Since the policy was introduced, the number of alcohol-specific deaths in Scotland has risen by around 10 per cent.
The SNP is claiming that this proves that minimum unit pricing works therefore.
Since the policy was introduced, the number of alcohol-specific deaths in Scotland has risen by around 10 per cent.
The SNP is claiming that this proves that minimum unit pricing works therefore.
The results confirm my expectations but that’s still no reason to hold back on pouring some scorn on the expression “alcohol-specific deaths”. Have they got a PCR test for those, then? What do they demand of the death certificate if a death is to be so classified?
Yes, just develop a “model” of what would have happened without said policy and compare. Simples. Oh, and on no account involve real comparisons in any of this.
(See also: Global Warming, Economic effects of Brexit, etc.)
Well of course, because they are using The Science™ method of claiming that in the absence of minimum pricing the rise would have been even worse. If you’ve swallowed that argument for covid vaccines, why cavil about alcohol minimum pricing?
I can only quote from a recent conversation.
I think we both know what goes wrong with economic planning, Jim. The presumption that people are economically rational.
It’s not even hard to work out what’s happened.
Drunks wish to get drunk.
Raise the price of alcohol.
Drunks will economise on those things keep them alive.
Alcohol deaths are the fake “because”.
Our technocratic twatocracy no longer justifies its existence on the basis of the will of the people (because lol), instead they conjure a seemingly endless series of hobgoblins and phantasms like a magician pulling a knotted scarf from his sleeve and claim to be “solving” them while making everything worse.
Net Zero is objectively more stupid and insane than Enver Hoxha’s decision to spend much of his country’s meagre wealth on hundreds of thousands of useless concrete bunkers. But nobody’s listening. We’re third class passengers aboard the RMS Titanic, and an Indian midget has seized the wheel and is heading at full speed for the nearest iceberg while spouting buzzword bullshit bingo and grinning like a lunatic.
Eh… Help?
“Eh… Help?”
Don’t worry, Capt Starmer is here to take over! Whats the new instructions Capt? Go even faster and make sure we aim right for the middle of the iceberg? Aye Aye Capt!
Yeah, dearieme. It’d be interesting to know what other things those dead drunks had in their systems. There’s all sorts of things* people can put down them as a cheap alternative to alcohol. But you would really not want to be using them in conjunction with alcohol.
*People have this idea that illegal/quasi-illegal drugs are expensive. They aren’t necessarily. After all, they’re sold in a market like anything else but the don’t get the f**k taxed out of them. If you’re going out on the razzle, it’s far cheaper to get high on coke than paying bar prices. And coke’s at the champagne end of illegal substances. There’s stuff could do the job for a fiver.
I think those hobgoblins belong to H L Mencken.
It’d be interesting to know what other things those dead drunks had in their systems.
I’m sure many of them were mixing their tipples even before minimum alcohol pricing.
And, just as the UK is full of smuggled ciggies, I am sure some enterprising criminals are importing cheap nasty vodka to Scotland.
That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, MC.
Drunks are inherently lazy. The offy’s just round the corner. Put the price of being drunk out of reach at the offy, they walk across town, buy a wrap of smack. Then buy a couple of tinnies on the way back & get to smoking it. Whoops!
Suffocation on your own vomit (Or your girlfiend’s for that matter. They’re not particular)
TMB – we all owe a great deal to Henry Louis, imo. Chesterton also.
Jim – I can picture Jeremy Hunt, grabbing a bearded Afghan and barrelling his way, smirkingly, towards the lifeboats:
“I have a child!”
Jim,
I have heard it claimed that if they had actually hit the iceberg nose-on, the Titantic may have survived, and the glancing blow was actually more damaging because it ripped open more ‘watertight’ (they weren’t) compartments than would have occurred if the nose had been smashed in by a direct hit.
On the grounds that most if not all politicians are incompetent and fail to achieve what they are trying to do, letting capt Starmer do his best to wreck the country by steering it directly for the ice berg may actually be a sensible option (unless, of course, you are standing right on the pointy bit on the front).
Well we already know the answer to this. Some enterprising Poles are running blackmarket stills (some are huge operations) producing knock-off vodka which goes into the small off-license chains. So not even imported, but actually locally distilled.
But as the unCivil Serpents will always insist, “People don’t take behavioural responses to higher taxes”.
(unless, of course, you are standing right on the pointy bit on the front).
So Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio are the only ones to die.
I can live with that.
“Alcohol related death”
Crushed by falling shelves as they try to climb to get to the cheap bottles at the top.
