Theresa May has announced that there will be minimum pricing for alcohol. Booze duty wasn't a big feature of the Coalition's budget this week so this is a vignette from the Home Secretary which, if nothing else, will divert headlines away from the hyperbole over Osborne "stealing money from pensioners" to give to his rich buddies. The focus of the proposed legislation appears to be upon that section of society that was once described as 'feral youth'. Apparently, what happens is this:
| (In)Decorous Ladies Out On The Town |
Boys and girls aged between twelve and twenty-ish, mostly NEETs from sink estates of course, cannot afford to pay for alcoholic drinks in clubs and pubs. However, they like to go to pubs and clubs to socialise; i.e. argue, cry, show off, swear, fight, shag, cry again, vomit, piss themselves (or all over buidlings), collapse, injure themselves and others, abuse passers-by and cabbies, and then get arrested. In order to achieve all of these laudable ambitions in one nightly session, they need to be completely shit-faced. This state is achieved by drinking alcohol somewhere other than a pub or club. Thanks to the drinks industry being very efficient and existing in an extremely competitive market, shit-facedness can be reached quickly and cheaply these days.
A two-litre bottle of "white" cider, with an alcohol content of around 7.5% can cost as little as £4 from supermarkets. There are 15 units of alcohol in the bottle. Compare that to a 330ml bottle of Stella (containing 1.5 units), which is available for purchase over the bar in your local club for anything upwards of £3 and the economics of getting pissed before going out start to make a lot of sense, as opposed to the actuality of the venture. Ten bottles of Stella will therefore cost £30 for the same alcohol hit as a £4 bottle of White Lightning. Not only that, but by necking the cider quickly at home with your mates, you can all get shit-faced much more quickly and at the same rate as one another. This provides a level playing field with all the other fighting, shagging, vomiting youths that have been through the same process at their homes. Brilliant!
| About as far from synthetic, Apple-Free Cider as you can get... ...Those were the days, eh? |
If May's proposal comes in at, say 40p per unit, then the drinkers that just buy the Stella at the club will be unaffected. The others, the White Lightning consumers, are in for a terrible shock. Instead of the club prices being over seven times that of the supermarket, the 40p per unit will reduce this to only five times!! (15 units @ 40p = £6). The poor ferals will only be able to get ten units of alcohol for their £4 but, if consumed within the hour, shit-facedness will be acheived anyway. The societal benefit will perhaps be ten per cent less fighting and a similar reduction in the vomit and piss distribution as the subset of drinkers that are already too hardened to booze might not quite get to the totally wrecked state to which they were aspiring.
There must be better legislation than the Home Secretary's frankly timid response on alcohol pricing. Unfortunately, the justice system isn't really in a position to help, except with dealing with crimes that are fuelled by alcohol, which itself remains a legal consumable. Besides, the prisons are full and and community service doesn't work and ASBOs remain a 'badge of honour' in some communities, along with the fact that our current Justice Secretary isn't exactly a role-model for sobriety. Nope, in Dave's Britain, it's actually OK to get off your skull on cheap booze.
But This Isn't The Worst Of It!!! Oh! No!
Town centres have become 'no-go areas' for decent, law-abiding folk and their families as a result of the pissed-up, fighting, vomiting yobs' behaviour and this has led, inexoribly, to the middle classes - Oh Yes! Tory voters among them! - to take to drinking at home! Soon, these booze-addled bank managers, accountants and estate agents will be so soused that they may even forget to LOVE DAVE [TM] and not even vote next time around.
| Home-Drinking Quite Clearly Leads to Lewd, Naked, Behaviour Among the Middle Classes |
As the poor, sink-estated scumbags descend into the cheap alcohol hell that their fecklessness deserves, a pattern is emerging among the better off of "serious alcohol abuse" - behind closed doors! A lovely bottle of Chateauneuf Du Pape will set you back £12.50 at Mr Tesco's shop and contains between six and ten units of alcohol depending on which government department statistic you wish to believe (don't get me started...). Let's say eight units then, just for argument's sake. To get to the White Lightning state will cost about £24 then, significantly less than than the club Stella route. A Pavillion Rouge Chateau Margaux is £125 so...oh, do the maths yourself. However, this comparison should be approached on the basis of affordability through disposable income. Even after Osborne has robbed the 'squeezed middle' of child benefit and made them pay almost £1.50 a litre to fill up a Chelsea Tractor, your average professional will have several hundred pounds to fritter away on booze at home compared to a feral scumbag who will have only a few quid after having spent their benefits on crack a couple of hours after cashing the giro. So as a percentage of disposable cash, the White Lightning and Chateauneuf are probably on comparable ratios.
| What filthy, disgusting secrets are hidden in these? Booze? |
For once, the scumbags and the middle classes have something in common. They will all die horribly from diseased livers very soon. Recent statistics have suggested that deaths from liver disease have risen "...by 25% in less than a decade..." This is a very unhelpful stat. Less than a decade could be a few weeks, but is likely to be a few years. Also, the cause of the liver disease is assumed to be booze, seeing as this is the common understanding due to famous cases such as George Best's, but it's just as likely to be hepatitis or obesity. Nonethless, it cannot be denied that drinking too much hooch can't be good for your liver and there is a worrying trend (upwards) in the development of liver disease in the twenty to thirty age bracket that can probably be associated with binge drinking. However, the 25% increase was from just over nine thousand to eleven and a half thousand. To put that into a finer perspective, in the North East of England, liver disease accounts for 22 deaths per 100,000 population - so, .022%, then or, if one were to take the population of say, Morpeth, the lovely county town of Northumberland, then we can expect no more than three people a year to die from liver disease and, despite Morpeth being as lovely as it is, the dead are more likley to be scumbag scroungers from the shittier bits of the town. Unfair assumption? Not really, as the statistics are tending to back up this politically-incorrect generalisation.
| Good and Bad Livers - ugh! |
Cameron is no Stalin (although give him time). Dave doesn't want us all to be off our heads on cheap vodka just so that we don't rise up and revolt and besides, we rarely have an excess from the potato harvest like they did in the good old USSR. Indeed, we'll be lucky to have any tatties this year if it doesn't rain soon. So the coalition will have to police this home-binge issue. This could be a gift for the new, elected police commissioners we are about to get. They could, where appropriate, set up home-drinking detective squads armed with alco-meters (and maybe guns). Anyone suspected of home binge-drinking can be subjected to evening-raids and alco-meter testing. And think how pleasant this will be for the police! OK, some of them will still have to enter the sink estates as normal, but a lot of policing will be done in the 'burbs and on 'executive' residential developments, with the added bonuses of a decent cup of coffee after the violence-free raid and nice sit down on a posh settee.
Punishment for domestic bingeing has to be Mikadoesque so that it 'fits the crime'. This can only apply to the middle classes though, as it has proved largely pointless and very costly to attempt to punish the feckless poor for minor offences. The binge-drinkers of the 'squeezed middle' will face a fair tariff of sanctions designed to discourage their behaviour...
Severe Bingeing (In excess of 100 alco-units a week): Removeal from NHS access for one year and a total ban from using supermarkets / on-line shopping for six months. Weekly test for alcohol-freedom for two months. ASBO - twelve months; reported in local press.
Moderate Bingeing (60-100 alco-units a week): Banned from on-line shopping for one year and weekly tests for alcohol-freedom for two months. ASBO - six months; reported in local press
Borderline Bingeing: (40-60 alco-units a week): ASBO - six months; reported in local press.
This will make sure that the middle classes see the error of their ways and thus return Britain to the accepted equilibrium of the better-off living longer than the poor.
So that's OK then....
So that's OK then....
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