The Honeymoon is Over

[directhex]

DirectHex... in answer to your question: I really don't know. The Spanish, in my experiece, just don't get totally plastered and fight every night.. they just don't.

Nor the French. (they're just surrender I think) and tbh even the German's dont ruck quite like the UK do after a few too many.

It's gotta be blamed on the Sun newspaper I think

I think it's similar in Scandinavia to the UK. And they have the highest alcohol prices in Europe, suggesting that minimum pricing won't help at all

[TAKTAK]

I don't see the problem with loss leading, if they want to do it then it is up to them...

Why should the government dictate a minimum price?, if they set a minimum for booze then where's the minimum for milk...

The dairy industry of this country is in dire straits because of prices being forced down with many having to shut up shop... Yet the alcohol industry the supermarkets are happy to sell at a loss rather than drive price down...

I say let the supermarkets get on with it... It doesn't affect me directly anyway as i don't buy the offers as hardly anything decent is ever discounted...

If there is a minimum price for alcohol then there needs to be a minimum price for everything, one rule for one and one rule for another much?

[kalniel]

If there is a minimum price for alcohol then there needs to be a minimum price for everything, one rule for one and one rule for another much?

Well yes - just like there's one rule for crack cocaine and another for Shreddies. Left to itself society does not always chose what is best for itself or for others so I see no problem in an elected government setting rules for the betterment of society.

[TAKTAK]

Well yes - just like there's one rule for crack cocaine and another for Shreddies. Left to itself society does not always chose what is best for itself or for others so I see no problem in an elected government setting rules for the betterment of society.

How does raising the cost of alcohol better society?

All it does is put more money in the supermarkets pocket as a safe sell..

The average consumer won't notice the extra £2+ going out of their pocket, so they will consume the same amount..

Minimum pricing will not reduce strain on the NHS or policing... It merely increases the supermarkets profits...

Betterment of society would be minimum pricing for milk, resulting in keeping thousands of people in jobs and paying money to the state.

The state of milk is worse than alcohol, yet the government concentrates on the one that makes sod all difference to anyone except the big dogs...

[TooNice]

go and find out how your local authority deals with those bars and clubs if they are reported by the Police to be selling alcohol in a totally detremental fashion.

I have been told "no more" in a bar in Aylesbury.. and they were right to say no, too. I'd had waaaay enough.

They are fined and have their licenses revoked totally if they cause or create too much grief.

Tesco's doesn't

Ever.

Detrimental to whom? Again, they are not looking after their welfare of their customers, they are looking after their own interests every bit like supermarkets are looking after their own. Someone drinks too much, and damage property. They can make the person pay (if they catch him/her in the act), but it's still a hassle. A drunk individual hassles other customers. Bad for the reputation, so bad for business.

By and large, the bouncer will check if a person is sober enough before letting people in. Meaning that those who 'preload' alcohol from supermarkets should be blocked out anyway. And if they manage to sneak in (perhaps by having a drink out of sight and get in before it kicks in),

Oh and if they are so concerned with the welfare of the their customers, they would not allow anyone but the person buying drink, and in front of the bar to keep an eye. What's stopping someone sober from buying 20 shots for a small group of people yet only 2 drinkers?

Would you advocate a complete ban for the sales of alcohol from all supermarkets and shops where cheap yet powerful alcoholic drinks may be bought? Because short of doing that, there is even less a supermarket can do to check that drinks can be consumed sensibly, or at least in a private property where no one else cares if it gets wrecked than your average clubs. They may be able to restrict the number of bottles someone can buy in a trip, but that would only inconvenience the organiser of a large party, and frankly speaking a bottle of vodka can wreck anyone anyway.

