That whole scotch parliament thang.

[ECA]

Measures to tackle alcohol abuse by stopping cut-price offers have been outlined by the Scottish Government.
It has proposed a range of measures including the radical step of a minimum price per unit. It would be the first country in Europe to take the step.



BBC NEWS | Scotland | Scots plan to stop cheap alcohol




Viva La Revolution!

 

[DaGaffer]

Cue hordes of Jocks heading to England to stock up on crates of Tennants. These idiots should have a look across the Irish Sea and take a peek at Newry on any Saturday; booze shelves cleaned out by 11AM in every supermarket by marauding Irish shoppers looking for a cheap deal. When will they work out that the proles don't like the nanny state, especially when it comes to the drink?

 

[rynnor]

Isnt this a cynical tax hike under the guise of paternalism?

 

[Scouse]

Yeah, prohibition works fine doesn't it :|

Don't worry, it's a coordinated thing at the highest political levels. They want to reduce alcohol consumption worldwide. Probably has an effect on economic competitiveness per head of population and our elite masters don't like that we're not pumping out profit for them as efficiently as possible.

Fuck if most people in the UK drink to escape the general weekly shitness by binging at the weekend. We can fool the daily-mail sentiment of the population into agreeing to it by talking about health benefits and anti-social behaviour cuts...

 

[throdgrain]

Scotland certainly is a shit place to live. Thier government is working it's way closer to a lefty Stalinist state every day

 

[old.user4556]

*ahem* I resent that Throd, it's got some of the most gorgeous places in the UK; however it has it's fair share of shit holes just like everywhere else in the UK.

 

[Tom]

To my mind a much simpler alternative would have been different rates of taxation on different strengths of alcohol.

Some beers are stupidly strong these days.

 

[Furr]

Well you guys do have a problem with booze up there is seems... same down south to be honest but from what I've read the problem in Scotland is at least 2x as bad.. so pricing alcohol out the price bracket of the chav(or neds as you call them or whatever) should work since Alcohol is an elastic luxury good (except with alcoholics, then its an inelastic essential item...) so price goes up, demand goes down, blame society! Oh and I guess the hard hit alcohol connoisseur can still order his alcohol from south of the border...

 

[DaGaffer]

To my mind a much simpler alternative would have been different rates of taxation on different strengths of alcohol.

Some beers are stupidly strong these days.

From a retailer POV that's a terrible idea.

 

[Tom]

Don't tax it at retail then - tax it at manufacture.

 

[old.user4556]

From my own experience in Scotland (being a young 'un, teenager and adult), the problem is more a psychological / social one than the drinking.

I see it over and over again at all levels, but the issue seems to be this: it's peer pressure, you're a sado without a life unless you get regularly pissed. It affects men and women equally; all the girls at my work do is go on about how much wine they drink during the week and how paralytically drunk they got at the weekend - Monday morning usually starts with "man, I was so mortal at the weekend".

They're proud to tell people they never knew where they were when they woke up, or who they fucked in that state, or that they ended up in hospital again. My ex's little sister (from a respectable middle class, good value family) was found unconcious and blind drunk in a puddle at 14 suffering from hypothermia. She spent the night in hospital and thought it was hilarious the next day. Instead of being condemned, she got bags of kudos from her sister (my then girlfriend) for enjoying her life to the max.

You're a noone unless you're getting absolutely out-of-your-tits drunk. If I tell the girls at my work I went out and had a couple of pints, they'd say "what's wrong with you, you're so boring, do you never go out and have a good drink?".

I don't understand it, I don't get this pressure to be out of my face every weekend and I don't know where this "it's cool to be drunk all the time" label has come from. Maybe people are bored with their lives, stuck in dead in jobs, who knows.

I've said it before about the Scottish (more from a football perspective) but they really are top-heavy with utter fuckwits.

 

[Scouse]

Some beers are stupidly strong these days.

Really? Stronger than vodka? Or Bacardi?

Beer has been produced in varying strengths for thousands of years so it's not the beer's fault. (And I don't include lager here, 'cause it's a relatively new phenomenon and utterly shit and reasonably tasteless, therefore allowing it to be consumed in huge quantities).

I also don't notice the antisocial problems across Europe, where alcohol is considerably cheaper...

 

[Scouse]

You're a noone unless you're getting absolutely out-of-your-tits drunk. If I tell the girls at my work I went out and had a couple of pints, they'd say "what's wrong with you, you're so boring, do you never go out and have a good drink?".

Yep. I think that the massive increase of girls drinking pint-for-pint with men since the 1990's, and drinking much more generally, is probably the* biggest factor in all this.

