Did the Lords call for pub closures?

"Shut down pubs that don't cater for disabled people, says House of Lords", according to a headline in the Morning Advertiser (MA) about a House of Lords Select Committee report. In response, a spokesman for the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) said: “Shutting pubs isn’t the answer, but we should all be encouraging pubs to be accessible as possible." So there we have it: two diametrically opposed viewpoints on how to address the problem.

However, according to the Parliament website, the Select Committee actually said: "Many restaurants, pubs and clubs are difficult to access, with many not providing basic facilities such as a disabled toilet. Local authorities should be allowed to refuse to grant or renew these premises' licences until they make the necessary changes." The italics are mine, but the MA completely fails to mention that proviso, which I regard as quite significant.

Disability access has been a problem with many organisations ever since the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) was passed in 1995. The Act allows establishments not to make alterations where the nature of the structure makes them impracticable or excessively expensive, or where they may cause major damage to an historical building. However, there's no doubt that many places have ignored the Act, or paid lip service; for example, in one pub I used to frequent, the disabled toilet could only be reached by climbing two steps.

Other bodies have used the Act as a pretext for cutting costs. For example, Birkdale railway station in Southport used to have public toilets until the day when they were locked permanently with a sign stating that closure was necessary because they didn't comply with the DDA. The obvious answer of Network Rail coughing up for suitable alterations was clearly not considered; closure was cheaper, and eliminated ongoing costs such as cleaning and maintenance. It was made clear when the DDA was passed that it was not the intention to close anywhere down: if there were genuine reasons why DDA compliance was not possible, that would be acceptable.

In relation to pubs, the incompleteness of the MA's article is unhelpful. Firstly, non-compliant licensees may be concerned that they might be shut down, and thus lose their livelihood, even though in very many cases the maintenance of and adaptations to the structure of the pub are not their responsibility. Secondly, I can see cashed-strapped pubcos using the cost of making premises and toilets accessible as an excuse to close the pub altogether, claiming that the cost of adaptations have rendered the pub unviable. Where pubs are situated in areas where the land can profitably be sold off for redevelopment, the temptation may become almost irresistible.

As Baroness Deech, who chaired the Select Committee, said: "We found that there are problems in almost every part of society, from disabled toilets in restaurants being used for storage, to schools refusing interpreters for deaf parents, to reasonable adjustments simply not being made."

Clearly much more needs to be done. However, many pubs are in a unique position in the hospitality industry in that they are owned by pubcos which have accumulated whole mountain ranges of debt (entirely their own fault); I fear unintended consequences may ensue.

Two cheers - Liverpool's Roscoe Head saved

The Roscoe Head's entry in the 1974 Good Beer Guide.
Descriptions were very brief in those days!

While I was in Whitby, I learnt that the Roscoe Head in Roscoe Street, Liverpool, had been sold by Punch Taverns to property company New River and was at risk of redevelopment. It is an attractive little local near the city centre with a tiny snug on the left as you enter, two lounges and a drinking area by the bar. There are six hand pumps serving five changing guest beers mostly from small breweries, plus Tetley Bitter. It is also one of only five pubs that have been in every edition of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide.

New River's response is that existing leases are legally binding, and the Roscoe's runs to 2021. The licensee, Carol Ross, is obviously relieved that in the short term she is okay, but is worried what may happen when the lease expires. She had hoped to benefit from the Market Rent Only option that was recently agreed by parliament, but in order to qualify, the pub has to be part of an estate of at least 500 pubs, and New River has fewer than 300. As she says, she will now have to keep on paying over the odds. The sale was particularly upsetting as she had offered to buy the pub on several occasions, but was refused, and she wasn't offered first refusal when this sale took place. She is particularly bitter because, although her family have run the pub since 1983, she feels she has no rights.

