booze hike

[Leothebear]

I wonder how the price rise has been received in bonney Scotland. I suppose the worst hit will be the lower income folk, rather than the likes of our Snorvey (who's a wine drinker) so I wonder how they'll react to this being done because 'it's good for them.'

[Dod101]

I think it may be a bit early to say but I think it may be a good thing although surely the Government could have organised things so that the extra went into their coffers rather than the retailers. Now there is talk of banning drinking in public and so on, a bit like the war on tobacco. It is all a bit nanny statish.

I suspect that Westminster will find this is a good idea as well but I hope that Hammond can devise a tax as per my previous comment.

Dod

[stevensfo]

Now there is talk of banning drinking in public and so on, a bit like the war on tobacco. It is all a bit nanny statish.

Not only that, but I think that this habit of over-drinking, getting legless, causing trouble etc is very much a cultural thing and extremely difficult to control simply by increasing prices. In France and Italy, alcohol is incredibly cheap and you can even buy bottles of 95% alcohol in the supermarkets. Yet, it's very rare to see people drunk. Teenage boys are under pressure to appear 'cool' and this means not being seen drunk, especially by potential girlfriends!

No doubt people will start making their own wine as I did as a student, then experiment with distilling.

Steve

PS We have bottles of gin, vodka and whisky in our Lidl for about 6 euros. Great for removing paint!

[bungeejumper]

Never been on a booze hike. I've survived a few pub crawls, though.

BJ

[UncleIan]

Never been on a booze hike. I've survived a few pub crawls, though.

I've been on a Real Ale Train a fair few times. Recommended, if you like real ale and steam trains.

[Beerpig]

I am totally against this because It will hit the poorest hardest. Many poor people have little other release from the monotony of life and consuming alcohol is high on their scale of preferences. Do the government really think that increasing the unit price will deter hard drinkers from drinking?
It just means they will spend less on other things and become even poorer.

The Scottish public will not thank the government for it and I'm not surprised Westminster is monitoring the situation rather than jumping in.
The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.
Gladstone blamed his 1874 election defeat on the consequences of interfering in the licensed trade.
'We have been borne down in a torrent of gin and beer' he wrote to his brother.

If people want to drink, don't penalise them for it.
Advise, warn, inform but don't tell people what to do.

[bungeejumper]

I am totally against this because It will hit the poorest hardest. Many poor people have little other release from the monotony of life and consuming alcohol is high on their scale of preferences. Do the government really think that increasing the unit price will deter hard drinkers from drinking?
It just means they will spend less on other things and become even poorer.

Hmmm, there was some Scottish hospital bod on the ten o'clock news last night saying that whenever alcohol prices rose (in Scotland), alcohol-related admissions declined, and when they fell the admissions increased, and that the relationship between the two was clear. So either he was statistically correct on his facts or he wasn't.

It should be possible to establish that. Would inform the debate, I suspect?

BJ

[Dod101]

BJ

Yes the guy was a liver specialist I think and he sounded convincing. I doubt that he was making it up but that of course was only his experience. Anything to improve this binge drinking culture we have has got to be worth a try. I am fundamentally against a nanny state and have no sympathy for the SNP but a bit like the cigarette restrictions (which have done what was intended) something needs to be done and if education and exhortation are failures then I am afraid that increasing the price is the only alternative.

But I would like to see the price hike going into the tax coffers.

Dod

[kiloran]

BJ
But I would like to see the price hike going into the tax coffers.

Dod

How would that be done? Previously, a 1L bottle of Gordon's gin was anything from £19 down to £15 on special offer at various supermarkets. It must now be a minimum of £20. So what is the price hike..... £1? £5? How can you measure the price hike? What would be the cost of administering the tax collection? It's not like an across-the-board tax.

Common sense tells me that increasing the price will reduce sales. However, I also think that the reduction in sales will be lost in the noise of all of the other variables, so nobody will ever know if the minimum price has had any effect. Some years ago, the SNP banned alcohol sales before 10am. I bet nobody knows what effect that has had (other than rile me because I tend to do our weekly shop before 10am)

I think it's just typical SNP.... make lots of noise and tinker around the edges with no real effect, like their over-complication of income tax rates

--kiloran

[dionaeamuscipula]

Common sense tells me that increasing the price will reduce sales.

The elasticity of demand on alcohol is very low.

Drinking alcohol is nuts. We mainly know the health and social costs of drinking alcohol yet around 80% of adults do so. As I have said before I suspect that future generations will look at our alcohol consumption much as we look at previous generations consumption of tobacco.

DM

[Meatyfool]

Any news yet North of the Border of road trips to England to stock up on cheap booze?

It isn't a certainty that it will happen in large volumes. I live 30 mins from Dover but haven't been for cheap booze in France for a long time.

Meatyfool..

[swill453]

Any news yet North of the Border of road trips to England to stock up on cheap booze?