I do not buy for a millisecond that clubs are somehow more deserving of sympathy than Tesco or any other supermarkets. They are both in the business of making money, and it just so happen that one has to sell the alcohol cheap to remain competitive with other supermarket but has the benefit of being held accountable (short of selling the drink to a minor), whereas the other, by virtue of the environment, can get of the bottle back in no more than 5-6 shots, but can be held accountable because they are in a much better position to do so. Once out of the premises though, I am not sure how the authorities could lay the responsibility on them (surely they'll have to prove that 1. the drunkard was in that club, and 2. they got drunk there and nowhere else).

[Paul Adams]

I think it's similar in Scandinavia to the UK. And they have the highest alcohol prices in Europe, suggesting that minimum pricing won't help at all

The "Systembolaget" in Sweden is the government-operated outfit that is the only legal retail outlet for spirits and lager >3.5%. You have to be 20 years old to buy booze in them, and they will ask for ID if you look under 30.

I think there is a lot less of an issue with alcohol here because of this - not price fixing or high taxation on this luxury, but there being only one source for the public to get it and it a home-made fake ID won't cut it (the ID card has been here for years and is heavily used).

Apparently the EU doesn't like the Swedish government's monopoly on selling alcohol, so the Systembolaget may become a thing of the past.


The culture for consuming alcohol here when going out is completely different to the UK - the Swedes I have chatted with were shocked when they experienced "pub lunches" or the degree to which any night of the week is fair game for going to the pub.

Fridays & Saturdays are the nights where the Swedes go nuts, but the huge difference is they don't get aggressive - I used to feel constantly on guard when going out in the UK, but there is no sensation of a fight about to break out any second here.

Be aware when comparing costs of drinks when going out - a "single" measure is 40ml, compared with 25ml in the UK

[kalniel]

How does raising the cost of alcohol better society?

It means people buy less alcohol with that £20 note in their pocket.

All it does is put more money in the supermarkets pocket as a safe sell..

I don't think so - if supermarkets didn't profit from the low alcohol prices they wouldn't do it. Now they won't be able to loss lead on it. However I do agree it'd be better as a minimum duty than a minimum price.

The average consumer won't notice the extra £2+ going out of their pocket, so they will consume the same amount..

I think they will notice it.

Betterment of society would be minimum pricing for milk, resulting in keeping thousands of people in jobs and paying money to the state.

I think artificially manipulating the market where there isn't a health/social concern is a bad thing. The EU does enough of this for my liking.

[SiM]

How does raising the cost of alcohol better society?

I take it you didn't do economics at school, read up on negative externalities.


As for raising the price of milk, it is not the best option. afaik farmers get subsidies from the EU/govt instead... Also it is not similar to alcohol at all, you are confusing a luxury good which has zero need with a normal good which is required for basic nutrition

[TooNice]

How does raising the cost of alcohol better society?

All it does is put more money in the supermarkets pocket as a safe sell..

The average consumer won't notice the extra £2+ going out of their pocket, so they will consume the same amount..

Minimum pricing will not reduce strain on the NHS or policing... It merely increases the supermarkets profits...

IMHO, taxation would have been a better way to do it (other than brainwash/educate everyone into thinking binge drinking is bad). But as I said in my first post on this thread, it's probably not done that way because the current government, more than any other, need to watch out where they tax due to the balance between 'bettering society' (evidently Rave disagree that this is such), and keeping people reasonably happy (any most are resistant to change habit they enjoy).

Still, though the demand of alcohol may be quite inelastic, it's probably not perfectly so. So any increase in price -should- at least make a small amount of difference in the long term. Perhaps.

[SiM]

IMHO, taxation would have been a better way to do it

Increasing tax % won't affect the overall cost much because we are talking about low price booze here, the supermarkets will probably just absorb it as extra loss. Maybe charging a minimum of £1 tax per unit of alcohol if the tax % is less than £1 would do the job.

[Tikkabhuna]

Detrimental to whom? Again, they are not looking after their welfare of their customers, they are looking after their own interests every bit like supermarkets are looking after their own. Someone drinks too much, and damage property. They can make the person pay (if they catch him/her in the act), but it's still a hassle. A drunk individual hassles other customers. Bad for the reputation, so bad for business.