The Roscoe Head (picture borrowed
from pub website)

She is right to be concerned: New River is primarily involved in the retail sector, and although it has bought quite a few pubs, if the potential proceeds of redevelopment exceed the profitability of any pub, the days of that pub would almost certainly be numbered. If the economy improves sufficiently to push up the price of land and make redevelopment and construction more profitable, then ironically the upturn, which might otherwise help pubs survive, may put some of them at risk. This is one of the unforseen long-term consequences of the Beer Orders that led to whole pub estates being bought by the property companies that we call pubcos.

I understand that the CAMRA Liverpool Branch is applying to have the Roscoe Head registered as an Asset of Community Value (AVC), whereby planning permission is required to change a building's use or to demolish it. Let's hope they succeed.

P.S. 1 September: here is a petition calling on Liverpool City Council to list the pub as an AVC.

Can a pint be hard work?

I came across this last night:

"A survey by 02 has found that two out of five workers in Britain spend four hours or more a week working from places away from the office, with pubs and coffee shops particularly popular. In total, Britons spend 131 million hours a week working from coffee shops, and 8% of those working outside the office do so from the pub."

With the right to ask (and be refused) flexible working hours being extended to all employees, could pubs gain a new place in the world of work? Instead of lunchtime or after-work drinks, might we see pub-going actually taking place during the working day?

I can't see it myself: this is a story written specifically to provide a startling headline. Drinking during the working day, even during the employee's own lunch hour, is increasingly frowned upon, and I doubt that employers would want their business to be conducted via all those insecure free Wi-Fi connections in places such as pubs and coffee shops, nor risk beer being spilt on work laptops. So that's that: I don't see this being a route for pub salvation.

However, if I'm wrong and it does take off, it would be something of an unintended consequence for the government, and it would really annoy their mates in Alcohol Concern. So not all bad then.

The article in AOL Money is here, assuming you're sufficiently interested.

Barons Bar defies owners' repeated death wish

I wrote in December how the Barons Bar in the Scarisbrick Hotel on Southport's Lord Street seemed to be bent on alienating drinkers with their introduction of plastic glasses. My proposal to the local CAMRA branch that we threaten the hotel with removal from the Good Beer Guide if they didn't reinstate real glasses was passed unanimously, but was subsequently overturned after a sustained e-mail campaign by a few who hadn't been at the meeting. Obviously the word "Campaign" in CAMRA's name has passed these e-mail lobbyists by, a couple of whom asserted that they had no problem with plastic glasses; that's up to them of course. Despite this defence of plastic, sales in the Barons Bar plummeted to the extent that in March real glasses returned, so I feel somewhat vindicated, although disappointed that the branch lost its nerve. Plastic glasses have their place, for example at open air events, but not for everyday use in pubs. I had e-mailed the company to state why I thought they were making a mistake, but received a bland 'thank you' for contacting them, an assurance that my views were valued, and a statement that this was now their policy and they were sticking to it.

A view of the Barons Bar

It's not the first time that corporate decisions by Britannia Hotels, who took over this formerly independent hotel around three years ago, have nearly destroyed the Barons Bar. When they acquired the hotel, they told the bar manager to order real ale through their regular supplier, rather than shopping around for an interesting range of beers, as had happened previously. The result was a boring range of the usual suspects such as you can find anywhere and sales predictably went through the floor - well, I predicted it even if no one else did. Britannia demanded to know what had gone wrong with the sales, and when told why, they reluctantly to give the bar manager more freedom.

To me this is just further proof that corporate businesses are often not very good at business with their 'one size fits all' approach. The Barons Bar has managed to survive, and the beer recently was fine, but it is no thanks to the owners. I hope it recovers from this latest unwitting attempt to kill off its real ale sales, but I wouldn't be surprised if the accountants in head office are dreaming up more silly schemes that will have disastrous unintended consequences again.

I know this is late news, but this is the first chance I've had (due to computer problems) to write a follow up to my December post which was rather doom and gloom. I think it's worth mentioning the good news that Britannia saw sense unexpectedly - well, I certainly wasn't expecting it.

