Ed West: A Word In Your Shell-Like

On Tuesday, I asked a question.

Who wants to pay more for their own goods because a very few are irresponsible?

So what's the difference with minimum alcohol pricing? No, really, I mean it. Why are so many average, everyday, non-righteous in most circumstances, people taken in by this crap?

As if by magic, up pops the Telegraph's normally rational Ed West.

I doubt anyone questions any more that alcohol abuse is a serious issue in Britain

I do, Ed. You see, alcohol consumption has mostly been falling for a decade.

I can see I'm going to have to update that graph to properly show the sustained downward direction of the line according to ONS figures.

[...] there are undiscovered tribes in the Amazon aware of how awful British city centres are at night. It is not just the health statistics Nice can effortlessly produce, showing the number of deaths caused by alcohol or of the various other social ill-effects – it’s the site (sic) of derelict men in high streets and the shrieks at half-eleven as jollity turns sour.

And yet again we see the misdirection of town centre anti-social behaviour being used to justify a minimum alcohol price. Despite the two being entirely unrelated, again covered here on Tuesday.

The public has been suckered into believing the twin menace of a tangible cost to their own finances via national insurance contributions, and a threat of alcohol-fuelled violence to them and theirs.

The former is imaginary, and the latter isn't the prime target of minimum alcohol pricing.

Even NICE didn't claim it to be so in their carpet-propagandising this week.

Hook, line and sinker, Ed.