Why minimum pricing for alcohol is a really stupid idea...

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Right now the booze we buy is pretty safe - we are pretty confident of its origins.  But if minimum pricing comes in and we continue to see accelerated rises in duty, something will change:

Seizures of contraband alcohol smuggled from France have surged to around three times their normal levels this summer, say officials.

French customs officers in the Channel ports of Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer confiscated 82,000 litres of illegal spirits in the past month.

This is the amount normally seized over a three-month summer period.

And this contraband booze isn't sold in Sainsbury, nor is it sold through the cash-and-carry. It's sold out of the back of a van or in a fifth floor council flat. Do you think the blokes selling the booze care about selling it to 12 year old kids? Or give a monkey's about whether it's the real brand or some dodgy moonshine?

As I said - minimum pricing for alcohol is a really stupid idea.

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Diageo lines up with the puritans in calling for higher duty on beer.

In what can only be described as an orgy of self-interest, the booze manufacturers and their representative organisations are leaping about trying to sound all good and righteous in submissions and representations to the current Treasury review of alcohol duty. At the forefront is Diageo in calling for higher duty on beer and wine:

Diageo wants to see "full equivalence" between all kinds of alcohol, so that one unit is taxed at the same rate, regardless of the drink. The strongest drinks would therefore pay the highest level of tax. Diageo is proposing the move as a way of staving off political pricing on drinks such as alcopops and strong cider, targeted by health campaigners for encouraging binge drinking.

Now all this is just a little disingenuous of Diageo – makers of eight out of the top 20 spirits brands – since such a change would raise the level of duty on beer and wine considerably. Presumably Diageo think Guinness can take the hit while they increase profits on higher margin spirit and spirit derived brands.

All this has brought a robust response from the beer business with Wetherspoons’ boss, Tim Martin weighing into the drinks company branding them, “a bunch of morons” and this position has been – more moderately – supported by others:

Kristin Wolfe, head of alcohol policy at SABMiller, said: "Excise tax 'equalisation' is a ruse for making high strength alcohol cheaper relative to low strength alternatives," she said. Ms Wolfe pointed to the lower production costs associated with spirits. "Unless spirits are taxed proportionately higher, they can be sold at a much lower price per unit." Mark Hunter, head of Molson Coors in the UK, branded Diageo's call "self-serving".

What should concern us is that booze businesses appear to be lining themselves for a scrap that is essentially over market share within a declining industry. Oh yes, did we mention that alcohol sales have fallen year on year for six years?

And the effect of Diageo’s representation – if implemented – would be a further discouragement for the pub trade. On top of the smoking ban, a further increase in beer duty (dubbed ‘equalisation’) would undoubtedly push a further bunch of long-established pubs from marginal viability into closing.

That any booze producer is calling for any increase in tax is wrong. Yet the prohibitionists, puritans and health fascists will seize on Diageo’s proposal as another little nail in the coffin of the pub. And this time it will be the drinks industry hammering in the nail.

All this despite the welcome discovery that drinking helps us live longer!

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Wednesday Whimsy: why I believe in Fairies

It has long struck me as odd that it is socially acceptable to believe in ghosts but considered a sign of utter madness to believe in fairies!

Of course it was not always so as a couple of girls in Cottingley showed - sensible grown men and women were taken in (maybe distracted by the day job of getting thousands of Frances and Elsie's neighbours blown to bits in Belgium) by their pictures of real live fairies!

It does however strike me that fairies are far more believable and understandable than ghosts - which makes absolutely no sense at all to me. At least I can see a route back to belief in the spirits of stone and tree and stream - things that may have no reality but which chime with our love of anthropomorphic representation. Indeed this humanising of the non-human seems a huge part of our modern culture perhaps suggesting that Paul Jennings was not so far off the mark with his spoof philosophy - resistentialism. "Les chose sont contra nous" - Jenning wrote: and do we not echo that every day in our talk of bugs and gremlins, fates and breakdown?

Surely these are modern day nature spirits - the 21st century fairies. Far more real than ghosts - merely things to scare or else reflecting a fearful realisation that our time on this earth is short and we have no idea what does or doesn't happen after.

So yes, I'm prepared to believe in fairies. But ghosts - no way, no such thing.
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