Sunday 31 January 2010

I agree with Labour! (*)

Slaps forehead. Scrapes oneself off the ground.

But they've got this one right:

Scottish Labour, which is opposed to minimum pricing, said the study strengthened its argument that the measure would do little to cut problem drinking while penalising moderate drinkers and boosting supermarket profits
Needless-to-say I understand that Labour's opposition to minimum pricing is almost certainly simply because it's a policy of the SNP, not from any moral opposition to market rigging. Oh no.

Labour's Jackie Baillie says: "Scotland’s hard-drinking culture is a national disgrace."

No, Scotland's hard-legislating culture is a national disgrace. Drinking is voluntary; being legislated into serfdom isn't.

(* Doesn't mean I'm going to vote for Alistair Darling.)

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments from previous template:

Colin Finlay
 Just because too many of the lumpen proletariat, force - fed as they are with preposterous notions of 'equality', possess IQs too subterranean to equip them with moral sense, it shouldn't mean that when one ambles up to the bar for a fourth large Chivas Regal, one should have to confront a traumatically embarrassed barman who suggests, as a viable substitute, a glass of water.

11 February 2010, 11:36:58 GMT
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David Farrer
Michael, 
 
I agree that we should privatise health care and "public" spaces. Learning how to handle alcohol at home and in pubs (rather than in the park) is the way to go. 

3 February 2010, 15:42:19 GMT
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Michael
What is so bad about scottish drinking culture? People getting agressive? Producing costs for health care, which are paid by the society? Then privatise health care. And private security (doorman ...) helps against agressive drunk people. In Italy, people are drinking also, even at jung age and no problems known with antisocial behaviour. - Perhaps they learn how to drink responsible as there is a lower legal age to do so? Or is this the way you deal in Northern Countries (e.g. Scandinavia) with the long winter nights? Getting drunk as prevention of depressions?

2 February 2010, 10:21:27 GMT
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David Farrer
Richard: 
 
A cross-subsidy by, say, a supermarket is part of the market. Government intervention isn't. 
 
The "market" is what we get when we allow capitalist acts between consenting adults.

31 January 2010, 15:02:04 GMT
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Richard Thomson
Isn't using cross-subsidy to sell other products as a loss leader also a form of rigging markets?

31 January 2010, 14:50:59 GMT
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Subrosa
Phew!  Thought for a moment you'd had a dramatic conversion.  I tend to agree with you about this as I don't see how the increase in price will change our drinking culture.  Still I'm open to persuasion.

31 January 2010, 12:53:03 GMT