Alcohol and Joined Up Government

Others have said how I feel about the recent hoo-ha with BMA opening it's mouth, and fakecharidee Alcohol Health Alliance wading in with demands to remove alcohol advertising, and the general righteous screams about the eeeevils of alcohol.

Scotland has been busy trying to implement minimum prices, stopping promotions (a rule which is already being circumvented) and generally being very down on alcohol in general. And now we have this, the Scottish Government desperate to keep the Johnnie Walker bottling plant open in Glasgow. 900 jobs will be lost, and I doubt there'll be anyone other than the state looking to open up employment opportunities there.

So here we have the Governments problem, it hates alcohol - well, unless it's them drinking it, hence the subsidized bars - but there's the rather inconvenient fact that it keeps quite a lot of people in gainful employment, and brings in no small amount of tax revenue. Oops.

So there we are, joined up government at it's best - one hand limbering up for an all out assault on our love of the booze, the other doing it's damnedest to keep people in the booze industry employed there.

Something has to give.