By and large, the bouncer will check if a person is sober enough before letting people in. Meaning that those who 'preload' alcohol from supermarkets should be blocked out anyway. And if they manage to sneak in (perhaps by having a drink out of sight and get in before it kicks in),

Oh and if they are so concerned with the welfare of the their customers, they would not allow anyone but the person buying drink, and in front of the bar to keep an eye. What's stopping someone sober from buying 20 shots for a small group of people yet only 2 drinkers?

Would you advocate a complete ban for the sales of alcohol from all supermarkets and shops where cheap yet powerful alcoholic drinks may be bought? Because short of doing that, there is even less a supermarket can do to check that drinks can be consumed sensibly, or at least in a private property where no one else cares if it gets wrecked than your average clubs. They may be able to restrict the number of bottles someone can buy in a trip, but that would only inconvenience the organiser of a large party, and frankly speaking a bottle of vodka can wreck anyone anyway.

I do not buy for a millisecond that clubs are somehow more deserving of sympathy than Tesco or any other supermarkets. They are both in the business of making money, and it just so happen that one has to sell the alcohol cheap to remain competitive with other supermarket but has the benefit of being held accountable (short of selling the drink to a minor), whereas the other, by virtue of the environment, can get of the bottle back in no more than 5-6 shots, but can be held accountable because they are in a much better position to do so. Once out of the premises though, I am not sure how the authorities could lay the responsibility on them (surely they'll have to prove that 1. the drunkard was in that club, and 2. they got drunk there and nowhere else).

I've only been told I can't go in a club once and that is because I fell onto the bouncer (yeah, not a good night). But every student pre-drinks and then goes out. There's no limit to how many drinks can be done in a club. Last night if you got 2 malibu and mixers you would get a free gift thing and all my mates had at least 1 thing. Clubs don't care because there isn't much you can break. They might have to clean something up or throw people out but this is done by people already being paid for.

And to the other guy saying that they can be reported for being detrimental, which I'm assuming as serving extremely drunk people. No student would ever report them because then where else would we go for cheap nights? Binge drinking is staying with or without the price increase. Clubs won't care.

[TAKTAK]

It means people buy less alcohol with that £20 note in their pocket.

People will compromise in other areas in order to get the same amount

I don't think so - if supermarkets didn't profit from the low alcohol prices they wouldn't do it. Now they won't be able to loss lead on it. However I do agree it'd be better as a minimum duty than a minimum price.

That would be the right way to go about it, a minimum duty imposed on alcohol so the state has a guaranteed minimum that can be ploughed into public services to offset the real cost of alcohol, that way the supermarkets can still loss lead if they wish but the government still benefits

I think they will notice it.

Yes some will notice, but the people who abuse alcohol will still go for it whatever the price

I think artificially manipulating the market where there isn't a health/social concern is a bad thing. The EU does enough of this for my liking.

I agree on principal, but the UK populous are too god-damn idiotic for the industry to survive on it's own... (i.e. Nocton dairy's plans for Yorkshire being scrapped)

Such a move would have propped the whole industry up as it provides a market for heifers (an additional 500 per year to build up to 8100) as well as increasing the milk production for the country.



If they had positioned the change as a minimum duty, then yes, i'd happily say it was the right call...

Setting a minimum price however?

Another caveat of raising the price is that you open the market up to abuse (i.e. knockoff booze that could be dangerous), as it is, people wouldn't even bat an eyelid at buying off the shelf rather than backstreet, with price increases you introduce a new danger to people that are incapable of thinking sensibly (i.e. the same people that will buy a white powder off a person they've never met), you have no idea what is in it, and no idea what it will do to you... But it's cheaper than Tesco so it's better...

[scaryjim]

Setting a minimum price however?

