MPs Agreed On Denormalising Beer, Wine, And Spirits

While Old Holborn was delivering the public response to the consequences of previous dictatorial legislation, MPs were engaged in nearly four fucking hours of discussion on how to bring us all further under authoritarian control.

If you have time, read the whole debate, but this shit should come with a health warning. They really are, with but a few honourable exceptions, hideous bastards.

David Cameron has stated that, however much he opposed legislation in the past, he isn't going to do anything about it once enacted.

“I don’t like bans. I don’t like the hunting ban, I don’t like smacking bans and I don’t like smoking bans.

"I’m just not a banner. But you know, I think the country has moved on, and people have accepted the smoking ban.”

So, on reading this, there should be some very scared drinks industry execs and beer lovers. The operative word there is 'should'.

They have moved on all right, the devastation they have caused is set in stone. They don't give a shit anymore as, like spoilt (overpaid) brats, they are used to getting their own way.

It's time for the next target, as I always said would happen, and the cross hair is firmly targeted on alcohol.

Here are the highlights of yesterday's commons debate, as MP after MP jumped up to enthusiastically treat us all like naughty little kids.

Disgusting bansturbator, Kevin Barron (a cunt of the first water who believes in making laws without reference to voters), kicked off proceedings by suggesting our life choices are wrong because they don't reflect those of 1947 when the country was still being rationed.

In 1947, the nation consumed approximately 3.5 litres of pure alcohol per head; the current figure is 9.5 litres.

Kev says we are drinking more than he dictates we should be.

General Household Survey data from 2006 show that 31 per cent. of men are drinking hazardously, consuming more than 21 units per week

So, drink more than 8 cans of Stella per week, for example, and you must be tackled. You're hazardous.

As you can imagine, with such a low bar to prove to each other that 'something must be done', the scope for wild exaggeration and mutual panic was huge.

Barron, incredibly, has decided that your bottle of spirits should cost more. A fucking hell of a lot more, in fact.

According to calculations undertaken by the Treasury at the Committee's request, for our report, if the duty on a bottle of spirits had increased since the early 1980s at the same rate as earnings, it would now be £62.

Now, I've mentioned before that Labour keep pointing to the difference in affordability of alcohol between the past and now. And that 1980 tends to be their chosen benchmark.

£62 for a bottle of gin? Can they seriously be suggesting that? Well, Nicola Sturgeon (she of the minimum alcohol pricing legislation) talks quite a bit about affordability in 1980 too, and we tend to follow where the thistle-munchers lead. No?

And may I just take this moment to remind you of this from last month.

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is under strong pressure from 10 Downing Street to "make an example" of whisky, gin and vodka drinkers when he makes his Commons statement next month.

A bottle of Bells whisky could rise from £14.79 to £23.73 while Gordon's gin, another favourite of middle-class drinkers, would increase from £12.79 to £21.17.

I think we are more clear where this is going now, aren't we?

Luton Labour MP, Kelvin Hopkins, is so enraged that he is quite happy to flout EU regulations to stop you benefitting from their favourable tax rates.

We should restore the former limits on alcohol imports that we used to have and rigidly enforce them.

Some people might say, "Well, it would upset the European Union," but I am not terribly worried about upsetting the European Union if it means protecting the health and lives of our citizens. If the same people said, "I'm sorry, but it's all about the free market. You've got to allow cheap alcohol to come in," I would say, "Well, tough. We're not going to." We could have a derogation from the legislation or whatever we needed.

He hasn't the balls to stand up to the EU on Lisbon, but when it comes to your freedoms, he is right there at the front of the queue.

John Grogan, yet another Labour wanker, recommends exempting alcohol from competition legislation to facilitate minimum pricing.

It is within the Government's power to pass an order under one of the Competition Acts, in this House and the other place, exempting the alcohol sector from those restrictions.

[...] in terms of competition law, only this House-as I understand it-could exempt the Scottish Government or, indeed the UK Government, from that law in a way that would make the position legally watertight. I hope that will happen.

