Wednesday 28 November 2012

Why minimum alcohol pricing is not the answer

I am firmly against the idea of a minimum pricing strategy for alcohol. This is for various reasons which I shall explain I do not think raising the price of drinks in pubs and in the super markets will bring down binge drinking one bit people who enjoy drinking and drink to get drunk will not be deterred by this in fact it will give them added incentive I feel as they will turn to shoplifting or worse to get alcohol. We may see the return of home brewing and some even stronger alcohol being imported from abroad which is even more dangerous than what we have currently. I think there is also the adanger of this turning into a nanny state question again. Where we are told what we can and cant do once more. I am a drinker of alcohol I’ll admit that but not excessively that often I am more a social drinker with friends and comrades at weekends and after meetings. This minimum price will hit me who am not a troublemaker in the pocket and guess where the extra tax will go? The government who already make huge amounts of cash in tax through alcohol and breweries will be hit as a result. The pub trade is an industry close to my heart and with the introduction of this plan this will put even more pubs out of business than there already is. Already there is roughly 1 pub closing every week in this country and this will only increase this further. It’s a barmy idea which will only benefit big business and capitalism this won’t solve peoples drinking habits or improve the pub trade. This is a cynical ploy by health charities who claim to want the best for us while not even stopping to think of the social reasons why people often young people end up drinking vast quantities of drink a lot. Do they stop to think could it be the lack of an education, lack of a good well paid job? Poor housing conditions or lack of housing at all that turn ordinary working class people to drink every day. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of capitalism who while drives people to drink literally through driving them into the ground through the wage slave system also makes millions of pounds out of peoples misery in the process. Nice this capitalism ay? The solution, a democratic planned socialist economy based on peoples needs, breweries which are run for peoples needs not for the profits of th boss’s a fair cheap affordable drink structure with good affordable housing with good well paid jobs. All possible when big business sits on 800 billion and refuses to invest, time to tax the rich!

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