When the levy breaks

Cartoon by Matt

There was a discussion today on Radio 4's You and Yours about the late night levy that councils are now permitted to impose upon pubs and clubs that stay open after midnight to help meet the costs of policing and clearing up after the night time economy, as they coyly called it. The charge cannot be selective: it has to be levied on all pubs and clubs in the area of the council concerned. Newcastle intends to introduce the levy in November, Islington next year and around 30 other councils are considering it. The money would be split, with the police getting 70% with no obligation to spend any of that money on policing the night time economy, and the council getting 30%.

The spokesperson from Islington was quite clear that it was the intention to encourage licensees to close at midnight, and he thought it fair that those who wished to stay open later should contribute a small amount towards the clearing up and policing costs. I decided to check how small the amount is: the amount payable is based on rateable value and ranges from £299 to £4440. A Home Office briefing paper about the levy, including the full range of amounts to be charged, is here.

I see several problems with this measure:

1. Much of the behavioural disorder that happens late at night is caused by pre-loading: drinkers who have bought their alcohol from off licences and supermarkets to drink at home, and who then finish off their drinking in licensed premises. The outlets where they bought their booze are not covered by the levy.
2. Following on from that, as licensed premises are not the exclusive cause of the problem, this measure cannot constitute a complete solution, which suggests that the aim is to make money from a problem rather than solve it. The fact that most pubs do not cause any mess or disorder at all but are still subject to the levy is evidence that this is a money-raising rather than an enforcement measure.
3. The levy will apply to all pubs that have a licence after midnight, even if they have never used it - quite a lot of pubs did apply for later licences that they didn't intend to use regularly so that, if they wanted an occasional extension, they didn't have the hassle of having to apply for one. Rather than give up a licence that they had to fight for in the past, they may instead decide to pay the levy and stay open later instead. Law of Unintended Consequences?
4. Increased costs will inevitably be passed on to the customer.
5. It is yet another tax on drinking in a country that, despite the ending of the duty escalator, still has one of the highest rates of beer tax in Europe.

Most pubs will not be affected by this measure - I think the only one in Southport would be Lloyds No. 1 - so real ale drinkers probably don't need to be too worried just yet, but I'm worried about the "foot in the door" effect: if taken up widely by cash-strapped councils, the policy will be declared a success. Who can be certain that the time limit might not then be moved from midnight to - say - 11.00pm? It would require no more than a simple adjustment to the Act - fine-tuning they'd call it - to bring most pubs within its scope.

The hopeful and the blind

As you've probably heard by now, the Chancellor yesterday scrapped the 3p rise in beer duty due in April and has instead cut it by a penny. He has ended the beer duty escalator (inflation + 2%), but has kept it for wine, cider, spirits and cigarettes. 

CAMRA has reacted to this news with elation, claiming that "pubs won’t need to increase their prices this year." Within half an hour of this assertion going on the CAMRA website, a licensee asked me why pubs don't need to increase prices this year, with fuel prices, rents, raw materials and pretty well all other costs rising at above inflation. I didn't know, so I asked CAMRA, and received this very prompt and courteous reply from the Campaigns Manager, Emily Ryans:

"We believe it's reasonable to expect that pubs won't increase their prices this year following yesterday's news that the beer duty escalator has been scrapped and beer duty has been cut by 1p.  A 1p cut per pint equates to a 2% reduction - with inflation running at around 3% we think the 2% cut will be sufficient to avoid pub price increases. Of course other factors affecting prices such as fuel and raw materials feed into the level of inflation. In addition, many pub companies and brewers raised their prices just a few months ago to take rising costs of raw materials, rents and staffing etc into account so we would hope that they will not react to this news by raising prices further. We were heartened that several pub companies including Heineken and Enterprise Inns  have already committed to pass this duty saving on to their consumers and we'll be encouraging others to do the same."