It isn't a certainty that it will happen in large volumes. I live 30 mins from Dover but haven't been for cheap booze in France for a long time.

The Scottish gov. know this will happen to an extent, as will illicit alcohol production, and they don't seem to be proposing any specific action to prevent it. But they still think it's worthwhile to do for the beneficial effect on health.

Scott.

[bungeejumper]

My apologies, Beerpig, I quoted you just now and then didn't have the common ordinary decency to engage with your point. My bad.

I am totally against this because It will hit the poorest hardest. Many poor people have little other release from the monotony of life and consuming alcohol is high on their scale of preferences. Do the government really think that increasing the unit price will deter hard drinkers from drinking? It just means they will spend less on other things and become even poorer.

You may be right on that point. One could say the same about heroin junkies who'll take the kids' food money to feed their own habits because the dope takes away the spiritual pain as well as the physical stuff. (I once spent a week on morphine-grade codeine, and I can confirm that it does indeed work like that. You feel safe and warm. An awkward truth, but there we are.)

And the better-off are not going to b susceptible to price anyway. I know a family (near to me in Wiltshire, but hailing from Edinburgh as it happens) whose lives have been completely smashed up by alcohol. Good, honest, well-qualified professional people, but they can't/couldn't leave it at one bottle of dinner wine where three or four would feel better. Hospitals, divorces, written off cars, and (in one daughter's case) having her children taken away from her. So desperately sad.

The health experts will be well enough aware that you won't stop the hard-line booze addicts by raising the price of drink, but that still leaves everybody else who might be teetering on the edge of dependency, but haven't fallen over it yet. Still a cause worth fighting for.

BJ

[Slarti]

Any news yet North of the Border of road trips to England to stock up on cheap booze?

It isn't a certainty that it will happen in large volumes. I live 30 mins from Dover but haven't been for cheap booze in France for a long time.

Meatyfool..

The cost of getting across the channel is much higher than that of driving to Berwick or Carlisle. And with less hassle from Customs on the border.


Slarti

[melonfool]

Common sense tells me that increasing the price will reduce sales.

The elasticity of demand on alcohol is very low.

Drinking alcohol is nuts. We mainly know the health and social costs of drinking alcohol yet around 80% of adults do so. As I have said before I suspect that future generations will look at our alcohol consumption much as we look at previous generations consumption of tobacco.

DM

Yeah, they just use coke.

Mel

[vrdiver]

An example given on the news last night was of a 2L bottle of cider going from £2.50 to £7.50.

The target consumer for this beverage is unlikely to be mobile enough (or organised enough!) to go on a long-distance shopping trip that might reasonably require forward thinking and budget planning (i.e. to buy a week, if not a month's worth of booze).

Of course, there's nothing to stop shady entrepreneurs doing the booze run and then selling on at a profit, Cider just joined the list of street drugs...

I'm with Dod re the lost government revenue: if they'd slapped a tax on a unit of alcohol all drinks would have been hit, but the premium drinks less so, percentage-wise. As has been mentioned, it's not just the poor that drink, so a general negative pressure on consumption wouldn't really be such a bad thing, assuming that producers/retailers passed all of it on to consumers.

Perhaps the avoidance of the general tax on booze was in deference to their voting base, rather than an assessment of the health effects?

VRD

[vrdiver]

Yeah, they just use coke.

Mel

Pepsi is also available...

VRD

[Dod101]

Kiloran et al. vrdriver has more or less answered your question and I suppose that is the only way it could be done. Presumably Tesco etc will now be able to increase the price of say Bells from its current level of around £14 since that apparently reflects the minimum price for a 70cl bottle, otherwise the own brands of whisky would just die a death.

I am no supporter of the SNP and to that extent I certainly agree with Kiloran's comments but the smoking changes were a good thing I think and the booze culture is mostly thoroughly anti social.(One reason why I do not hold Diageo shares) I could easily be like the family that vrdriver describes (well not on wine) because mostly I am from the 'three are too many and four are not enough' school. I comfort myself that I cannot be an alcoholic because if I over indulge I will not drink again for a week!

Dod

[swill453]

Kiloran et al. vrdriver has more or less answered your question and I suppose that is the only way it could be done. Presumably Tesco etc will now be able to increase the price of say Bells from its current level of around £14 since that apparently reflects the minimum price for a 70cl bottle, otherwise the own brands of whisky would just die a death.

It would be fairly immoral and greedy of them to increase the price of any alcoholic drinks that they aren't actually obliged to. And the initial evidence is that they haven't (Tesco - Grouse whisky £15 per 70cl bottle in both England and Scotland. 1 litre bottle on special offer at £16 in England, is £20 in Scotland because of minimum unit pricing).

I reckon the own brands will die a death, in Scotland.

Scott.

[Dod101]

But the supermarkets are greedy and immoral if they can get away with it.

Dod