Any study that asks patients how much they drink or how much they spend has to be unreliable because:
A) if you drink enough to get cirrhosis how could you possibly remember, especially if you have alcohol caused Korsakof’s syndrome where you can produce plausible information whenever asked but which varies minute to minute because you have no memory.
B) you have been lying for years to family, friends and yourself about your booze habit which is why you’re in hospital with a terminally damaged liver
C) you have hepatic encephalopathy ie your higher faculties don’t work well because your liver can no longer maintain normal chemistry.
But someone still got paid for asking.
The narrative is more important than the facts.
All Cretans are liars.
bloke (not) in spain
Minimum alcohol pricing?
Oh, please, please bring it on.
After much research, whilst it’s clear there’s a great deal of loot to be won clandestinely distilling spirit for the cheap alcohol market, the clever money would come from supplying the equipment to do so. Hence a design for a still, 95% of the parts can be sourced from readily available components & the remaining 5%, simply fabricated as a dual use item – alternate use entirely legitimate.
We’re in the plumbing business! We could have every lock up & garden shed in the country churning out 50%+ proof hooch at less than £5/litre.
Oh please, please!
Ljh
D) lying to annoying prodnoses is one of life’s few remaining pleasures when your liver has gone terminal.
Jim
Why is it that those in favour of the State taking more and more control of our lives have such inconsistent attitudes to the consequences of their actions? On the one hand we have the RMs of this life claiming that higher taxes (ie reduced income) will only result in people working harder in order to maintain their income levels (ie denying that the reduction in income will result in less activity) while the bansturbators here are claiming that increased alcohol prices (which is effectively the same thing as reduced income) will result in less activity (ie less alcohol purchased, and people won’t try to maintain alcohol expenditure by other cuts to spending).
Rob
If we made hard drugs illegal, everyone would stop using them.
In the world of a fanatic, every problem has a simple solution.
The Meissen Bison
Why on earth you would try to raise prices and then insist that the extra margin stays with the manufacturer or retailer is very hard to fathom
Not so hard to fathom if the objective is to spoil people’s fun. The means matter little – don’t be pernickety about the detail – if the aim is courageous.
Iromman
Jim
Because he and they are cunts.
Does that answer your question?
“We’re in the plumbing business! We could have every lock up & garden shed in the country churning out 50%+ proof hooch at less than £5/litre. Oh please, please!”
And that’s precisely why you keep the tax on booze down to nothing more than what it costs to treat and arrest violent pissheads. The last thing we want is everyone running a still and filling up the burns unit. Or having to taste someone’s godawful homebrew.
It’s legal in France to distill alchol but even out in the rural areas around Cognac, most people don’t bother. They pick their grapes and a bloke with a mobile still comes round and does it for them.
The Meissen Bison
The Stigler It’s legal in France to distil alcohol but even out in the rural areas around Cognac, most people don’t bother
Legal, yes, but extremely controlled under the watchful eye of the state. Le part des anges is the quantity that the excise man allows you poetically to lose but woe betide you if your angels take more than their state-allotted share!
bloke (not) in spain
@TMB
I’ve a pal in Tarn et Garonne inherited the family distilling license. The licensed still’s in the atelier next his house. The other still’s …. The bureaucrat heads off into darkest Occitania on a quest for that one’s a very brave man.
Jonathan
“We could have every lock up & garden shed in the country churning out 50%+ proof hooch at less than £5/litre.”
And that’s exactly what happens in Scandinavia, where everyone makes their own Moonshine.
Bloke with a Boat
FYP
D) lying to annoying prodnoses is one of life’s few remaining pleasures when your liver has gone terminal.
Bloke in Costa Rica
The cost of the drug-of-choice to an addict is one of the most perfectly inelastic things it is possible to imagine. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this is purely intended as a punitive measure by the neo-Puritans that Ian B is always telling us about.
