceeding made up, arbitrary limits of how much alcohol they can drink. I, for one, am glad that our politicians have a sense of perspective and are focussed on issues like made up alcohol limits rather than less pressing issues like the Iraq War, the economic melt-down and the possible bankruptcy of the UK.

Banning booze... from being by the cheese!

The Drinkers Alliance are doing a survey - go take a look, sign-up etc etc.

What did amuse me, though, was this quote from an e-mail about their survey:

Virtually all of the respondents thought that the Government's idea to make people queue up twice - buying alcohol at a special supermarket checkout - was flawed and our community has overwhelmingly rejected the politicians arguments that wine can't be sold next to cheese!

That's right, the people taking the survey have the good sense to realise that not selling booze next to cheese is not going to make a blind bit of fucking difference to the drinking habits of the nation. The only staggering thing is that the politicians who run this country thought it might. I'd say it makes despair of them, but the truth is, I despaired of them a long time ago.

Still, I'm off to the supermarket now to pick up some final supplies for Christmas. And I'd like the government to rest assured that any alcohol I buy will be a result of me wanting to buy alcohol. Not because it is located next to the cheese. And as a heads up, a special checkout queue wouldn't make do anything other than to piss me off just a little bit more.

How much alcohol can you drink a week?

I've been thinking. And I think these limits on the number of units of alcohol you can drink a week are just plain silly. Far too low. So I have engaged a couple of my brain cells, and come up with a new limit of how much alcohol you can drink a week. This is it:

You should drink no more than 150 units of alcohol a week. Unless it is your birthday or something. In which case you can drink more.

And how do I know this is ok? I made it up myself. If it is OK for some to make this sort of shit up, I don't see why it shouldn't be ok for me.

h/t Mr E.

Bar Darling

A blogging campaign has been picked up by the national media. Mr Eugenides tells the full story of the attempts to have that badger faced bastard, Alistair Darling, barred from the nation's pubs.

I haven't thrown the inconsiderable weight of The Appalling Strangeness behind this campaign. I mean, I think the campaign is worthwhile, but I don't think it goes far enough. I'd like to start a campaign to have Darling, and his evil overlord, torn apart by a pack of wild dogs. But, whilst such a campaign might get some support, the mainstream media probably won't pick up on it. At least not until after the security services have picked up on it, anyway.

Still, nice to see that the media does pay some attention to what happens elsewhere on the internet. And hopefully Darling will find it tough to get a beer. At least, beer that isn't a can of Special Brew from the local Costcutter.

Alcohol Taxes

The Tories are planning to increase taxes. No, no, don't panic - they haven't gone completely insane. Only partially. Because they are going increase the taxes on booze. And to avoid the risk of upsetting too many people, they are only going to increase the taxes on alcopops and super strength drinks.

"A can of Carlsberg Special Brew or Tennents Super would cost 32p more and a three-litre bottle of Diamond White strong cider would be £1.25 more expensive under the plans."

And why?

"The Conservatives say the price rises would target younger drinkers, many who consume alcopops and super-strength beers and ciders to excess, while not hitting "the vast majority of law-abiding, responsible drinkers"."

That's a bit unfair. The taxes will also hit some adults as well. For example tramps. This proposal seems really hard on them as well. I mean, if you were a tramp wondering through life wearing crumpled, stained clothing and trying to live through this horrifically cold winter, Special Brew might be the only thing you have to look forward to. And the only thing that will be keeping you going. And now it is going to cost you an extra 32p. It may not sound like too much to some, but if you're a "gentleman of the road" then you have to make every penny count.

Which means this proposal might have a knock-on impact on the electorate as a whole. Each can of alcoholic poison that a wino needs to obtain will cost more money. This will create more begging. And the tramps will be more desperate. So it might cause more aggressive begging. The upshot of this Tory policy is more begging. This is what happens when you don't think your policies through!

I'm being tongue in cheek, of course. Sort of.

But this policy is going to impact on people other than the younger drinkers, and is an example of a major party increasing taxes (even if they are revenue neutral) when they don't need to. And really, they don't need to, you know. The laws are already in place to stop young people binge drinking. Just enforce the laws that makes drinking illegal if you are under 18. Simple. As. That.

Because if you are over 18 and still drinking Diamond White, then you are twat. And we really shouldn't care about you.

'Tis the Season...

I love Christmas. I dare say some people, given the general misanthropy sometimes seen on this blog, might expect me to be Scrooge like over the Festive period, but nothing could be further from the truth. Christmas is awesome. It is even better these days because there is actually something worth watching on the TV.

Office Christmas parties, however, are different.

Don’t get me wrong, I do still enjoy a decent office Christmas party. If it has been properly considered and properly planned, it can be a good experience. But far too often they descend into mindless drunkenness, and have all the attendant problems of mindless drinking.

I’m not against drinking. In fact, I rather like drinking. A (rather worryingly) large amount of my life has been spent in various stages of inebriation. But that means, come Christmas, I know how much I can drink and still avoid being utterly, if you pardon my French, shitted.

It is those who don’t drink, or who seldom drink, who tend to be the ones who rapidly get to the state I would define as "mindlessly wasted". It is those who end vomiting anywhere other than in the toilet, who end up fighting and falling over, and who end up humiliating themselves. It is those non-drinkers who probably make up most of the passengers on "the vomit comet". It is a simple message, but one people seem to miss – just because you can drink more at Christmas, doesn’t mean you should. After all, the fact that it is Christmas doesn’t suddenly give you hollow legs and a greater tolerance to alcohol.

So to anyone who is "gonna go mental" at Christmas after a year of relative temperance, think about how you will feel the next day. You’ll have a hangover that makes the very worst flu feel like a light cold. And your stomach will want to eat itself – not just because of the sambuca shots, but also as you remembered the crippingly embarrassing things you did in front of your work colleagues the previous evening.