They haven't set a minimum price. They've said "Don't sell it for less than it costs to make / source it". And personally I think it's fair enough, although I'd agree with what appears to be a general consensus that a minimum duty / unit would have been better. The problem with loss-leading is that it encourages over-consumption, and it's a very different thing to overconsume on, say, baked beans, than on alcohol.

I don't think it will make any significant difference to the amount of alcohol consumed in the UK, but I don't think that's the point: it's more of a public statement by a new government that this is an issue on which they want to make a stand. This is probably the easiest thing to legislate in the short term. Expect significant alcohol duty rises in the next couple of budgets, though

[TAKTAK]

I take it you didn't do economics at school, read up on negative externalities.
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Negative_externality.jpg[IMG]

Yes there is a cost incurred by the state by those who're idiots and drink excessively, however those are the kind of people who will drink excessively what ever happens, the only reason that they stop drinking at the end of the night is because they're either in A&E or everywhere is closed...

So increasing the price doesn't remove them from A&E, it merely means that they pay the supermarket more for the privilege of being put in A&E.

Set a minimum rate of taxation aswell as an increase in duty and leaving minimum pricing out of it IMHO, that way the government makes more out of the sale which they can plough into the relevant services to deal with the imbeceles...

As for raising the price of milk, it is not the best option. afaik farmers get subsidies from the EU/govt instead... Also it is not similar to alcohol at all, you are confusing a luxury good which has zero need with a normal good which is required for basic nutrition

The marjority of the EU subsidiaries goes to the processors and exporters (i.e. dairy crest), NOT the producers. But it revolves around the same thing, the EU pratted about with things too much (attempting to produce a stable price) to the detriment of the UKs industry, to the point where government intervention is needed to ensure the survival... As things are, farms are having to be eaten up by large initiatives in order to even survive (i.e. Velcourt).

[Rave]

1) I disagree

O.K., well explain how it's going to work then? How exactly do you enforce a law that says that a retailer may not sell an item below cost price? Because as I see it, the only possible way is to set up a government Alcohol Price Monitoring Agency to which every single transaction between alcohol retailers and suppliers must be reported, and which then undertakes regular monitoring of retail sale prices to ensure no negative discrepancy (at, presumably, great expense to the taxpayer). Realistically this puts the wholesale price of booze in the public domain- for a start, most government departments are as leaky as a sieve, and for a second, as soon as anyone is prosecuted for breaking this law, the relevant facts will have to be disclosed in a court of law. And when the wholesale price of booze is out in the open, then the inevitable outcome will become a homogenisation of prices, and almost certainly an increase therein, to the detriment of the consumer.

And, TBH, the cost price of alcohol is, to a first approximation, absolutely sod all. In France you can buy a bottle of table wine for about 50 pence, so 5-6p a unit. And I daresay that winemaking is not an especially cost efficient means of alcohol production, compared to say, industrial scale fermentation of a sugar beet mash. I sincerely doubt that a bottle of alcopop costs much more to make than a can of cola.

2) Explain, please? Surely it's the big retailers who are going to be forced to increase their prices..?

See point one, above. The only way to enforce this law as far as I can see is by the introduction of an enormous state bureaucracy, to which all wholesale alcohol transactions must be reported. Whether you're buying 200 cans of beer at a time, or 2 million, you still have to make a report. This obviously is a tiny cost to a retailer with 2000 outlets and a big burden to a guy with a corner shop.

And in fact, independent retailers near me are selling two bottles of Italian wine for a fiver, one is even doing 3 for £6.75. I've run out of French wine (going for some more next week), so I've been popping in for some, and I don't begrudge paying him more for a pint of milk and a bag of rice than Tescos charge as a result.

3) It doesn't 'discriminate' against anybody.

Consumption taxes (as opposed to income taxes), and/or cartels (defacto or otherwise) manipulating the price of goods, always discriminate against those on lower incomes. This is surely self-evident?

