Wednesday 13 March 2013

Pretty, pretty good

By now, I'm sure you will have heard the news that was first reported by the BBC last night and apparently confirmed today...

Sources have confirmed to the Telegraph that the Coalition will not attempt to implement the Prime Minister’s plan for a 45p per unit minimum price.

This is still not official, but Sarah Wollaston went into full "help me, I'm melting" mode last night on Twitter so I guess she knows something. She's since appeared on television repeating the lie that alcohol costs the NHS and the police £21 billion a year to deal with. In fact, these costs are much lower than this and are amply covered by alcohol duty. Even if this were not so, minimum pricing would put a further cost on the population without raising any more tax revenue.

The shadow home office minister, Labour non-entity Diana Johnson, has accused Cameron of "weak leadership" which is a bit rich when you read her own evasive and wishy-washy statement on minimum pricing. But the former shadow home secretary, David Davis, really seems to get it...

"It won’t just hit those, it’ll hit poor people. It’ll hit people in the north. It’ll hit the pensioner having their one bottle of wine a week; it’ll hit the hard-up couple doing the same. It’s going to cost…it’s going to transfer £1billion from the public to the people who sell alcohol, and it’s not going to work.

Unusually for a politician, David understands that medics should not be lawmakers and that their evidence is suspect...

“If I wanted medical advice I’d go to a medic. This is a social policy issue: it’s much more complex than saying put the price up and we’ll stop it... The medics are not evidence. The medics are making an argument; they’re not actually presenting evidence to show that this works. I’ve not seen anywhere that this works.”

After Stanton Glanz's bollocking and the court decision on Bloomberg's soda ban, this is turning out to be a pretty good week. Plus it's No Smoking Day today and the government hasn't used it as an excuse to pass more draconian anti-smoking laws. Oh, and that crank Aseem Malhotra has been pulled up for getting his facts wrong again. Happy days.






7 comments:

proglodyte said...

'Plus it's No Smoking Day today and the government hasn't used it as an excuse to pass more draconian anti-smoking laws.'

No, but the ditched minimum pricing plan will be compensated by the implementation of plain packaging It's political, they were in danger of pissing off too many voters with MP. They'll take a gamble over PP and probably weather the fallout. Is there any real evidence that Nu-Labour was seriously helped on its way by disgruntled smokers pissed off by the ban? As far as I can make out most simply accepted their fate, having swallowed the bullshit lie hook, line and sinker.

To be perfectly honest, smokers needed a major assault on drinkers to highlight how non elected Public Health orgs are determined to erode personal freedoms. And routinely lie in order to do so.

Ivan D said...

You do wonder how Wollaston managed to become a candidate let alone an MP. I know we talk about politicians being less than honest but political parties are generally bright enough to avoid recruiting people who are such obvious serial liars. She is of course further proof that medics should stick to medicine as they are absolutely useless outside their field of expertise.

Sarah said...

The Independent's Steven Richards is bemoaning the fact that minimum pricing has been dumped. He doesn't get it either. He believes the vast majority should pay because of an irresponsible minority.

Surprisingly, he has more 'Strongly Agree' votes than Disagree votes. Independent readers are bizarre.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/it-looked-like-the-cabinet-would-act-against-instinct-on-alcohol-pricing-what-a-shame-it-didnt-8532306.html

Jonathan Bagley said...

Something mysterious goes on at medical school. School swots turn into arrogant know-it-alls. Perhaps they have lectures from a reincarnation of this chap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVWjAeAa52o

Fierce Rabbit said...

Well, if you are going to put people through the bother of years and years of study at medical school, you might as well put them in charge of running the country. They must be experts after all.

nisakiman said...

A client of mine is a recently retired doctor (GP), and he told me that when he was at med school (which must have been in the late sixties, I guess) they were comprehensively brainwashed with anti-smoking propaganda. I can only imagine that it has increased in its intensity over the subsequent years, hence the total antipathy of the medical profession in general to smoking.

I mailed him several links to original research (on the subjects of SHS and smoker mortality, I think) and he was quite amusingly grateful, being a bit of a closet roll-up man! He'd been trying to convince himself to want to give up, but after reading the links I sent decided to abandon the attempt and just enjoy the pleasures of tobacco.

Ivan D said...

The reaction of Independent readers is atypical and BBC readers were still giving the policy the thumbs down yesterday.

I suspect that it was more to do with Tory bashing than anything else. Even Milliband managed to "win" at playground politics because the government scored yet another own goal, not by making a u-turn but by listening to the public health lefties in the first place. Even Gordon Brown had the sense to have nothing to do with this stupid idea when he was in office.