It sounds rather optimistic to me, but I do hope they're right. And, to be fair, CAMRA has every right to be pleased with the success of their campaigning on this issue. So let's see the reaction of the killjoys:

The chief executive of Alcohol Concern said: "Too many people are dying and suffering from crime and poor health because of alcohol misuse. Sadly there was nothing in this budget which shows a real and practical commitment from the Government to tackling this. If we’re to get to grips with this problem, and we must, the Government has to take the lead and target strong, cheap, alcohol –  the kind drunk by the most vulnerable in our society, the young and the very heavy drinker. Although the Chancellor said the Government will look at plans to tackle cheap, strong booze we cannot delay, we urgently need to see a firm commitment to introduce a minimum unit price, a measure which all the evidence shows will save lives and cut crime.” 

All the evidence shows no such thing. The findings I've seen suggest that minimum pricing could save X number of lives, could cut crime and disorder by X% and could save £X billion pounds in policing and NHS costs. "Could" is not a term that suggests scientific rigour, and it just makes this so-called research little more than informed guess work. With sales of alcohol inexorably moving from the pub to the supermarket, i.e. from public places into the home, all we are doing is moving problem drinking out of sight, which I genuinely believe politicians are quite happy about, seeing that they are in the business of smoke and mirrors. This effect seems blindingly obvious to me, but as the old saying goes, there are none so blind as those who will not see; so fixated are the killjoys on their own solutions that they are unable to contemplate the unintended consequence that they aren't solving the problem; they're just concealing it.

Ultimately, while yesterday's budget announcements are welcome, they are not a solution to the difficulties facing the pub industry. All they have done is prevent a bad situation becoming worse, but if I'm honest, even that's rather better than I expected.

A million miles from 1984

"Britain Slips Down World Death Table" screams the newspaper headline, going on to assert that, "Rising levels of drink and drug abuse are turning Britain into one of the sickest countries in the Western world". Later in the article, the culprits are said to be alcohol, tobacco, high blood pressure and obesity. At face value, this looks plausible, seeing that the UK has gone down from 10 to 14 in the table that compares premature death rates in 19 wealthy nations (which isn't exactly the world, seeing that there are nearly 180 other countries on the planet). In addition, we are told that cases of cirrhosis of the liver, usually attributed to alcohol, have risen by 65% between 1990 and 2010.

It's not looking good for us, except that the article later states that the UK's average life expectancy has risen by 4.2 years between 1990 and 2010; it's now 79.9 years. So are we getting sicker or not? Clearly, if life expectancy is increasing, our general health must be improving, but that's not the message the headline conveys, i.e. that we are going down, when in fact we are simply going up more slowly than some other countries, but that doesn't make such a good story, does it? It does irritate me that statistics are being misrepresented for the sake of a good, shock-horror news story. Birkonian has a few other observations about the report too.

The cirrhosis statistic cannot so easily be dismissed, but I can't help wondering whether the draconian policies of successive governments concerning under age drinking haven't contributed to the problem. When I was drinking under age, we did it in pubs, drinking a few pints in a well-behaved manner (you didn't want to draw attention to yourself and be thrown out). As well as limiting the amount of alcohol you consumed, you also developed good drinking habits.

Not so now: you can buy a cheap bottle of vodka for the price of 3 or 4 pints, drink it at home, in the park or, as I saw recently, on the train going to a night out. Necking vodka quickly, even diluted with a soft drink, inflicts a massive alcohol hit on the system that cannot be achieved by drinking beer. When I was in my teens and twenties, drinking spirits was a rarity; now it's commonplace with young people, and has been for a while. I am certain that the Law of Unintended Consequences is at work here, in that legislation designed to protect young people from the damage that alcohol can undoubtedly cause, especially to a body that hasn't finished developing, is in reality driving many young people in a direction of greater damage. I'm not suggesting this explains all of the 65% rise in cirrhosis, but I'd be very surprised if it weren't a contributory factor. In other words, the cure is making the problem worse. Not only that, unregulated drinking is much more likely to lead to antisocial behaviour than drinking in a pub or bar.