You have a rather vested interest in cheap alcohol, no? Your ranting blog post certainly supports this view.

On the contrary, as I said at the bottom of my blog post (possibly after you read it) I buy about 90% of my alcohol in France. This will affect me very little.

You also seem rather blase about the problems that alcohol abuse cause in this country (and others). I'm especially shocked at your dismissal of the difficulties faced by the police (and hospitals, remember) EVERY Friday and Saturday night, due to excessive drinking - number of deaths is hardly the issue.

Well, as I said in my blog post, dealing with antisocial behaviour is the police's job. If alcohol misuse and associated troublemaking were to be sharply curtailed, then there would be very little justification for having so many of them, and a number of police men and women would thus find themselves out of a well paid, secure job with decent promotion prospects and an excellent pension (or at the very least, presumably lucrative Friday and Saturday night overtime would completely disappear). Anybody who joins the police force without expecting to spend a significant proportion of their time dealing with drunks is, IMO, an idiot.

As for the cost and disruption to the NHS (in particular Paramedics and A&E), there are two issues. One is whether staff should expect to have to deal with difficult and potentially abusive patients with self inflicted injuries. The answer is no, I suppose, but then it is for employees and unions to negotiate appropriate extra recompense for working shifts where this is a known issue. The second issue is whether the cost to the NHS outweighs the revenue earned by the government in alcohol duties. I don't know the figures, but I suspect it doesn't even come close, just as the argument that banning smoking would result in a net cost saving was always a total crock (the revenue from cigarette duty has always dwarfed the cost of smoking related illness to the NHS). In any case, that is an argument for raising duty, not an argument for a stupid and unworkable rule about 'cost price'.

http://www.ias.org.uk/resources/factsheets/tax.pdf

While I obviously greatly dislike the 'nanny state' for both ideological and personal reasons, and hence am against attempts to regulate personal behaviour through taxation, I am greatly in favour of tax increases, since I don't want to be paying for the current government deficit for the next 36 years of my working life.

Don't they say that if alcohol/ciggies were invented now they'd never be allowed to be sold for health reasons?

Well, that would depend on whether the government of the day trusted its own citizens to be responsible adults and make choices for themselves, would it not?

The arguments against seem to (in my limited experience) to come from people/companies with a vested interest in keeping consumption/profits as high as possible with little regard for the lives it (may) be affecting.

Well, this argument against is coming from someone who believes that adults in a free society should be allowed to make their own decidions about how they want to live their lives- and who believes that the many should not be made to pay for the sins of the few.

Unless I was dreaming it, Rave most certainly has a vested interest in cheap booze as he's an alcoholic and drinks a lot of cheap vodka.

Now removed, Reason: Favour to Zak33

Whether or not I am an alcoholic depends on your definition of what an alcoholic is- I prefer to think of myself as a recreational heavy drinker. But anyway, I almost never touch vodka, my usual tipple of choice being wine which I buy in France, or beer if I'm drinking with mates.

I see that Rave's not been back in to comment....probably nursing a cracking hangover....

Actually, I was at work.

It's no secret that I am a regular heavy drinker, and that on occasions heavy drinking has caused me various problems (quite the opposite of a sectret in fact, as I have started threads on here to that effect). However, I have a job which earns me the median wage for all workers in London (which is not bad considering I'm just shy of 31), and I do it both conscientiously and well, with a sick/absenteeism record well below the company and national average. In my hundreds of nights out drinking, I have been chucked out of a club once, when I was leaving anyway. I have never had any dealings with police, never had a fight, and never committed any crime beyond peeing in an alleyway on my way home. I strongly resent the idea that the drunken idiocy of a small minority should call for government measures that would adversely affect me both as a consumer and a taxpayer.

[Moby-Dick]

In my hundreds of nights out drinking, I have been chucked out of a club once, when I was leaving anyway

that was my fault apparently