A centralised approach to alcohol pricing won’t stop the binge drinkers, says Kevin Hawkins
"Sell-out to the drinks industry!" sums up the reaction of the neo-prohibitionists to the government's proposals for minimum alcohol prices.
The editor of The Grocer, never one to resist a trend, called them "wet and jelly-like", an epithet he also stuck on the big society.
We now hear voices in our industry extolling the virtues of definitive regulation in preference to voluntary action. Having moaned for years about the "burdens of regulation" under the previous government, the prospect of more freedom (and, to date, that's all it is) seems less attractive to them than it once did.
First, we should draw a clear distinction between the top-down "initiative" industry generated by successive governments, with its bevy of costly quangos, consultants and ad campaigns, and the kind of bottom-up action of the big society. The centralised model assumes nanny knows best, always, everywhere. The bottom-up approach rests on the belief that those nearest to the final consumer are best placed to know what works.
Localism in concept directly challenges decades of creeping centralisation and therefore requires huge political will to make it work. Not surprisingly, Whitehall is resisting its application. Meanwhile, most voters still expect governments to solve all our social and economic problems and business says it feels comfortable with the "certainty" of regulation. As Edmund Burke observed, "Custom reconciles us to everything". Complex patters of human behaviour, however, tend to resist legal definition and remedy.
There is no common analysis, for example, of why people eat and drink to excess, still less is there a consensus on how to dissuade them from doing so. Some foods whose health benefits were once held to be scientifically proven have since been dethroned. Binge drinking among 15 to 24-year-olds is a problem common to many EU states, including some like Spain with very different drinking cultures from our own.
The UK government is relying on pricing up alcohol, not by interfering with legitimate competition but via duty and VAT presumably to the level at which diminishing returns begin to set in. This is a simple but crude centralist weapon, which is reducing total consumption without apparently curbing individual excess.
The clamour for more drastic top-down action is an irrelevance. Let's think locally for a change.
Kevin Hawkins is an independent retail analyst.
"Sell-out to the drinks industry!" sums up the reaction of the neo-prohibitionists to the government's proposals for minimum alcohol prices.
The editor of The Grocer, never one to resist a trend, called them "wet and jelly-like", an epithet he also stuck on the big society.
We now hear voices in our industry extolling the virtues of definitive regulation in preference to voluntary action. Having moaned for years about the "burdens of regulation" under the previous government, the prospect of more freedom (and, to date, that's all it is) seems less attractive to them than it once did.
First, we should draw a clear distinction between the top-down "initiative" industry generated by successive governments, with its bevy of costly quangos, consultants and ad campaigns, and the kind of bottom-up action of the big society. The centralised model assumes nanny knows best, always, everywhere. The bottom-up approach rests on the belief that those nearest to the final consumer are best placed to know what works.
Localism in concept directly challenges decades of creeping centralisation and therefore requires huge political will to make it work. Not surprisingly, Whitehall is resisting its application. Meanwhile, most voters still expect governments to solve all our social and economic problems and business says it feels comfortable with the "certainty" of regulation. As Edmund Burke observed, "Custom reconciles us to everything". Complex patters of human behaviour, however, tend to resist legal definition and remedy.
There is no common analysis, for example, of why people eat and drink to excess, still less is there a consensus on how to dissuade them from doing so. Some foods whose health benefits were once held to be scientifically proven have since been dethroned. Binge drinking among 15 to 24-year-olds is a problem common to many EU states, including some like Spain with very different drinking cultures from our own.
The UK government is relying on pricing up alcohol, not by interfering with legitimate competition but via duty and VAT presumably to the level at which diminishing returns begin to set in. This is a simple but crude centralist weapon, which is reducing total consumption without apparently curbing individual excess.
The clamour for more drastic top-down action is an irrelevance. Let's think locally for a change.
Kevin Hawkins is an independent retail analyst.
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