Pub bosses have been warned ministers could bring in minimum alcohol pricing as part of the Government’s public health drive, sources have told The Telegraph.
Industry insiders said they had been privately told the policy could be on the table if they do not take more action to tackle the harms of alcohol.
Yes, yes, OK, so it didn’t work in Scotland but it will here! But more than that. Booze in pucs is already massively more expensive than supermarkets for home consumption. Minimum pricing would – at any believable level only marginally but still – benefit pubs by closing that price gap. Why would you warn pubs that you might make them better off?
Remembe, we live in Clown World.
So therefore a policy that is known to be a failure, has no effect on the targeted group ( in this case heavy drinkers ) and actually does economic harm is no reason not to implememt.
See also: rent controls
What I find interesting is how governments that want to penalize some activity, like drinking alcohol or smoking, have no problem taxing it to fund government activities. Various levels of government here in the U.S. do it. How serious are they about curbing the activity of they rely on the tax revenue?
I would absolutely love it if a huge percentage of smokers quit. Obviously it would be good for their health, but the hit to tax revenues would be glorious. I would love to see legislatures having to frantically deal with the very thing they, allegedly, want.
Cheers, Tim! I’m enjoying some sangria. Don’t tell nanny.
This will not make pubs better off, such is the cunning of our new authoritarian masters! True, making off-licence booze more expensive should benefit pubs but that is offset by the smoking ban in pub gardens or on the pavements near pubs which will keep customers away.
Under Der Starmer, pubs will be infrequently frequented by non-smoking people of thirst who want to save a few quid. That’s if they can find one.
Hmm, Saint Grist? It has a certain ring to it, but sadly all of my mates would just larf…
Being abysmally lazy, I just stroll up to the end of the street to buy my booze from the pub.
Maybe I should consider buying it from the supermarket.
It’s a stupid idea that won’t work and will be incredibly unpopular. In other words a uniparty policy.
‘What I find interesting is how governments that want to penalize some activity, like drinking alcohol or smoking, have no problem taxing it to fund government activities. Various levels of government here in the U.S. do it. How serious are they about curbing the activity of they rely on the tax revenue?’
my council offered free resident parking permits for EV’s because in their words they want to promote environmentally sound practices. They have now removed this because in their words ‘it was too expensive’
2TK, 5 July in his very first address as PM, promised that he would “tread more lightly on people’s lives”.
Whilst lacing up his ballet shoes with razors in the sole.
It’s the bare-faced lying that marks him out.
Pubs are dangerous places for the new regime. A bit like X and other online platforms. They are where people gather to grumble, and more importantly where there is encouragement to join up the dots of public atrocities and form some kind of narrative.
Starmer is advised to hit pubs as hard as he can, and encourage solitary drinking. Apparently there were few places for communal drinking in the Soviet Union, unless you were something important in the Party. People would get hammered in their kitchens, either alone or with a small group of friends.
There’s that poem about the English people sitting quietly in a pub watching the world, but on the edge of rising up to overthrow their inferior rulers. So, clearly, pubs have to be destroyed to remove the threat.
The aim is to close down the catering industry, step by step. Already restaurants must disclose calorific values of the dishes on the menu. Next limits on calorific values, next limits on how much meat on offer, portion sizes etc.
Al to reduce the burden on the sacred NHS of course – bang those pans.
@TMB
Ummm… it’s not logically possible for pubs to be infrequently frequented.
There are already comments floating around on X suggesting that 2TK will be banned from every pub in the country. This proposal ought to ensure it happens.
@ Simon Neale
Note that pubs are not frequented by a certain sacred demographic.
Sir Bernard – Many thanks. Your long association with Sir Humphrey Appleby must have perfected your appreciation of that particular verbal dexterity which allows one to say one thing while meaning the opposite.
In this instance, of course, I was using ” to frequent” in the sense of “to resort to habitually” which can be intermittent.
Congratulations on your K, by the way: I only remember you in your original TV persona.
“Yes, yes, OK, so it didn’t work in Scotland but it will here! ”
But that wasn’t TRUE minimum alcohol pricing!
We were just discussing the bureaucratic mind at the place where I volunteer.
The council wishes to encourage visitors to our little seaside village.
So they organise a big fete that runs over the Bank Holiday.
But close the car park to allow food stalls to open up in it
Then prey upon the motorists who have overstayed their 1 or 2 hour parking limits on the street. There was a sea of yellow penalty notice stickers up and down my road.
Trebles all round !
There’s that poem about the English people sitting quietly in a pub watching the world, but on the edge of rising up to overthrow their inferior rulers. So, clearly, pubs have to be destroyed to remove the threat.
The Secret People
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.
The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.
We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.
The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;
There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
And the eyes of the King’s Servants turned terribly every way,
And the gold of the King’s Servants rose higher every day.
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk’s house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
The King’s Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.
And the face of the King’s Servants grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey’s fruits,
And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.
A war that we understood not came over the world and woke
Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.
They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people’s reign:
And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and scorned us never again.
Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;
Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.
In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,
We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,
We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than a man we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.
Our patch of glory ended; we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain,
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires rode slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.
They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.
We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
“tread more lightly on people’s lives” is a decent example of the speechwriter’s art.
But it can have been written only by a secret opponent of Labour, a man who wanted the contrast between that claim and the imminent reality to be used as a weapon against them.
I spent much of today in hospital. I overheard an ex-dustman say to an ex-publican, “Labour are shit!”, which was mildly surprising so early in this socialist tyranny…
“I overheard an ex-dustman say to an ex-publican, “Labour are shit!”, which was mildly surprising so early in this socialist tyranny…”
Better the actual socialists get the blame for things going sh*t then Theo, rather than than the ersatz ones you want to foist upon us. Labour are going to discredit everything the Tories have been doing over the last 15 years, by doing more of it on steroids, and get blamed to boot. And either the Tories learn their lesson, elect an actual conservative as leader, chuck out all the fellow travellers and offer a real alternative or someone else will do the job for them. Continuing to be Labour-lite is not an option.
Just had a friend (statist, centraliser, pro-EU) say we’ve just had the worst government in memory and now arrives a worse one. He bets, and Ivan Toney’s move to play football in Saudi Arabia reflects on Premier League clubs being unwilling to bet on signing him.
PL clubs are risking their own money, and Toney may get a lengthy suspension for betting on football games that didn’t involve him, and no-one will offer to insure against losing his labour. Labour govt hates betting. Worse, they think that the working classes think that Toney is a role model. In other words the elite think the working classes are thick and don’t know the difference between that and merely being v. good at football. Heck, even the PL’s greatest player, handball Henry, ain’t a societal role model, just a coaching one. Moan over.
https://www.samizdata.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Tories-and-Labour-same.jpeg