Less is more

It really is depressing. On the news we hear that the highly laudable suggestion in Scotland to legislate against cut-price drinking is opposed by a coalition of politicians on the basis that such action on price will be harmful to the sensible drinker. Rather like the bankers, they just don't get it.

Anybody who lives a life of crime as we do knows that alcohol and drugs are behind a huge percentage of all crimes. Acquisitive crime, including violent acquisitive crime, is committed not to put a loaf of bread on the table or because somebody fancies a Rolex watch but can't afford to save up for one (just buy a fake from a car boot sale, it's much easier). Acquisitive crime is committed because somebody needs to turn your flat screen television or the contents of your wallet into something they can shoot up their veins and obliterate their consciousness with. They do it because their body craves it. They lose their jobs and relationships and homes because of it. And the suppliers use violent crime to maintain any potential informer's silence and deal with the competition '“ so, again, most drive-by shootings and stabbings are not because of fallout over a girl or the height of a hedge, but turf wars and old scores in the gang drug world.

But booze: ah, we drinkers are not criminals, are we. We drinkers are not the same as the feckless junkies with their dogs on bits of string. Well no, of course not '“ but there is a huge section of crime that is caused entirely by drinking. How often as the jobbing hack barrister have we found ourselves on a Friday saying 'it was the drink '“ not mitigation of course, your Honour, but an explanation'? We represent very contrite young men in outsize suits and bulky knotted ties that they have probably had to buy for the occasion, who stand looking anxious and pathetic with pink scrubbed, youthful, scared faces, facing the consequences of the mind-bending '“ literally '“ amount of cheap drink they have consumed. That run of drinking may well have ended up in a fight captured on CCTV where the mob kick somebody on the ground, or the car is wrapped around the tree, or the pretty girl that they were getting on so well with earlier in the evening has now in fact turned into their sexual victim, all because they got hopelessly, hopelessly drunk.

And then there is the cost of it all: all those self-pitying, snarling, vomiting cases in Accident and Emergency, cluttering up the hospital and costing us all time and money in bandages, sutures, trauma surgery, cleaning fluid and laundry bills; all those ambulances and paramedics picking up the bloodied, sick-splashed casualties on Friday and Saturday nights. The bill runs into the billions '“ the cost to health is untold. And on top of that our city centres are no-go areas after 10pm from Plymouth to Penrith.

Battling the booze

So, why can't we act? In the recent kerfuffle over government advisers' advice not being followed by the government, the comment was made by somebody that alcohol is arguably worse than Class A drugs. I don't know if anybody is interested in that, because of course it is not a vote winner. No hopeful government in-waiting is going to have manifesto commitment to put up the price of cheap booze and be seen to be spoiling the party.

But if it was difficult and more expensive to get quite so utterly wasted '“ i.e. no mad promotions and 'happy hours' and discount selling from shops, and if it was nearly impossible legally for people under the age of 18 to buy alcohol '“ then there is a real chance that the daily carnage would abate, at least a bit. After all, if it is more expensive to buy then you can only afford less of it. If you can't drink as much then you don't get quite as drunk. Seems simple to me.

And for those of us whose 'down in one' days are over, if the price for a bit of civilisation and better health and cutting of the massive public debt is a pretty insignificant price increase, then so what. Anyway, the price cutting is not at the sensible end of the market '“ unless the responsible drinkers' tipples are cheap sticky cocktails and gallons of lager and ropey spirits.

So, fear not middle England '“ the end of cheap booze won't really hurt you, and, who knows, you might be able to walk back to your car late on a Saturday night without having to avoid the pools of sick and the risk of having your face rearranged by some well-meaning young men who are ever so nice to their mums '“ when they haven't just drunk a brewery, that is.