There seems to be a clamour among the licensed trade for minimum pricing per unit of alcohol, a concept being mooted by what would normally be seen as opponents of the industry; health lobbies and the like.
I can’t help thinking that licensees voting for minimum pricing is akin to turkeys voting for Christmas; not really in our best interests.
Looking back over the last twenty odd years it’s starkly obvious where the last set of government fingerprints are and we are still dealing with the consequences.
What came to be known as ‘The Beer Orders’ of the late 1980s forced the ‘Big Six’ brewers of the day to shed thousands of tied sites in a ham fisted attempt to increase competition. The ultimate result is what we see around us; the demise of regional brewers like  Boddingtons, Greenalls and Tetley to name a few, the rise of super-brewers such as Heineken and Interbrew, and the birth of the much maligned pubcos, the obvious examples being Punch and Enterprise.
Government ministers were, in late 2009, quite candidly saying that they had ‘got it wrong’ and jostling for another chance to get their hands on our industry. I’m kind of horrified to see so many industry insiders nodding their heads and believing what they hear when the politicians start pontificating on the subject of the licensed trade.
Anyone thinking that minimum alcohol pricing might be a good idea would do well to look back at recent history and realise just what a horlicks the politicians made of it last time, start looking at them with a degree of scepticism and begin to fear unintended consequences.