“On the grounds that most if not all politicians are incompetent and fail to achieve what they are trying to do, letting capt Starmer do his best to wreck the country by steering it directly for the ice berg may actually be a sensible option (unless, of course, you are standing right on the pointy bit on the front).”
Well we’re going to find out over the next few years aren’t we? I was kind of hoping that the utter collapse of the state apparatus since covid might actually mean that Capt Starmer is ringing his engine changes down to an engine room thats ‘working from home’ and thus nothing much happens. On the other hand I suspect the Civil Service will be considerably more conscientious in implementing Labour’s policies than Tory ones, so plenty of damage will get done quite quickly.
Some enterprising Poles are running blackmarket stills (some are huge operations) producing knock-off vodka which goes into the small off-license chains.
I did some research on this when I was in the UK. (Always up for a bit of entrepreneurship) There’s a Swedish* company will sell you all the kit you need. mail order. Distillery, yeasts, flavourings, the works. Entry level’s around £300. (I was actually considering selling the kits)
*Look at the prices, regulations around alcohol in Sweden for the answer to your question.
I even have books on the subject somewhere if anyone wants the download.
Crushed by falling shelves as they try to climb to get to the cheap bottles at the top.
That’s the aged malts. The cheap ones are eminently shopliftable. Stealing those is their own punishment.
In the context of this thread, this might amuse….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ChimGhYOI`
Is it legal to own a still in the UK? In Denmark, mere possession is a criminal offence.
Yes, because a still has legal uses.
Want to start distilling your own whiskey and flogging it, then the Customs and Excise will be paying a visit.
@BiS entirely possible from Sweden…
They *sell* a distillery, they *ship* basic lab equipment and home-brew paraphernalia.
Neither of the latter runs afoul of swedish law.
And honestly.. small “commercial” level setups (about 150 liters 70+% ethanol/batch, 100-ish liters of 95% if you know how to fraction distill.) should set you back no more than about €50-100. You can get most of it from thrift shops, if not for free, with some DIY store thrown in..
If you know what you’re doing of course, which the buyers of those kits rarely ever do…
The still at school 60 years ago was a self-contained thing run off electricity and the water supply, for generating distilled water. It had a Customs & Excise seal in it and I gather they checked it occasionally. Of course the chemy lab had plenty of glassware to knock up a still on demand so what was the point?
If I’ve understood it right ‘alcohol-related deaths’ are estimated using a guesstimate of the % of certain types of deaths that are likely due to alcohol.
So in the UK around half of people who drown are drunk, so dying by drowning scores 0.5 alcohol related deaths.
A temperance cruise on Loch Ness could flip and 100 tee-totallers die by drowning and we add 50 to the alcohol related death tally.
Liver disease has a very high rating, over 0.7 iirc. The UK could literally quadruple its alcohol consumption, liver deaths rise, but we only attribute 0.7 of the increased deaths as alcohol related deaths.
Every 10 years I think, the alcohol attribution scores are recalibrated.
And this increase in Scotland being lower than the increase in England is their best datum the policy was successful. And it wasn’t even meant to achieve that – it was about overall health outcomes.
We would be doomed if we couldn’t vote them out.
@Bongo The cynic in me feels that any inhabitant of Scotland who doesn’t die of “alcohol-related causes” isn’t , in fact, a true Scotsman. 😉
A Bulgarian mate of mine used to bring back home-distilled rakia. Every village has one or two chaps with a still, apparently. The risk of explosions is greater than the risk of getting meths in the hooch, he said.
Bearing in mind that Aldi will sell you a bottle of single malt for £17.49, a bottle of red for £3.99 and ten bottles of French lager for £3.59, it’s probably not necessary to convert the shed yet.
Stills all over the place around here. The local firewater is “medronho” which is from the strawberry tree (nowt to do with strawberries). Vile stuff….
Yes, because a still has legal uses.
Want to start distilling your own whiskey and flogging it, then the Customs and Excise will be paying a visit.
(Shrug.) Half the rolling tobacco in London, now, is smuggled. I hardly bought a legitimate tobacco product for 20 years. Just the odd pack from a pub machine if I ran out. Charlie’s illegal & the authorities expend billions on interdicting its import. if you’re a user, it’s about as hard to obtain as a packet of fags.
Laws need the compliance of the public to enforce. They’ve virtually lost it on smuggled tobacco & charlie. Same would happen with home brew. Be like the little Dutch boy & his digit. And the footsoldiers of the authorities aren’t always on the same side. Why would they be? They are also consumers.
