The Honeymoon Is Over

Well, it had to happen. I've been in the unprecedented position of having gone a week and a half without the government of the day having announced a half-baked policy calculated to infuriate a freedom-loving liberal. Well, they've now fucked it big time, with the announcement that they're (apparently) going to ban the sale of alcohol at less than cost price. This, frankly, is a policy so illiberal, unworkable, and frankly so fucking stupid that it's difficult to decide where to begin.

But hey ho, needs must. Let's start with the issue of competition. I was under the impression that a guiding principle of a liberal free market economy was that competition was important- nay imperative. That's why we have the Competition Commission. But apparently there are limits. It's fine for cutthroat competitors to, say, fight to see who can give the biggest mortgage to sub-prime borrowers. Or, in the name of competitiveness, for companies to put British workers out of a job in favour of call centres in Bangalore, or manufacturing plants in China. But woe betide anyone who competes to allow struggling British proles to get off their face on the cheap.

Tesco came out in favour today. Well there's a massive fucking surprise with bells on. A company that already (apparently) takes in one pound in every eight spent in UK retailers is in favour of no longer having to compete on price on a major area of its business. Apparently:

"A survey of Tesco's customers found nearly 70 per cent thought excessive drinking was one of the most serious issues facing the country, while 61 per cent were concerned about anti-social behaviour as a result of drinking."

Maybe so. And if you think that's why they're supporting this measure, you're a stupid, gullible cunt. And if you think there actually is an workable mechanism whereby the government can demand to know the cost price of the alcohol sold to every retailer in this country, and enforce a 'not below cost price law', without properly fucking up any pretence of competition, then you're doubly so.

Let's move on to the issue of who this measure is actually going to affect. Much has been made of the fact that David Cameron was a member of the Bullingdon Club when he was a student at Oxford. I personally have never held it against him, but it's as well to keep in mind the obvious purpose of the club- for posh kids to get roaringly drunk, and frequently behave obnoxiously. From the Wiki article:

"I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. [...] A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."

So far, so par for the course for the young people of today- except the paying in cash part. I think it's fair to say that a minimum price for alcohol is not going to dissuade a budding Bullingdon yob from having a good time, given that the increase in his booze bill is likely to be insignificant beside the bill for trashing a restaurant. This measure is quite transparently an attack on the poorest in society, and carries the implicit assumption that they are the most likely to misbehave if they are allowed to drink to excess. Even if you believe that that is true, which I emphatically don't, you're still a fucking arsehole if you think you have a right to price the lowest paid (and, presumably, unemployed) out of drinking on the basis that they can't handle it and you can.

Is booze culture a problem in this country? Debatably. I daresay that the police spend a considerable amount of time policing high streets and night spots on Friday and Saturday nights- but so what? That's the fucking job. And, to take the unfashionable option of looking at cold hard statistics for a minute, instead of media hysteria and hypocrisy, the number of people who get killed in instances of drunken town-centre yobbery must surely pale into insignificance beside the number of people killed in drink drive incidents- 460 in 2007. Now yes, I guess there are a few poor people driving drunk in uninsured old bangers, but in the main the cost of running a car in this country is now prohibitive for the unemployed and people on the minimum wage, and so I'd wager that the significant majority of those deaths were caused by people who can afford an increase in the basic price of booze.

So don't be a wanker- oppose this stupid, nanny-statist, illeberal bollocks.

And a quick edit for the sake of full disclosure: as someone lucky enough to make the median wage in London (despite a fondness for the sauce) I can just about afford to run a shitty old diesel car, so I buy all my booze in France courtesy of P&O's £19 day trips. So this measure won't fuck me at all.