Salvation From Drink!

Whether you want it or not.

We don’t need to the government to dream up new ways to suppress our freedom to make choices and take away our liberty. Oh, no. Non-governmental alliances will do it for them.

Take the Health Alcohol Alliance, who are using some very spurious evidence and logic to try to make our money grabbing Prime Minister shaft us even further.

"The Health Alcohol Alliance says 13 children are admitted to hospital every day as a result of Britain's growing alcohol misuse."

Now, I’m fairly fucking sure that children drinking alcohol is a criminal offence. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but all that needs to happen here is for the existing law to be correctly implemented. No need for more taxes, no need for more rules or regulations. The laws are in place. Let’s use them.

"It wants TV adverts for alcohol banned before 9pm and stronger health warnings to be placed on promotional material."

What is a ban before the watershed going to achieve? Save kids from seeing evil advertisements for booze? Well, that’s a waste of time then, isn’t it? Because, as has already been noted, children can’t drink. It is illegal. You could make every ad in the breaks for kids TV about booze, and it wouldn’t matter. The law is very clear. It is illegal for children to drink.

And what would health warnings on alcohol adverts achieve? For as long as I can remember cigarette ads have had warnings that basically say "If you smoke you are fucked" on them, but it hasn’t made people stop smoking, and it hasn’t stopped people from starting to smoke.

"It calls for the government to adopt a twin strategy of increasing tax and reducing the easy availability of alcohol."

Increasing tax simply means people end up paying more and the government has more money to cunt away on pointless schemes. And what do we mean by reducing the easy availability of alcohol? Putting it on higher shelves in supermarkets? Presenting a series of Krypton Factor style challenges before people can buy a four pack of Stella? Making it a specialist shop purchase, like a wank mag in a porn shop? No matter, no doubt the Alliance will have some sort of idea that will make it terribly inconvenient for anyone who fancies a beer or a bottle of wine after work.

"The Alliance says increasing tax by 10% could cut all alcohol-related deaths by between 10% and 30%."

Or it could make fuck all difference other than making drinkers pay more for their poison. Or it could turn half the population into dancing bears – because we don’t know what the outcome of a 10% tax rise would be. Other than really pissing me off.

However to increase tax based on a projected possible outcome from a biased alliance strikes me as a frankly shitty way to make policy, to be totally honest with you.

"The charity Alcohol Concern said the price of all alcohol in shops has barely changed since the mid-1990s - with some wines and lagers becoming cheaper."

Good, quite frankly. For once consumers ain’t being fucking shafted by prices rises. This should be a cause for celebration, not for mealy mouthed carping from bastards like the Alcohol Concern.

"The number of alcohol-related deaths has more than doubled from 4,144 in 1991 to 8,386 in 2005. There has also been a substantial increase in the number of people suffering serious disease, such as the permanent scarring of the liver known as cirrhosis."

As with all stats, some context would be nice. What constitutes an alcohol related death? Did the classification change in the 14 year period? How has the increase in population affect the figures? Had the ability to detect cirrhosis improved over the period in question?

But anyway. 8,386 deaths in a population of over 60,000,000 doesn’t strike me as a major problem, however awful it might be for those affected. And certainly doesn’t strike me as a valid reason to start punishing the whole population with more taxes.

"The government has recently beefed up its Home Office target for reducing harm from alcohol."

The government reliance on targets rather than action may be a good thing here. But why is the Home Office dealing with harm from alcohol? Surely this should be a health issue? Unless the government sees drinking – something people do in their private lives – as a legal issue. What an interesting Freudian slip. What you do in your private life, even if it is enjoying more than one glass of wine, is not a health concern. The Home Office want to know. And the Home Office will be watching you…

"It has also introduced a cross-departmental Alcohol Strategy."

*Yawns.*

Cross-departmental strategy. Which roughly translates as "we don’t have the first fucking clue about what to do about this so the whole government will talk about it." Hopefully, in this case, inconclusively.

"This includes a public information campaign to promote sensible drinking, an independent review of alcohol pricing and promotion, toughened enforcement of underage sales by retailers and plans to introduce more help for people who want to drink less."

Campaigns, reviews, being tough, plans. Any drinker in this country should be quite happy that our government seems quite incapable of doing anything other than talking about possibly doing something in the future.

Except…

The Health Alcohol Alliance are calling for more government taxation. And you don’t need to encourage the shower of cunts who run this country to tax more. They do so just as easily as they breathe.

Furthermore, if people chose to drink, then fuck it. It is their choice. They are adults (and I can’t stress enough – it is illegal for kids to drink). They make a choice. It is a patronising, insulting and pointlessly paternalistic attitude from the Health Alcohol Alliance that allows them to think that they know best – better than you – about how you should live your life. It wouldn’t surprise me if the government jumps at the chance to implement some of what the Alliance wants, because their mindsets seem to be equally arrogant.

I do wish the arrogant shitheads who make up the Health Alcohol Alliance would go and drown themselves. Preferably in a vat of alcohol.

The Glorious Day Comes - a reminder

A quick reminder - the Nameless One and I look forward to raising a glass with anyone who wants to celebrate Tony's exit from Number Ten at St Stephens Tavern in Westminster tonight. 7pm onwards!

Some light reading to prepare.

"Fight against these insulting, ugly and otiose labels."

I haven't commented on the government's plans to introduce labels to booze in this country. Needless to say I think it is totally fucking stupid. Because labels like "Smoking Kills" on cigarette packets have had such an impact on smoking in this country.

But I would advise having a look at Boris Johnson's take on this policy - as witty, verbose and outraged as ever.