Bye Bye cheap booze?

[poprock]

See, it's more the night time economy I'm thinking of.

If this effects pubs and clubs too, people will be less likely to go out.

Why would it affect pubs and clubs? How many do you know that are selling the really bargain basement drink products? It’s not like you pop into your local and order a pint of White Lightening.

Besides which, surely the whole point is to make a start on encouraging people to drink less? Change attitudes eventually (which will need more measures than this one) so that whilst you still go out, you buy less booze each night. Putting prices up would be helping pubs and clubs remain profitable, in that scenario.

[Jenpot]

Whoever said "It's a start" - bang on the money. It's not going to solve the problem on its own but it's a step in the right direction. I'm still grumbly about it because i don't want to pay more for beer, but i know i should spend my money doing something else other than drinking every weekend and maybe this'll help.

People do drink because it's easy and cheap to get booze and i don't know if it's just me but i'm fed up with it being my main social activity.

[poprock]

People do drink because it's easy and cheap to get booze and i don't know if it's just me but i'm fed up with it being my main social activity.

That’s just called ‘growing up’. Most folk do it eventually, no big deal.

[Foxglove]

Is the concern here that the help alcoholics need is not addressed by the proposed alcohol price increases or that this will adversely affect the pockets of people who drink and are posting? Is there any reason people can't enjoy the same nights out at pubs/clubs or visting friends without drinking the amount of alcohol they currently do - or am I missing something? I don't see why a night out at a club or pub is only enjoyable according to units of alcohol consumed. Are you worried for the health of your countrymen or annoyed that this will impact on your own pockets? I think this is a quick fix and I am not convinced how much benefit it will have but I don't think anyone can argue that the issues do need to be addressed. Creating a different cultural perception of alcohol is a very long term problem but it has to start somewhere and I applaud the Scottish Parliament for their starting this process, even if I am not convinced entirely by their first action.

I think there will be more "booze runs" to England rather than Europe from this though. There will be nothing stopping people popping to one of the English border towns to stock up on cheap alcohol and with a difficult economic climate, I can see cheap drink shops opening to cater for this.

Am I right in thinking that the profit margin of soft drinks is vastly higher than for alcoholic ones and, therefore, aren't pubs/clubs etc hoping to sell more soft drinks which will actually increase their profit margins so more likely to try and encourage drinking soft drinks?

Whilst a nanny state irritates me to hell, this is an issue in England too and I think the whole country needs to do more to change our drinking culture which is the long run is the only thing that will benefit us in terms of health issues arising from alcoholism.

[Kenny Everett]

I don 't think this is solely aimed at alcoholics with the cans of 7pm super lager... If the price in pubs and clubs went up and meant people buying less drink then that can only be a good problem. A lot of people don't realise the huge problem Scotland has with alcohol-related violence and disorder, if raising the price of booze in the hope that people will drink less isn't a good idea what other things can we do?

[Bunnylingus]

Why would it affect pubs and clubs? How many do you know that are selling the really bargain basement drink products? It’s not like you pop into your local and order a pint of White Lightening.

Besides which, surely the whole point is to make a start on encouraging people to drink less? Change attitudes eventually (which will need more measures than this one) so that whilst you still go out, you buy less booze each night. Putting prices up would be helping pubs and clubs remain profitable, in that scenario.

That's not my point - the piece on the radio I heard was saying that booze in pubs/clubs would be going up too - so if this means bye bye £1 drinks, it's probably going to effect how many people go out. Even just a 50p increase could change people's minds. It then becomes 6 drinks for a tenner instead of 10.

Then, maybe it's wrong, or maybe I picked it up the wrong way.

My point was that it's going to take much more than a price hike to change people's ingrained drinking habits - so I don't think it will lead to people drinking less on a night out - I think it'll lead to them going out less and drinking more or drinking more in the house first.

That's my issue with this, as well as the fact that I think the REAL problem isn't being addressed here at all - why are people alcoholics and what help can we give them/how do we prevent people from becoming alcoholics? If I could see that the goverment were trying to tackle the real issue, I probably would see this as a far better move.

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[MarkMono]

I’m not convinced by the economic arguments. This measure is designed to reverse a recent trend, not something that's entrenched in the country’s economy. The massive availability of ultra-cheap booze is a new development. Cans of Tesco Value Lager, for one example.

Recent?

Admittedly supermarkets used to just punt cheap French beer (and Australian. Mmm, Viborg.) before we started brewing our own, but the mass availibility of cheap-ass booze is by no means recent.

Unless by recent you simply mean post-war.

[Zippy]

Don't they come up with ideas like this all the time, stopping happy hours etc. but in the end up it doesn't make any difference. They should just charge registered alcoholics twice as much as the rest of us.

[Bunnylingus]

I don 't think this is solely aimed at alcoholics with the cans of 7pm super lager... If the price in pubs and clubs went up and meant people buying less drink then that can only be a good problem. A lot of people don't realise the huge problem Scotland has with alcohol-related violence and disorder, if raising the price of booze in the hope that people will drink less isn't a good idea what other things can we do?

A lot of the statistics to do with alcohol and violence though will show that they really aren't as directly related as people think - people who commit violent crime tend to be those who commit violent crime without the influence of alcohol too, no?

I'm not denying that it's an issue, I just think that it gets made out to be much worse than it is.

[MarkMono]

Ban Buckfast, MD2020, Thunderbird and Special Brew.

Still wouldn't achieve much, but it would make far more progress than simply bumping the price of alcohol while claiming that you're doing it to reduce alcoholism.

[Kenny Everett]

A lot of the statistics to do with alcohol and violence though will show that they really aren't as directly related as people think - people who commit violent crime tend to be those who commit violent crime without the influence of alcohol too, no?

I'm not denying that it's an issue, I just think that it gets made out to be much worse than it is.

See, I don't mean that at all here. I'd bet you that the majority of assaults and other anti social behaviours commited on friday and saturday nights have alcohol as a mitigating factor. People in this country go out and get blitzed and lose control, that's the cold hard fact.

[MarkMono]

They also tie their shoes before doing so. And the majority have been wearing trousers.

People who are going to go out and fight go out and fight.

[Kenny Everett]

Part of me agrees with you, part doesn't. We've all seen perfectly rational humans turned into absolute monsters when they've got a drink in them!

[Foxglove]

See, I don't mean that at all here. I'd bet you that the majority of assaults and other anti social behaviours commited on friday and saturday nights have alcohol as a mitigating factor. People in this country go out and get blitzed and lose control, that's the cold hard fact.

That is where I see the problem. People will talk about going out in terms of how much they intend to drink or how they are likely to end up in a gutter etc. The cultural change needs to be that people just go out. Sometimes you may drink too much and I don't see this ever stopping but it seems that a lot of people plan to get blitzed. That is the difference I see in the way our culture is compared to other countries.

[poprock]

Recent?

Admittedly supermarkets used to just punt cheap French beer (and Australian. Mmm, Viborg.) before we started brewing our own, but the mass availibility of cheap-ass booze is by no means recent.

Unless by recent you simply mean post-war.

No, I think the very cheapest end of the market has become massively cheaper (in comparison to the mean) in the past five or ten years.

I know there’s always been cheap drink. Partly the cheapest of the cheap is getting even cheaper and partly the drinking of the cheap-ass stuff is getting to be more socially acceptable (it’s less embarrasing to the middle classes getting discounted lager by the crate in a supermarket than it was buying a 2-litre bottle of white cider at the offy).