DocBud
As Professor Steve Kisely observed when presenting a report into Australia’s alcopops tax which has failed to curb teenage binge drinking (about half a bottle of wine here in Aus):
If teenagers are looking for a good time and find their favourite tipple of alcopops has doubled in price, they’re not going to go home and have a hot mug of chocolate
Any study that asks patients how much they drink or how much they spend has to be unreliable because:
A) if you drink enough to get cirrhosis how could you possibly remember, especially if you have alcohol caused Korsakof’s syndrome where you can produce plausible information whenever asked but which varies minute to minute because you have no memory.
B) you have been lying for years to family, friends and yourself about your booze habit which is why you’re in hospital with a terminally damaged liver
C) you have hepatic encephalopathy ie your higher faculties don’t work well because your liver can no longer maintain normal chemistry.
But someone still got paid for asking.
The narrative is more important than the facts.
All Cretans are liars.
Minimum alcohol pricing?
Oh, please, please bring it on.
After much research, whilst it’s clear there’s a great deal of loot to be won clandestinely distilling spirit for the cheap alcohol market, the clever money would come from supplying the equipment to do so. Hence a design for a still, 95% of the parts can be sourced from readily available components & the remaining 5%, simply fabricated as a dual use item – alternate use entirely legitimate.
We’re in the plumbing business! We could have every lock up & garden shed in the country churning out 50%+ proof hooch at less than £5/litre.
Oh please, please!
D) lying to annoying prodnoses is one of life’s few remaining pleasures when your liver has gone terminal.
Why is it that those in favour of the State taking more and more control of our lives have such inconsistent attitudes to the consequences of their actions? On the one hand we have the RMs of this life claiming that higher taxes (ie reduced income) will only result in people working harder in order to maintain their income levels (ie denying that the reduction in income will result in less activity) while the bansturbators here are claiming that increased alcohol prices (which is effectively the same thing as reduced income) will result in less activity (ie less alcohol purchased, and people won’t try to maintain alcohol expenditure by other cuts to spending).
If we made hard drugs illegal, everyone would stop using them.
In the world of a fanatic, every problem has a simple solution.
Why on earth you would try to raise prices and then insist that the extra margin stays with the manufacturer or retailer is very hard to fathom
Not so hard to fathom if the objective is to spoil people’s fun. The means matter little – don’t be pernickety about the detail – if the aim is courageous.
Jim
Because he and they are cunts.
Does that answer your question?
bnis,
“We’re in the plumbing business! We could have every lock up & garden shed in the country churning out 50%+ proof hooch at less than £5/litre. Oh please, please!”
And that’s precisely why you keep the tax on booze down to nothing more than what it costs to treat and arrest violent pissheads. The last thing we want is everyone running a still and filling up the burns unit. Or having to taste someone’s godawful homebrew.
It’s legal in France to distill alchol but even out in the rural areas around Cognac, most people don’t bother. They pick their grapes and a bloke with a mobile still comes round and does it for them.
The Stigler It’s legal in France to distil alcohol but even out in the rural areas around Cognac, most people don’t bother
Legal, yes, but extremely controlled under the watchful eye of the state. Le part des anges is the quantity that the excise man allows you poetically to lose but woe betide you if your angels take more than their state-allotted share!
@TMB
I’ve a pal in Tarn et Garonne inherited the family distilling license. The licensed still’s in the atelier next his house. The other still’s …. The bureaucrat heads off into darkest Occitania on a quest for that one’s a very brave man.
“We could have every lock up & garden shed in the country churning out 50%+ proof hooch at less than £5/litre.”
And that’s exactly what happens in Scandinavia, where everyone makes their own Moonshine.
FYP
D) lying to annoying prodnoses is one of life’s few remaining pleasures
when your liver has gone terminal.The cost of the drug-of-choice to an addict is one of the most perfectly inelastic things it is possible to imagine. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this is purely intended as a punitive measure by the neo-Puritans that Ian B is always telling us about.
As Professor Steve Kisely observed when presenting a report into Australia’s alcopops tax which has failed to curb teenage binge drinking (about half a bottle of wine here in Aus):
If teenagers are looking for a good time and find their favourite tipple of alcopops has doubled in price, they’re not going to go home and have a hot mug of chocolate