A total of 529 people have been arrested in Greater Manchester in a major police operation targeting alcohol-related violent crime.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said about 3,000 officers and police staff are involved in Operation Admiral.

Police arrested 447 people on Friday, on top of a further 82 who have been held over the past few days…

GMP Deputy Chief Constable Simon Byrne said: “All too frequently, alcohol is a major cause of aggression and results in innocent people being subjected to violent and unprovoked assaults.

“But this is just the start of an ongoing process that will see Greater Manchester Police continually target those responsible for violent crime until the message sinks in.” (BBC)

Yes, by applyiong the law, they’re fixing the problem. And they don’t even need to hurt anyone who doesn’t actually cause the problems in the first place!

Rather than raising taxes on the vast law-abiding majority, those who cause the problems should be dealt with. By the use of the law if necessary and appropriate, and by the use of education.

You need to get the message that punishing everyone for the alcoholic abuse of a minority won’t work. Only those who cause the problems need to be dealt with; leave the rest of us alone. Don’t start to copy the bansturbationist tendencies of Labour and the Lib Dems.

The approach of the Greater Manchester Police is the correct one – praise it and copy it. It is the only solution that will work – and will win votes across the board.

Hat-tip: Dick Puddlecote

Don’t do it, Dave!

Raising the cost of alcohol will not prevent drink-related crimes or violence. It will not stop people binge-drinking. It will not prevent any of the “social problems” that are related to alcohol. It will not prevent people drinking themselves into an early grave. It will not “save” the NHS any money.

An increase in the minimum cost of alcohol will simply mean that those who want to get drunk, drink responsibly or even at all will have to pay more. And if people want to drink, they will regardless of the price. Even if alcohol were to be made much much more expensive, there would still be the same drunken brawls, and the same policing requirements. Nothing would change – except it would cost us more to drink.

This is a stupid thing to suggest, and comes from a complete lack of understanding of the issues. The only way to reduce the amount of drunken brawls is to properly liberalise the rules governing the sale of alcohol. Make any establishment licensed to sell alcohol able to sell it at any time they choose. Only when 24-hour drinking becomes a reality can we start to move on towards the much-desired “cafe culture”. As long the time that pubs, clubs and off-licences are permitted to sell alcohol is restricted, this will remain a pipe dream.

I hope that this is a mistake and the Cameron will soon make it clear that he isn’t really a bansturbator – or at the very least, he doesn’t bansturbate after he has been elected.

They regard it as so bad that they keep putting up the taxes on it. I don’t think there’s been a Brown (or Darling) Budget which hasn’t increased taxes on alcohol – at the very least, they have never reduced it.

Yet now it has emerged that the government’s wine cellar holds

39,500 bottles of wine, spirits and liqueurs valued at around £792,000

You what? How much booze? More than 39,000 bottles of wine and nigh on 500 bottles of spirits and liqueurs and, not including beer, worth nearly £800,000?! How could they possibly need to have such an extensive wine cellar or one worth so much? 40,000 bottles of booze would take even this bloated government a long time to drink! Hypocrisy, though art the government.

I don’t deny that the government need to have a good amount of wine for use at official parties and the like, but there can be no need for this quantity – and since it would appear that each bottle is only worth about £20, the great bulk of them can’t even be of that high quality!

Plus, how much is the storage of these 40,000 bottles costing us? More than it is worth, one can but feel.

The Advertising Standards Authority are a bunch of jobsworths, banning a poster campaign featuring the tagline “Take Courage, my friend” advertising Courage beer. Why because

Three members of the public believed the poster implied that the beer would give the man confidence to either make negative comments on the woman’s appearance or take advantage of her.

We considered that the combination of the text and the image of the man with an open beer can and half-empty glass of beer was likely to be understood by consumers to carry the clear implication that the beer would give the man enough confidence to tell the woman that the dress was unflattering.

Although we understood the humorous intention of the scenario, we concluded that the poster breached the code by suggesting that the beer could increase confidence.

They obviously don’t find it humorous, or they wouldn’t have banned it. Considering that the beer is named Courage, are they going to be telling them that they have to change the name now, because it implies that drinking it increases confidence?!

Why do we live in a world where just three humourless idiots can rule?