It's a pity that health campaigners and public policy makers don't take a more holistic view of the problem and the potential effects of their suggested solutions. Instead we are given dubious university research that suggests that a rise in alcohol prices of X per unit will result in saving of Y number of lives, coupled with further demands to rack up the penalties on licensees who serve under age drinkers. Last year, when the BBC quoted completely inaccurate figures in a programme about the effects of alcohol on older drinkers (the mistake was the university researchers', not the BBC's), I demanded that they correct the information in a later broadcast of the programme concerned. They said they'd corrected it on the website, and my argument that most people who had seen the programme were unlikely to look at the website was dismissed. The logical conclusion is that it's okay to broadcast duff info in error and not correct it, as long as that misinformation supports the anti-alcohol campaigners' cause. I'm certain if the errors had gone the other way, the Beeb would caved in to pressure to broadcast a correction on air.

That's what we have to deal with nowadays; it's not a million miles away from 1984, is it?

Wigan Beer Festival 2013

The CAMRA Wigan Beer Festival takes place this coming weekend from 28 February to 2 March. It's free to CAMRA members at all times. As the festival is at Robin Park Sports Centre, opposite the DW (former JJB) Stadium, a special courtesy bus service runs between the festival and the Anvil pub in Wigan town centre, close to both the bus and railway stations. 

Opening times and non-member charges are:

Thursday		17.30 to 23.00		£2.00 all day
Friday		12.00 to 23.00		£1.00 before 17.30 - £3 after
Saturday		11.30 to 23.00		£2.00 all day

Members: don't forget your card.

71 real ales had been confirmed earlier this week. Details of the beer list, cider and perry list, foreign beers, bus times, and everything else you need to know are on the festival website. There is music on most days, but those who prefer quiet sessions should come along on Friday between noon and 5.30 p.m. 

The gangster theme for the pie man logo is to mark the 80th anniversary of the ending in March 1933 of the American Prohibition, a benighted act that did a great deal to develop free enterprise in the USA. Unfortunately it was of the illegal kind; organised crime gained a major hold on the American economy and politics that still hasn't gone away. Oh, the old Law of Unintended Consequences again! British anti-alcohol campaigners, please note.

I'll be working there throughout the festival, so if you see me, come and say hello.

"More women drinking beer" - Sainsbury's

Borrowed from Lipstick On The Rim 

In 2002, Gordon Brown introduced Progressive Beer Duty, which allowed smaller breweries to pay less tax on their products. While it is not without its critics, for instance that it creates a glass ceiling because brewers will stop expanding when they are just below the point at which the higher rate of tax is payable, it is generally credited with being a significant factor in the huge increase in the number of microbreweries. According to Sainsbury’s, it has led to another interesting and unforeseen effect, that more women are drinking beer because, with more breweries, there are more varieties that appeal to women.

Sainsbury’s beer buyer Nicky Millington said, ‘There has definitely been a rise in women trying beers as there are a whole load of new tastes such as espresso, mocha, lemon, ginger and honey which appeal to them more than the traditional brown ales.’ She added that there were also more women working in brewing.

I find this interesting, although she does seem to be suggesting that the way to get women drinking beer is via novelty ales. But if beer is not seen as a monoculture, if the perception is that there is a variety of different flavours to be had, that must be a good thing. Flavoured beers aren’t going to displace the more conventional ales that many of us usually drink. But even I enjoyed a pint of honey beer at the Ship Beer, Pie and Sausage Festival in Lathom last week.

One thought has just occurred to me that there seem to be fewer silly sexist names and pumpclips that in my view discourage some women from trying beer by strongly implying it’s a drink for the lads. It’s a fairly modern phenomenon that beer was treated as a male drink – I blame the 1960s, when women were supposed to drink silly, girly drinks like Pony and Babycham, or grudgingly be bought “just a half of lager”. So perhaps the artifical distinctions between male and female drinking tastes are diminishing, which is good for beer diversity. 