The unintended consquences should be evident. But this matter is so mouth-frothingly urgent for these quite astoundingly stupid fucknuckles, that I'm not sure it has even lit up (dimly, of course, they are MPs) on their highly-paid and numerously-staffed radar.

Oh. Sorry. Did my preponderance in highlighting Labour MPs give you the impression that the Tories and Lib Dems will somehow be different?

Silly me.

Here's Lib Dem Greg Mulholland on the matter.

I agree fundamentally with the main conclusion of the Committee's report, which is that we should introduce a minimum price for alcohol.

And the Tories seem to be falling over themselves too, according to Wirral West authoritarian prick, Stephen Hesford.

In a recent Statutory Instrument Committee, we considered the five new tests mentioned today by Dr. Taylor. The Tory Front-Bench spokesperson on that Committee said that it was absolutely the Conservative policy to support minimum pricing.

The only problem with minimum pricing that Kevin Barron can see is that the evil drinks industry will do quite well out of it.

Of course, without an increase in duty, minimum pricing would lead to an increase in the profits of supermarkets and the drinks industry.

To increase profits in that way would not be helpful.

Those nasty drinks companies, eh? Kev wants the price increased but not if it profits the newly-anointed demon now the tobacco version has been righteously slain. Only the state must profit from telling you what to do in your life. It is decreed.

This is a steamrollering beast to the drinks industry. It is gaining momentum exponentially by the day. So are they taking it seriously yet? Of course not, they are still in the appeasement stage.

No chance. Appeasing these weapons grade cock sockets only gives them more ammunition. No, seriously.

Step forward Dartford MP, Howard Stoate (Labour, natch), to explain how.

In choosing voluntarily to remove its logo from child-size replica Rangers and Celtic shirts two years ago, Carling more or less admitted that the association between the clubs and the brand had a direct and positive influence upon young people's attitudes towards the Carling brand. Mark Hunter, the chief executive of Coors, Carling's parent company, said at the time:

"Coors and the Old Firm clubs have a long track-record in working together to champion responsible drinking. This means ensuring that sponsorship is not improperly targeted at people under the legal drinking age and using the combination of one of the UK's leading brands and football to promote responsible consumption by adults."

Carling is perfectly content, however, for that same group of young people to watch Rangers and Celtic on TV or in person at Ibrox or Parkhead, with every player's shirt in the whole stadium festooned with the Carling logo. That apparently does not constitute "improper targeting" in the eyes of either Carling, the clubs or the football authorities. If there is logic there, I am afraid I cannot spot it.

Well done, Coors. You tried doing as you felt appropriate to ingratiate yourselves with parliament, and their response is to treat it as an admission of guilt.

Don't give the bastards an inch. You're already considered evil and there is nothing you can do to convince these people otherwise. They have read the anti-tobacco manual, you see (Stoate again).

We have been there before with the tobacco industry, which claimed that it could behave, advertise and promote responsibly-but that simply did not work. It flew in the face of common sense to think that it would, because what it was really interested in was making profits.

This fond belief that the industry can promote itself does not bear much examination.

The drinks equivalent of the Master Settlement Agreement can't be far away at this rate. Don't say you haven't been warned. Voluntary never stays that way, compulsory always ensues.

We've seen this all before. You're not an industry supplying consumers anymore, merely heartless killers peddling death. Got that?

The only thing the drinks industry can do is to fight back. Not by appeasing, not by appealing, but by objecting in the strongest terms.

The war has already been declared. The only option is to match every pound spent by government on anti-alcohol advertising with two that highlight how the state is seeking to denormalise another legal, and popular, product.

Hit the MPs hard now. After the expenses debacle there is no better time. The iron has never been hotter. DARE them to ban your highly visible rebuttal. There isn't much time. Spend your advertising budget, and that of future years, now or you may never have one again.

But will the drinks industry even countenance such an approach? I think we know the answer, don't we?

I see Wilkinson's are doing a nice line in home brew.

I'll leave the last word on this astonishing debate to the appalling Kevin Barron.

I cannot tell my children what to do now: they are all grown up and two have children themselves.

But he feels quite within his rights to tell all other adults in this country what to do.

His own kids are able to make their own choices, but not you.

One rule etc.