Plans for minimum alcohol price

[Hom3r]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7944334.stm

This guy want to have a minimum 50p per unit on alcohol.

Well that would mean the vodka I but 90 proof i buy would have

700ml bottle = 26.5 units
litre bottle = 37.5 units

So you are looking at £13 to £19 a bottle, and that before mark-ups.

I will then get mine fron Cite Europe in Calias for £15 for 1 litre of 100 proof.

Again the small minority screw it up for the senisble drinkers.

[papa smurf]

i have a feeling that some one at Labour party HQ has pressed the self destruct button ,this is just another in a long line of election losing ideas, I'm sick of being nannied to death and i consider it my patriotic duty to make sure that new reinvented Labour never get back in power ..

I'm picturing panic buying in netto people brawling over cases of stella , i'm going down their as soon as i have finished this box

[alferret]

Originally Posted by papa smurf

i have a feeling that some one at Labour party HQ has pressed the self destruct button ,this is just another in a long line of election losing ideas, I'm sick of being nannied to death and i consider it my patriotic duty to make sure that new reinvented Labour never get back in power ..

Absolutly

[Derek]

I think this might actually work if the minimum price is set at a sensible level.

Either that or lace a random number of bottles of Frosty Jack, MD 20/20, Thunderbird etc. with poison to thin out of the number of 'problem' drinkers.

Originally Posted by Derek S

...Either that or lace a random number of bottles of Frosty Jack, MD 20/20, Thunderbird etc. with poison to thin out of the number of 'problem' drinkers.

That could work - although if it contained a small explosive it could take out the whole pub with one bottle which would be much more "cost-affective" i think

[Derek]

Originally Posted by JethroUK

That could work - although if it contained a small explosive it could take out the whole pub with one bottle which would be much more "cost-affective" i think

Pub? Most of the drinkers of frosty jack tend to be in flats where the furnishings consist of a huuuuuuuuge telly, some suspiciously stained couches and bare floorboards.

Setting off a bomb in there might do several thousand pounds worth of improvements.

[Taf]

So if there was a minimum price, who would get the extra profit?

[Hom3r]

Originally Posted by Taf

So if there was a minimum price, who would get the extra profit?

The government.

Always thought this would happen as soon as the anti smoking facists had their way(i am a non smoker by the way) then alcohol would be their next target and so it is.

Do what i'm doing drink faster before this law is brought in

Originally Posted by Taf

So if there was a minimum price, who would get the extra profit?

I've always felt that tax collect from 'specific' area should be spent in that 'specific' area (not just lumped into the coffers)

So it could be used for:

Extra policing/survellance Sat nights
Clearing up the street on Sun morning
(arresting the drunk & disorderly and getting them to clear the streets on Sun morn)
Investing in non-alchohol rellated activities (free health centre / swimming pool etc on Saturday nights?)

Governments have never felt any obligation to justify taxes - probably because they wont do any of those and just give themselves a jolly good pay rise instead

.

[Hom3r]

I'm lucky in the fact I get to drive to our base in Belgium, or one of the guys in my department whom travel there every other week will do a booze stop and get me some bottles.

So this will price increase will achieve nothing in my eyes.

Originally Posted by richard1960

Always thought this would happen as soon as the anti smoking facists had their way(i am a non smoker by the way) then alcohol would be their next target and so it is.

Sure i read somewhere that the government accrue something in the region of £13 billion per quarter from smoking tax

Had just 1% of that been spent in cancer research it would have been irradicated 20 years ago - god only knows what could've been acheived with 10% of those taxes

but instead, it paid for a lot of over-weight mp's to gewt a bigger car to haul their big fat @ssed around in

Can see this being a minefield actually,would this new tax apply equally to pubs/clubs if not i could seeing the supermarkets going to court their prices would go up by government dik-tat but not pubs /clubs. Also if the price did go up in pubs thousands more could close as they are doing now even before such a tax ,jobs would go in the brewing industry which brews in the uk most of what we consume,at a time of deep recession not very clever to have breweries closing just before an election (most are in nu-labours heartlands),hopefully this one will be kicked in the long grass where it belongs.