Sorry girls, but it's yer genes. Your tolerances are half that of men and you digest alcohol from spirits (30% or more) at half the rate men do. This makes a typical girl's vodka or bacardi and coke not only technically twice as alcoholic for you, you also get twice as much of it into your bloodstream, unit for unit...

/ducks and covers, just in case.

*Maybe not counting the Conservative Party's changes on pub ownership in the 90's...

 

[throdgrain]

*ahem* I resent that Throd, it's got some of the most gorgeous places in the UK; however it has it's fair share of shit holes just like everywhere else in the UK.

Nothing to do with the nice places mate, or the shitholes, to do with the commie "government" you got.

 

[old.user4556]

Nothing to do with the nice places mate, or the shitholes, to do with the commie "government" you got.

That's what happens when you've got Fuckwits for voters though .

 

[rynnor]

That's what happens when you've got Fuckwits for voters though .

Well to be fair the Scottish people didnt exactly overwhelmingly vote for those guys - they only got one seat more than Labour - its the coalition that gives em their power to do this stuff.

 

[Wij]

If cost was the issue then wouldn't wealthier people have higher rates of liver failure ?

Tell you what, why don't we force the kids of alcoholics further into child poverty ?!?

*face-palm*

 

[ECA]

If cost was the issue then wouldn't wealthier people have higher rates of liver failure ?

Tell you what, why don't we force the kids of alcoholics further into child poverty ?!?

*face-palm*

Pretty sure they have lower rates of liver failure in Afghanistan and Guinea-Bissau than in any western country

 

[nath]

What's more, I find it fucking offensive that the government feels it should have a say in such things. I don't really drink much/ever so it wouldn't affect me but nevertheless it really inflames my "get fucked you ****" reflex.

 

[Wij]

Pretty sure they have lower rates of liver failure in Afghanistan and Guinea-Bissau than in any western country

That's because noone lives beyond 40 anyway

 

[Bodhi]

That's because noone lives beyond 40 anyway

So it's more like Scotland than we first thought......

 

[mr.Blacky]

this is the first step to an independent Scotland, surely that is a good thing.
The English wont be able to complain that so much of their taxes goes to Scotland and the Scots will have their own idiotic politicians.

 

[ECA]

this is the first step to an independent Scotland, surely that is a good thing.
The English wont be able to complain that so much of their taxes goes to Scotland and the Scots will have their own idiotic politicians.

I wish we were seperate countries if this legislation passes.

Scotland would have to pay for it's own healthcare and stupid shit like this would result in more income for england due to all the cross border alcohol purchasing the scots would be doing.

 

[rynnor]

this is the first step to an independent Scotland, surely that is a good thing.

Its never going to happen - even at the peak of scottish nationalism I dont think the majority ever thought going it alone was viable and in the days of the credit crunch its a lot less likely.

The SNP always used to point to Iceland as an example of the kind of sucess an Independant Scotland could be...

The bottom line is that it would hurt both scotland and the remainder of the UK if it ever went ahead and the only people coining it in would be the lawyers - think divorce on an epic scale!

 

[Olgaline]

Not that I've davelled to much into the details, but Wondering if they'll enforce this on the Distilleries as well or purely on the last Link in the chain before they reach the consumer, aka the shops, bars, resturants ect ? does anyone know ?

 

[Wij]

Its never going to happen - even at the peak of scottish nationalism I dont think the majority ever thought going it alone was viable and in the days of the credit crunch its a lot less likely.

The SNP always used to point to Iceland as an example of the kind of sucess an Independant Scotland could be...

The bottom line is that it would hurt both scotland and the remainder of the UK if it ever went ahead and the only people coining it in would be the lawyers - think divorce on an epic scale!

Ironic since the Icelandic banks did the same thing as the Scottish ones, IE expand without risk-control.

 

[Wij]

Not that I've davelled to much into the details, but Wondering if they'll enforce this on the Distilleries as well or purely on the last Link in the chain before they reach the consumer, aka the shops, bars, resturants ect ? does anyone know ?

To be honest I doubt they've even thought how this would be implemented

 

[Furr]

All I know is that the 2008 + 2009 bailout package so far has come to at least £550B and apparently there is around £250bn - £400bn of oil revenue left in the north sea over a 30-50 year time scale.... yeh... maybe we should have let Scotland go and given them the oil fields a while back, would have been cheaper.

 

[Wij]

We'd have lost the revenue from fags and buckie tax though and the pension to national insurance ratio advantage of a a country where everyone dies at 60.

 

[mr.Blacky]

All I know is that the 2008 + 2009 bailout package so far has come to at least £550B and apparently there is around £250bn - £400bn of oil revenue left in the north sea over a 30-50 year time scale.... yeh... maybe we should have let Scotland go and given them the oil fields a while back, would have been cheaper.

Yes but oil prices are going to go up.