Price not the problem

We had some po-faced academic on the radio banging on yet again about how we should all be paying more for our alcohol - pushing this 50p a unit mantra - all to prevent people drinking themselves to death.

No one has yet admitted what will happen to all the extra cash that will come in if the already heavily taxed booze if hiked in price again but I suspect that the Treasury has already bought a new piggy bank which is ready just in case.

Now my experience of hardened drinkers - and I have known a few includng an alcoholic relative - is that price is not even considered in the equation of obtaining the next drink.

And when it comes to the drunken gangs of binge drinkers spraying the pavements of Broad Street with carrot pebble dash then it is not the cheap lager from the local Asda but expensive bar priced booze they have been pouring down their necks.

I have said before and will say again that France, Spain, Portugal and so on have much cheaper booze than we do yet don't have the problems we seem to get with drunkeness.

All of which tends to indicate that it is not the price of alcohol that is the problem so much as the price we are paying for this Government.