Tim Worstall

Minimum alcohol price in Scotland to be set at 50p a unit A bottle of wine will be at least £4.69 and four cans of lager £3.52 under Scottish ministers’ proposals 1) It’s illegal. 2) If you want to raiwe the price of something why in buggery are you giving the profits to the producers [...]

[Read more →]

Mintel said that over six in ten adults over the age of 18 visit a pub regularly to drink. This is down from seven in ten people in 2007. The group found that more people visit pubs to eat than to drink. Three in ten people think it has been much more pleasant going to [...]

[Read more →]

In a letter broadcast on Channel 4 yesterday, MP David Willetts told the Prime Minister he considered the minimum unit pricing “very likely to be deemed illegal” under competition and trade law. The minister added the Attorney General had already written saying the policy “carries a significant degree of legal risk”. The letter is understood [...]

[Read more →]

Cells known as “drunk tanks” which detain inebriated people until they sober up could be introduced to towns to tackle the nation’s growing alcohol problem, David Cameron signals on Wednesday. Spray them with cold water while we’re at it and we can have the full Soviet experience. Drunk tanks, popular in America, are prisons used [...]

[Read more →]

Right off, you understand. An alert reader (be a lert, your blog needs lerts!) sent me this: According to Margaret Rhodes, the Queen’s cousin, HM’s alcohol intake never varies. She takes a gin and Dubonnet before lunch, with a slice of lemon and a lot of ice. She will take wine with lunch and a [...]

[Read more →]

Prime Minister David Cameron is known to have sympathy with the idea of minimum pricing, which medics say could save nearly 10,000 lives per year if set at 50p per unit. Gosh, that’s amazing. Alcohol related deaths in the UK rose to 9,031 in 2008, up from 8,724 the previous year. Rilly? A slight rise [...]

[Read more →]

You know, million peeps turning up at A&E each year with booze related injuries? Well, yes, it’s not booze related injuries, not A&E and it’s most certainly not patients. It’s admissions. The number of NHS patients who have to undergo emergency readmission to hospital within a month of being discharged has increased by more than [...]

[Read more →]

So Mr Potato Head has been convinced by the lies. The Prime Minister has ordered officials to develop a scheme in England to stop the sale of alcohol at below 40p to 50p a unit in shops and supermarkets. Ministers could copy Scottish proposals, which would ban the sale of alcohol below 45p a unit, [...]

[Read more →]

Researchers found people who live rough are likely to die more than 30 years earlier than the average British person. According to new figures homeless people will die in their 40s – men on average at 47 while women have a life expectancy of 43. The homeless life expectancy rate compares to that in the [...]

[Read more →]

About booze: Each year, alcohol causes the admission of over a million people to hospital, No, it does not. The measurement is actually the number of admissions, not the number of people admitted. Let us assume that we’ve got an alcoholic, one who tumbles over regularly when pissed. How many admissions will he have in [...]

[Read more →]

Still, every now and then one comes across a mercifully practical piece of parenting wisdom. The Australian psychologist Steve Biddulph recommends that, as soon as both parents arrive home from work, they should sit down together with a stiff drink. The alcohol, he says, will make them more relaxed – and thus better parents. You [...]

[Read more →]

This really is cretinous stupidity. The costs to our economy of productivity lost at work, together with the criminal justice and health bill, put the financial drain as high as £55bn. There is no such thing as a cheap drink; we are all paying a very heavy price. Sigh. Leave aside that this is simply [...]

[Read more →]

Figures last year suggested that binge-drinking injuries cost the NHS more than £2.7 billion a year. They showed that almost a million people a year were taken to hospital after drinking – a rise of 47 per cent since 2004. This isn’t actually what the figures show at all: The big (old) news is that there [...]

[Read more →]

The report by think tank 2020Health cites research showing that those drinking twice the recommended weekly limits increase their risk of liver disease sevenfold, mouth cancer fivefold and stroke threefold. For women, breast cancer risk doubles. Any potentially beneficial effects of alcohol, such as reducing the risk of a heart attack, are countered by the [...]

[Read more →]

People find that drinking wine helps them to relax more than spending time with their children We needed a survey to tell us this?

[Read more →]

Five men have been killed and another seriously injured in a huge explosion at a Boston industrial estate amid claims it was sparked by an illegal vodka making operation. Stick the tax up too high and people will homebrew. That people are homebrewing might be an indication that taxes are too high. It’s a general [...]

[Read more →]

Excellent piece here. What do you do with alcoholics who don’t want to be cured? Get them off the streets of course, out of the emergency rooms, stop arrresting and jailing them. Put them in a “wet house”. Just like sheltered living for addicts who want to get off the juice, but let them drink [...]

[Read more →]

The cost of alcohol to British society is currently estimated at over £25bn per annum. This is not just the health costs, but also costs relating to crime and disorder, including domestic violence and fights and accidents on the streets. Health workers see the personal costs; we see the fractured families, the individual tragedies of [...]

[Read more →]

Heineken announcing this week that it is reducing the strength of “a leading brand” – thought to be the cider Strongbow – by 1pc alcohol by volume, from 5.3pc to 4.3pc as “just the start” of attempts to lower the alcoholic content of its drinks; I’m sure they’re entirely happy to do this. For booze [...]

[Read more →]

So, the latest booze scare: Sir Richard Thompson, President of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “How many more people have to die from alcohol-related conditions, and how many more families devastated by the consequences before the Government takes the situation as seriously as it took the dangers of tobacco? “We already know from the [...]

[Read more →]