Why UK alcohol means cheap, tasty obliteration

Dickens must be spinning in his 200-year-old grave. Even the realisation that alcohol is sold in industrial quantities for as little as £10 for twenty cans of Stella Artois, is enough to stoke the spin. Let alone last month’s promotions of 2 x 20 cans of cider for £20 (according to the research company Assosia).

We have long known that cheap drink was the commercial battleground upon which to win supermarket patronage. We have long known that of every £8 spent in Britain, £1 was spent in one chain alone. Hence the power of the supermarkets to cow politicians into doing nothing has simply been one of our assumed political facts of life.

The coalition’s intent to bring about a minimum price for alcohol is quite a moment. Dickens would have been tickled to find that within 24 hours of the announcement of the intent, the drinks industry would move as one to find a law by which they could challenge such a move.

I have been involved with a street level open access day centre for vulnerable young people for some four decades. Next to homelessness, alcohol has been our abiding menace. Not heroin, not amphetamines, not coke, not crack, but slosh – good old alcohol.

Obliteration is cheap and tasty. It is the fuel of violence, depression, and distress. It emboldens. Dickens would have written hard of the ‘interests’ that play in alcohol’s marketing yard.

The only disappointment in the government’s announced intent lies in the slowness of its introduction – 2014 at the earliest.

Perhaps the great redemption for the drink and supermarket industry would be to beat the government to it and introduce it now. But as Dickens might not have said: ‘Pigs will fly’!

Follow Jon on Twitter: @JonSnowC4