Saturday 4 April 2009

Teetotal day 28, verging on 29: the cost of alcohol.

Strong tea. Mug after mug today (Scottish Blend), consumed with great lip-smacking, soul-quenching relish.

Extraordinary piece in The Guardian by Chris Paling, a diary of his 30-odd days in a hospital ward specialising in alcohol-related stomach and liver complaints. Disturbing, especially as I've been daydreaming about a moderate return to imbibing come day 31, which is Tuesday.

Hmmm...perhaps not. Even with a large chunk of the family in Pisa, quaffing Frascati...

I do think the proposed 50p per unit minimum price for alcohol is absolutely justified. The argument that it somehow discriminates against 'sensible' drinkers is complete tosh. A 50 per unit bottle of wine is less than £6. It's only once wine gets above a fiver a bottle that you start paying a reasonable amount for the actual wine, as opposed to tax. Fifty pence a unit discriminates against insensible drinkers. Or to be exact, folk who use alcohol as a convenient anaesthetic/social lubricant, and don't really care about the taste.

Discrimination is the key. We should all be connoisseurs!

1 comment:

Bill said...

On balance, I think I agree with you on unit pricing. It wouldn't affect the price of a pint in the pub but it would hit the mad white ciders and Tennant's commotion lotion. How the people who market this stuff can live with themselves escapes me. "Enjoy Tennant's Super responsibly"? Yeah, right.