Despite Iain Dale’s warnings regarding Conservative bloggers attacking Cameron’s initiatives- or perhaps because of – Letters From A Tory is this morning laying into Cameron’s ‘DailyMailitus’, (wonderful term), and I couldn’t agree more.
Cameron’s apparent belief that it is the price of alcohol that is creating drink related violence and drink related crime is arrant nonsense on stilts, as anyone who lives within hailing distance of France and Andorra can testify.
40° Whisky is 4 euros a litre in Andorra, 12° and 14° wine is 2 eruos a litre and less, available round the clock from every possible outlet – the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, at 2am, 6am, 4pm, 10pm, and yet the country is not collapsing under the weight of drink related crime.
As for the sale of ‘cheap alcohol from kebab shops’, most lunchtime restaurants include the wine in their menu du jour, effectively giving the alcohol away, and the country still doesn’t have a problem with alcohol related crime.
The proof that price and alcohol related crime is not connected is alive and well jsut 20 miles across the cahnel.
If Cameron is right, and cheap alcohol in these establishments is aimed at ‘alcoholics and drug addicts’ – then what does he imagine will be the effect of putting the price up? That they will suddenly stop drinking? Or that the crime rate will soar as they are driven to commit more crime in order to feed their habit?
Pushing the price of alcohol up by taxation will have some effect in Britain though.
- It will help protect the pub trade from the sale of cheap alcohol in supermarkets in and take away food shops.
Herbert Asquith Licensing bill of 1908 gives us a clue as to motive behind all this. At the second reading Asquith admitted that the bill to limit opening hours was not merely a temperence measure.
“The second great and governing purpose… is the recovery for the State of complete and unfettered control over this monopoly,” he said, the monopoly being pub licences, 90 per cent of which were tied to brewers.
Asquith reasoned that the state ‘owned’ the liquor licences it generously granted and was therefore entitled to ‘recover’ them whenever it liked. His speech accused brewers of inflating prices, of “suicidal” competition to expand their tied estates and of producing poor quality watered-down beer.
The pub trade has been badly hit by the no smoking ban – Cameron can’t afford to side with the non-PC smokers, but he is trying to come to the aid of the pub trade by demolishing their competition. Liam Donaldson, who campaigned for, and wrote, the indoor smoking ban, has already uttered the phrase ‘second hand drinking’ to describe the costs to society of binge drinking, alcohol related rapes and assaults.
It can only be a matter of time before there is a call for stricter licensing hours, greater alcohol taxation, rationed alcohol allowances – Cameron is surely trying to shore up the position of the publicans by making them appear to be ‘responsible purveyors’ of alcohol, unlike those nasty supermarkets and kebab bars.
Anna is the landlady of the Raccoon Arms. She lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France and still takes a keen interest in British politics.
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None of this fill me with optimism. It’s as if the UK is drifting towards some totalitarian state, where all our actions and thoughts are controlled by the state – sorry, not as if, it is happening. Even changing the colour of government is no longer the answer to this. They all appear to be mere versions of each other. The debate is not about what the people want anymore. It’s about what the people can be fed so that the establishment can get away with murder.
We do not need no education
We do not need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
drifting? we are actively sailing there under our now microchipped Gauleiter Peter Mandelson.
Im really worried
Back in the 1950′s a combination of high prices for wines and spirits, limited outlets, basic incomes, and complete absence of credit certainly seriously curtailed the options for the undeserving poor, and the boozing classes. The relative weakness of the beer meant you needed to drink a lot for it to impact, and for many the stomachs were too full much earlier than the brain was addled. For those who did go abroad the currency restrictions and lack of access to money outlets meant limitations. As you say it is all a lot more complicated these days. BTW what are property prices like in Andorra?
A bit O/T but related
I’ve been watching and listening to the Test Match. You may remember how much the crowd and particularly the Barmy Army (BA) were lauded by the media. The sense of fun, the fancy dress, the songs etc. Since the incident a few weeks ago when the crowd booed Ricky Ponting as he approached the wicket there has been a media clamp down on the fans.
Apparently it is ‘not good form’ to boo! As a consequence, it seems to me that the crowd is now not recognised as a part of the game. They can pay but cannot ‘say’! There have been few shots of crowd activity. At the Oval there has been a hightened security exercise (WHY??) and only the BA’s trumpeter allowed to take any musical instruments in. Phil the Trumpeter has been seen but not heard because the media are ignoring him. The only shots have been of celebrities (naturally) and ICC dignatories (to show they care).
The media are behaving in a socially controlling manner, presumably at the behest of the authorities – the authorities who have to remind us who is boss – the same authorities who kill innocent people on the streets of London and send under-equipped soldiers to war
Seen from a helicopter just now when I was taking the washing in
Theres only one Freddie Flintoff
Suremen
Big Banner in the Sky
Honestly I am fed up of things being pushed in my face
Admittedly, I’d be more likely to barbecue my own testicles than ever vote Tory, but I had hoped for some sort of vague opposition to Nulab’s increasing health fascism – I’m off for a bevvy and a tab, before it’s too late.
A small amount of smoke in a decently ventilated venue is a statistically insignificant health risk
http://smokersclubinc.com
http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com
http://www.davehitt.com
I drink and smoke at home. I am becoming a hermit.
However, prior to that I haven’t seen a drunk in France in living memory.
This was and is only about two things.
1: The inherent English behaviour
2: The local licensing procedures
We have always been loutish drunks when provided the opportunity and I see no change in that. However it is clearly much worse now than any time since probably the 19th Century.
The process of granting licences has mutated into a rubber stamp department for massive drinks chains to turn our public centres into highly efficient puke and violence centres.
Premises after premises has been given over to large tableless bars with late licenses and easy to drink alcohol served at warehouse prices.
Allow for civilised pubs, grant licenses to civilised places and we will have civilised drinking. Lump one area of a town centre with massive industrial puke factories that force you to buy cheap plonk which you are forced to hold in your hand for want of a table and then empty said places at identical times, you get what we have now. An international disgrace.
None of this is science. Simply an unfortunate mix of bending over and lubing up to the drinks companies and their money and a tendency to consider loutish behaviour as somehow modern and honest whereas anything more sedate or sensible is somehow bourgeois and therefore oppressive.
Tyrants allowing robber barons to systematically exploit scum and gluttons. Or maybe like reality TV and redtops, we are just giving the people what they want. Blahdy blahdy blah.