As for Progressive Beer Duty, it may not be perfect but by encouraging the brewing of a greater diversity of beers, the favourable effects far outweigh the undesirable. And this story is unusual in being a positive example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The full story is here.

New Year beer stories

A headline shouts:  "Charity says giving up alcohol for a month is futile", which sounds rather final and damning.  It turns out that the British Liver Trust says it's better from the point of view of your liver's health to take a few days off alcohol a week throughout the entire year than remaining abstinent for January only, which isn't quite so prescriptive.  It's what most people do in my experience anyway; I can't think of anyone who drinks seven days a week during every week of the year.  The full story is here. 

There are of course many reasons other than health why people go on the wagon, such as losing weight, saving money, taking it easy after a frantic Christmas break, making time to do jobs around the house, etc., and none of these reasons is futile.  In this case, the strident headline is somewhat at odds with the actual message, and I wouldn't be surprised if some drinkers reading the headline only might conclude there's no point in giving up at all, which surely isn't what was intended.  These people need to learn that the message itself is often not enough; how you deliver it can be equally important.

Another news story is about the woman who stole a 24 pack of beer by hiding it under her skirt.  You can see the CCTV here:

Drunken disorder - all in the mind

When I was a student, it used to interest me seeing how the various student tribes handled their drink.  At the extremes, the PE students would all sit around in track suits singing rugby songs - I got fed up of hearing the tedious and rambling misfortunes of Constable Peckham - and the drama students would become even more luvvy-ish than usual.  The politicos would sit in corners to talk about the latest international trouble spot, say things like, "It's all happening in Nicaragua", and sup their Greenall Whitley while waiting for the revolution.

If the media caricature of the effects of alcohol had any basis in reality, there shouldn't have been these marked differences in behaviour and instead you'd expect a lot of trouble and fighting, but in fact that was rare.  I formed the view a long time ago that people develop certain habits about drinking quite early on and tend to stick with them, meaning that a lager lout of 20 years ago may well be a saga lout in 20 years' time. 

Kate Fox

I was therefore interested to see this notion supported in an article by social anthropologist Kate Fox, who says:  "The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol."  In other words, if we think we should get aggressive after drinking, then that's what will happen.  Similarly, if we think we should get flirty, then that will happen too, and so on. 

I do recall reading in the 1970s that some researchers asked young lager drinkers to take part in a bogus study and their reward was as much tinned lager as they wanted, which of course was the real research. The drinkers didn't know the lager was alcohol-free and they began to behave as though they were getting drunk.

Kate Fox explains why all our alcohol education programmes are self-defeating - the old Law of Unintended Consequences again - and asserts: "If I were given total power, I could very easily engineer a nation in which coffee would become a huge social problem - a nation in which young people would binge-drink coffee every Friday and Saturday night and then rampage around town centres being anti-social, getting into fights and having unprotected sex in random one-night stands."  She then tells us how she'd do this - it's quite funny, but utterly credible.

Her article also prompts the thought that the excessive penalties heaped upon the heads of licensees who serve under age drinkers only prevent young people from developing acceptable patterns of behaviour in controlled environments, instead sending them to shape their own drinking habits with the help of super-strength lagers, ciders and vodka, heavily influenced by hysterical and inaccurate propaganda about the effects of booze on behaviour.  That old law again.

 

I wonder if the pretend charity Alcohol Concern has read her article?  I doubt they'd want to because in around 1400 words she completely demolishes their entire strategy, which is almost completely funded by public money - now even more obviously a complete waste, especially in the current economic climate.

Beer rip off ~ no surprises there!

A study carried out by the GMB union shows that the price of beer is far higher than can be justified by inflation and taxation alone, and blames the sky-high rents charged by the property/pub companies who own a huge number of pubs.  It estimates that lager drinkers are charged an excess 80p, while the figure for ale drinkers is 65p.  The article is here. 