They propose to make the minimum price of alcohol about 40p per unit and ban promotions on alcohol. How stupid can they be?

Raising the price of alcohol won’t prevent any misuse of alcohol – all it will do is cost people more. Anyone who drinks to excess won’t stop just because it costs them a bit more – they’ll just cut it out from somewhere else, which will probably harm them (or someone else) more in some way. or other.

But not only is it a bad idea, its also an extremely authoritarian one. The SNP are effectively saying that the Scottish people as a whole are too stupid to know how much they can drink. And seeking to prevent them from drinking more than they decree is the right amount.

What may well effectively scupper the plan is if Asda carries out its proposed plan to open depots just south of the border – thus outside of the SNPs totalitarian regime – and sell alcohol over the internet into Scotland.

Alcohol, like everything else, should find its own price level. It is not up to the government to set prices, but the market – whether that be higher or lower than 40p per unit.

That’s those that are able to still have co-ordination after drinking too much. The rest end up sat on the pavement feeling (and generally looking) very sorry for themselves.

With all this extra work, together with the winter bugs that are flying around the air, and the cold not helping those who are generally ill, the ambulance services find themselves a bit stretched. The Paramedic’s Diary and Random Acts of Reality have commented on the "REAP4" situation presently in London. A quick search of "Ambulance" on BBC News shows story after story about the Ambulance Services being under much more pressure than normal.

Still, people appear to coping admirably, and in certain areas of the world things appear to be easing off a bit. I’m once again due out on the road tomorrow, and with any luck will be able to stick to non-emergency hospital admissions. That last thing I want is an evening dealing with this lot:

It’s a regular story – don’t dial 999 unless you really need to. Don’t go so drunk that you need an ambulance. I’m sure the regular readers of the TD wouldn’t ever get into such a state. But it’s still a worthy campaign. Merry Christmas all!

~Asp

Alistair Darling has already had to start backtracking on the measure announced in the Pre-Budget Report – aka the emergency budget.

The Chancellor was forced to backtrack on a key element of his Pre-Budget Report (PBR) on Wednesday after he admitted that the Treasury had got its sums wrong and raised the duty on spirits by too much.

The proposed duty rise of 8 per cent announced on Monday, part of a package of duty increases designed to offset the cut in VAT from 17.5 per cent to 15 per cent, has been halved to 4 per cent to leave the cost to the consumer broadly unchanged.

The Scotch whisky industry had pointed out that the 8 per cent rise would have increased the average bottle of whisky by 29p, whereas in his Commons speech the Chancellor had said that the duty measures “should keep the overall cost to consumers the same this year”. (The Times)

If Darling can’t even get his sums right over such a simple calculation, how can we possibly trust anything he has said in their entire budget?!

This is a pretty ridiculous proposal:

The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is to be urged to set a “zero rate” for alcohol for any driver aged under 21, in a report from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD)…

Group chairman and council member Caroline Healy, said: “We feel that young people under the age of 21 should have a zero rate for alcohol if they are driving.

“By their nature, they are inexperienced drivers and not able to tolerate alcohol, and the combination of the two is dangerous.” (The Telegraph)

Why a zero rate just drivers under 21? The issue is driving inexperience, surely? If there is to be a ban on driving after drinking, surely it should apply either (a) for a length of time after passing their test, or (b) to all drivers regardless.

I think that if there is any ban, it should apply on the basis of driving experience – and I say this as a newly-passed driver. It would be an extremely disgusting decision to just ban those who under 21.

I objected to the signs on cigarettes packets, even though I don’t smoke, for the simple reason that those who smoke know the risks and continue to smoke anyway. And the same goes for those of us who drink alcohol. We know the potential bad effects and choose to drink anyway. And the costs that both smokers and drinkers put on the NHS are more than covered by the tax levied from them.

This tightening of the law is in contrast the 24-hour drinking laws Labour passed only a few years ago, which began allowing some places to sell alcohol 24 hours a day.

Politicians spout off about cheap alcohol without actually thinking about it and the way to achieve their aims in the long-term. They want to reduce the amount binge drinkers and drunken brawls, right? So they should persist in creating real 24-hour drinking and enabling people to drink whenever they wish.

It is up to us what, how much, and when we drink. Not the Nanny State.