Stills all over the place around here.
Guy I know in SW France’s family has the license for producing the local hooch. Has the official still, gets inspected, in the atelier next to the house. I believe the license is for 200 litres per annum. The big stills are up in the barn. Officialdom is careful to stay away from them. Possibly because they value their safety.
It is an acquired taste. I quite like it. But I drink my pastis a la Marseilles. Ice no water.
There you go: https://lifeonlalune.com/2011/01/15/making-eau-de-vie-de-prune-an-ancient-tradition/
Not the same mec but the same area. Montauban, Tarn et Garonne. Your local stills similar?
Tractor Gent. Decades ago I used to work in a specialised photographic lab that did composite images using large format (10″x8″ and up) transparency film. We had a still for producing distilled water as well for mixing the photographic chemicals (having impurities in the water can be costly in terms of chemicals and photographic materials) and my guv’nor told me that we had to have a Customs inspection of it every now and again. However back then the number of still’s in operation were probably quite small. Advances in technology and therefore lowered cost means that today there are probably a lot more stills around because they are more affordable and I would suspect that many of them are not registered with HMRC. There are probably more small scale stills running now that it’s possible that HMRC may not have enough staff to inspect or regulate them or any idea whose got them. It’s likely that only when people commercialise or attempt to commercialise their distilled product that the HMRC start to take an interest. As others have said stills are difficult to control as there are so many legitimate uses for them in industry and commerce apart from brewing booze.
“100 tee-totallers die by drowning” or by being eaten by Nessie.
‘Cause of death – consumption’.
Zivania here – made from grape mush after wine making…
The local stuff (as opposed to official stuff you can buy in supermarkets) smells and tastes like nail varnish remover.
Yeah, but like most things, it’s cultivating the palate. I never did with whisky. I can just about tolerate bourbon & possibly rye. I don’t even like being in the same room as the Jockish shit. And that’s all that is. Hooch with airs & graces. I quite like the cognac hooch though.
UK carries on as it’s going, you’ll end up with people enthusing over aged in the wood Dagenham.
Sorta like Marc then – worse the more pips they keep in it.
Looks alarmingly modern for here. Bits of random copper tubing more usually….
Every lab in the UK has at least one water still. There must be tens of thousands them.
I have never encountered or heard of a customs inspection of them. Admittedly, this is a long, long time ago. It sounds like a nice little pointless make-work earner though, so I will be totally unsurprised if the government isn’t keeping thousands of bureaucrats busy with it.
@Steve, the Indian Midget? Blimey, I thought he was Norman Wisdom reincarnated with a suntan!
Why is it a bad thing if Scots pickle themselves to death? Do they use up less gas at the Crem? Pity we can’t encourage the Sheep-shaggers and Potato-less starvers to do the same. Makes more room for boat people …
. . . Jockish shit. And that’s all that is. Hooch with airs & graces.
I used to think that until about age 45; all I’d sampled were “Bells” type pub whiskies and well marketed stuff that was grossly smoky and peaty. Revolting.
Then I was introduced to well selected Speyside (and a few others) single malts and it was a completely different and rather glorious story. So much so that the title “Scotch” is meaningless as a description of a type of drink.
It was disappointing to have to give them up (along with the Belgian beers) due to my body just saying no to alcohol. At least I have a nice little collection that should sell well in the coming years.
Stills all over the place around here. The local firewater is “medronho” which is from the strawberry tree (nowt to do with strawberries). Vile stuff….
When I worked in Madrid (late 80s) the Galician (halfway between Spanish and Portuguese) restaurants sold Orujo (distilled from grape lees). The best stuff was in old unlabelled sherry bottles and it and the glasses were always straight out of the freezer.
In Galicia itself, Albariño wine was also sold in all the village shops from similar bottles – no excise duty paid 🙂
I think your body needs a strong talking to PJF.
Although I have to confess I felt somewhat strange after a couple of cans of cold Nigerian the other night. I just put it down to lack of practise. At nearly a fiver a go I don’t get the training.
Nigernian Guinness? That stuff’s 7 or 8%…..
Is it really Tim? The print’s very small on the tins.
Tonites task is what remains of 6 bottles of weissbier. The caps loosened rolling around in the back of the car returning from Lidl. I told her we should have bought bags, but she wouldn’t listen. That’s a mere 5%. At least they weren’t all f**ked. Can’t drink dago beer. The dog pisses better.