It's clear to me that pub companies don't really care whether a pub succeeds or not; if it fails, then they have a valuable piece of property to sell.  When brewers owned most of the pubs, they needed them as an outlet for their products and it wasn't in their interest for their pubs to fail.  Then came the Beer Orders of 20 years ago that by forcing breweries to sell most of their pubs created the present situation which has perhaps the most stupid business model going, one that has no incentive to succeed and which rewards failure.  The Beer Orders were supported by CAMRA at the time, which with hindsight was a magnificent own goal, and another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.  

It's not really news, but it's interesting in a depressing sort of way to have one's opinions confirmed. 

If you wish, you can find out how much beer has gone up above inflation since you bought your first pint by using the historical price converter in the right hand column.  I entered the price of a pint of bitter in the year I went to college (13p in 1972); if beer had increased only by inflation since then, a pint would be £1.30 today!

A Blighted Panorama

I've just watched a Panorama programme about alcohol misuse, called predictably Dying For A Drink (available here for 9 more days).  Much of the programme concentrated on alcoholics, some of whom regularly drank 20 pints a day, or a bottle of vodka plus beer, or super-strength ciders.  Such levels of consumption maintained on an almost daily basis are indeed shocking, but are in no way typical of the kind of drinking we are likely to see in our local pub.  Drinking levels are actually falling in Britain, but the impression was clearly given that we are being swamped by a relentless tide of increasing misuse.  Alcohol is cheap, we were told, despite the fact that our beer duty is second highest in the EU.  Alcohol is too readily available: well, who allowed supermarkets to sell alcohol throughout the store, thus encouraging impulse buying, rather than in a discrete off licence section where under age sales could be much more easily monitored?  The government, of course, in one of its previous fits of deregulation and "burning of red tape".*

It's true that drinking behaviours, particularly among young people, can be very different nowadays.  For a night out, as students we used to meet in the pub or college bar at around 7.30 pm and take it from there.  Young people nowadays often preload before leaving home, and then go on to bars and then clubs.  Why?

• The price of alcohol in pubs and clubs is much higher in real terms than in the past, especially after the excessive tax increases of recent years.  If beer had increased only by normal inflation since 1972, the year I went to college, a pint of bitter would cost around £1.40.  Drinking in pubs is not a cheap activity, so preloading cuts the high cost of a night out.*
• The zealous drives against under age drinking mean that young people can't go to pubs and learn what is and isn't acceptable behaviour from older drinkers.  I first bought beer in a pub when I was 16; the last thing I wanted to do was to draw attention to myself by behaving wrongly, so I tried to fit in.  But nowadays, a lot of young people are developing their own approach to drinking free of any scrutiny, and often choose high strength drinks, which they do not have the experience or capacity to cope with.* 

Several people in the programme referred to drinking vodka by the bottle.  In alcohol terms, that's 15 pints of ordinary beer, but in its effects a lot more because it's concentrated into a pint and a quarter of liquid that can be knocked back quickly.  I have never seen anyone drink a bottle of vodka in a pub, so such vodka misuse must be taking place at home or in the park where there are no controls whatsoever.  This means that the fanatical enforcement of under age drinking laws in pubs is itself actually driving young people into unsupervised consumption of very strong drinks.*  As an aside, I can't understand why council officials who use under age people to entrap pubs into selling them alcohol aren't themselves guilty of inciting an offence.

This programme is clearly part of a campaign to foster moral panic about drinking in the hope that the very act will be seen as antisocial or even deviant, leading to a decline in consumption, but the consequence is more likely to be even more home drinking, which has shown a steady increase over the last 20 years.*  Moral panic is no way to deal with genuine problems because you generally get bad laws that backfire on you unexpectedly, and alcohol is no exception.  Besides, why the rush?  There have always been people who misuse alcohol; it's hardly a recent phenomenon, so surely we can take the time to address it properly, rather than adopt quick fixes that can do more harm than good.

This programme was big on tut tutting but didn't actually come up with any answers that will make a difference - just the usual anti-alcohol strategies, most of which have, I feel, contributed to the problem.  It was a missed opportunity.

* These are all examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences in action, and why I consider that anti-alcohol campaigns tend to be part of the problem, not the solution - not a point of view that the programme showed any awareness of in the slightest.

Minimum pricing for Scotland a step closer

Now that the SNP has won an overall majority in the Scottish parliament, one of its first priorities seems to be the minimum alcohol price proposal that was defeated by opposition parties when the parliament was hung.  There is a fairly wide-held view that such a proposal may be illegal under EU law; the Law Society of Scotland came out with this opinion earlier this year in March - you can read what they say here.  I personally would be wary of arguing a legal point with the Law Society, but the SNP is clearly made of sterner stuff than I am, and states that government lawyers have confirmed that the Scottish parliament does have the power.

A legal opinion is, of course, just an opinion, although one would hope an exceptionally well-informed one, but it's worth bearing in mind that all serious court cases have a lawyer on each side, and in every instance one out of the two will lose.  Remember also that Tony Bliar managed eventually to get a legal opinion that the invasion of Iraq was lawful, and yet millions regard him as a war criminal, myself included.

So where does this leave us with minimum pricing?  My view is that the SNP ministers are unconcerned about the legal position, especially as they have the go ahead from a government lawyer - from whom independent legal advice is guaranteed!  In other words, they intend to chance their arm.  After all, if they lose a European court case, it will be the Scottish taxpayer who pays, not the ministers responsible.  The trade association of the Scottish whisky industry has already said it will pursue legal options, and a couple years ago, at the request of the Scottish Labour MEP Ms Catherine Stihler, the European Commission responded to a question on minimum alcohol retail prices - you'll find it here.  I find it far from definitive and hedged with ifs and buts.  Nevertheless, the way I read it is that the SNP government doesn't have a completely free rein.  In the words of the song, "There may be troubles ahead", but I think the SNP will need more than music and moonlight to get this proposal through.

Then there is the law of unintended consequences. As the beer blogger Curmudgeon has written: "The sight of HGVs trundling cases of whisky from Scottish distilleries down the M74 to Carlisle ASDA, and white vans hauling them back again to Glasgow, would underline just how barmy the idea is." An unintended consequence, perhaps, but not unpredictable. 

It's funny, isn't it, how it never occurs to them to address the reasons why there might be a drink problem.  The thinking is, "This problem costs us £X million (pluck figure out of some computer projection), so we're going to get the big sticks out."  When there's a choice of a carrot or stick approach, most governments just reach for the stick for a whole range of problems, mainly because it is much cheaper to pass laws about them than it is to address their causes.

Farewell To Booze Cruises?

Apparently the appeal of the booze cruise is fading. I never knew anyone who actually went on one, but in the North West we're a long way from the South coast ports. Booze cruising had its biggest effect in the South East, with the local pub industry and Kent brewer Shepherd Neame vigorously complaining about the high rates of alcohol duty that encouraged this traffic and damaged their business - not that the government took the slightest notice of their campaign. Recently, however, several supermarkets in Calais, such as Tesco, Sainsbury's and Oddbins, have already closed, and others report steeply declining sales, so it looks as though trips across the Channel to stock up for parties, weddings or Christmas may be a thing of the past.

As well as the recession, several other reasons are suggested for the decline:

• The increasing cost of fuel.
• £75 average cost of return travel by Eurotunnel or ferry.
• Drop in supermarket prices in Britain, such as 3 bottles of wine for £10.
• The strength of the Euro against the pound.

However, if minimum pricing of alcohol is introduced, it may make booze cruises viable again, especially for people who live in the South East. The increase in VAT to 20% next January may do the same thing, and thus a measure to raise extra government revenue could actually succeed - except that the government concerned would be French! The old law of unintended consequences yet again.