To be honest, I don't think the minimum pricing thing will make a whole lot of difference, plus it tends to penalise those on lower incomes the most. Some EU countries with the highest alcohol prices (ie, Finland) have high levels of alcohol consumption, yet go to Germany and despite the cheap alcohol, consumption is a lot lower in general. I don't have a problem with trying to reduce alcohol consumption, but I do feel that minimum pricing is not really the solution, an educational approach would be more effective (albeit more difficult).

Personally though, I'll be voting SNP - mainly as it is a 2-horse race in my constituency between SNP and the Tories.

> it tends to penalise those on lower incomes the most.

Yes, and I'm generally opposed to taxing the poor, but when the studies on alcohol consistently show greater harm to less well off people, a specifically targetted deterrant is worth considering.

 

> Some EU countries with the highest alcohol prices (ie, Finland) have high levels of alcohol consumption, yet go to Germany and despite the cheap alcohol, consumption is a lot lower in general.

Obviously price isn't the only factor, however your claim there does not match WHO statistics:

Three year averages between 2009..2011 and 2015..2017 show Germany's alcohol consumption increasing from 12.9 to 13.4 litres per capita.

In the same time period, Finland's consumption decreased from 12.6 to 10.7 litres per capita.

 

> I do feel that minimum pricing is not really the solution, an educational approach would be more effective (albeit more difficult)

I'm always in favour of education, but when it's not working then it needs to be combined with other approaches.

Russia's average consumption peaked in 2003 at over 20 litres per capita. That was the year Russia introduced minimum unit pricing (along with other measures), and their consumption rates have been falling since then. For the same two periods mentioned above they went from 15.8 (2009..2011) to 11.7 (2015..2017).

Since 2003, life expectancy in Russia has increased by ten years.

 

> I don't think the minimum pricing thing will make a whole lot of difference

I don't expect Scotland's results to mirror Russia, but the evidence I've seen definitely suggests MUP is a significant part of the solution.

 

> Personally though, I'll be voting SNP - mainly as it is a 2-horse race in my constituency between SNP and the Tories.

It's still a one horse race here. :(

Though their margin was significantly reduced last time, so perhaps there's an outside chance of that changing...

And that was vodka!

Those values are for the alcohol content - in 2003 about 2/3rds was vodka (and other spirits) and a quarter was beer.

If we assume beer to be ~5% and vodka ~40%, that means about 100 litres of beer and "only" 33 of vodka.

Egad.

Apropos not very much, I've always loved the fact that 'proof' was the extent to which spirits impeded the ignition of gunpowder. Imagine all those experiments gone wrong with Poitín.

Boy on floor gaffe = hung parliament territory?

Nope. Tory majority still. No one gives a fuck unfortunately.

I agree with Ant, unfortunately. The Tories won some time ago by pressing home the myth that they will make Brexit go away. Labour's more rational approach hasn't the same strength.

The media pile-on hasn't helped, has it.

Not that they only don't give a fuck, they are also claiming it is fake despite the hospital already apologising for the mistreatment of the boy.

The media pile-on has to be experienced to be believed. BBC News has given up all pretence of impartiality (although obviously they do actually pretend to be impartial) and whenever possible they lead on almost unchallenged anti-labour stories. Often these are padded out with a piece-to-camera by Laura Kuenssberg whose journalism consists mainly of incisive statements such as 'there is no doubt that...' followed by some contentious claim that Corbyn is, for instance, a liability to Labour's electoral chances. Her evidence is commonly that 'this is what one hears on the doorsteps...' which meaningless anecdotal evidence is exactly what Tory politicians have told her - or she has cleverly thought up with her own brain. This is an almost verbatim account of what she said on the BBC prime 6 o'clock news today.

It's why I prefer alternative news sources in the UK. Channel 4 is a commercial channel but was established with public funding and has a charter that includes due-impartiality in news reportage. It is far better than the BBC but has recently been threatened by the Tory Party. They held a leaders debate on the environment that Johnson and Farage wouldn't attend. Channel 4 empty-seated them with melting ice-sculptures. I even prefer sources like Sky News, because at least they aren't pretending to be even handed.  

https://bylinetimes.com/2019/12/10/trolls-sock-puppets-and-useful-idiots-an-anatomy-of-an-election-disinformation-campaign/
 

And the sad thing is that it probably won't make a damn bit of difference. (Nice article btw).

Stupidity, lies, dirty tricks and exploitation have been the mechanics of power since forever, but the management of this has been a particular skill of the Labour party in the C20th and C21st starting with Jim Callaghan and finding its champion in Neil Kinnock. Whether things would have changed with John Smith is a moot point, but they certainly didn't with Tony Blair. I'm afraid it's quite understandable if Boris Johnson follows the parallel evolution of Trumpism. It's too depressing to think about. 

If you ever want to find out about how Kinnock set about stamping out any success left wing politics might have had in modern government in the UK, try Googling Lol Duffy and the tragedy that ended with Angela Eagle becoming a high flyer in the party.

So you're saying Boris Johnson is one of those people who perform better under pressure...

No, it really hasn't. The BBC's lead political correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg, in particular, has been openly partisan. Whilst it may serve her short term interests, in the long term, it may come bite her in the bum.

My twitter handle made the national news in that particular scrum, when a friend - passing on the shit that was going down on FB - was accused of being a right wing sock puppet.

Yeah, I don't know the gory details of their past missteps, but I prefer to blame "left wing politics" becoming the persona non grata / third rail of certain, um 'democracies' (e.g. US, UK, and yes, Canada), on media conglomeration, and the rise of billionaire feudalism, at the expense of all life on earth (eventually... soon -ish). This UK GE, and the USian impeachment process, are both part and parcel of an existential struggle between human greed and human survival --> two go in, one comes out. And I'm fucking scared.  :-@

Hard to call really. Scotland is fairly well split down the middle on the independence question, and the vast majority can't see past that when evaluating Sturgeon.

At a place I worked around the time of the last indy ref i heard colleagues (mostly retirement age men) who were diehard unionists and idiots go on about how 'she's definitely shagging Salmond' and practically in the same breath say 'bet she's a fucking lesbian'.

They were also out and out racists, which was pleasant. Two of the old guys (we're talking in their 70s here) got sacked eventually for having a full on fisticuffs session (including one of them vaulting over the customer service desk to land a punch on the other :'D ), I'm not sure of the exact reason why it started but it was probably football related.


Apart from that she's got mixed reviews really. Anyone against independence focuses solely on the areas that are not going so well (mainly NHS and the, thankfully now dropped, 'named person scheme' where every child was to be appointed a named 'responsible adult' contact point with pretty ill defined reasoning and powers involved), where as those who are ambivolent or for independence I think generally think she's doing an OK job. Doing well in some areas, pish in others.

They've been in power for quite some time up here now, I think they've had to learn a hell of a lot in fairly short space of time and on the whole I think they're doing OK. I'll be voting SNP tomorrow, because a) I hate the tories and b) Scottish Labour is dead*. Their policies are largely in line with my views (certainly more so than New Labour, but not as much as Corbyn's Labour (which I don't agree with all of either)).


*they died around 1998 when they brought in devolution and it was revealed how much contempt Scottish Labour had for, well, Scotland. It just took a decade for the corpse to stop moving.

Anecdotally, big turnout, looking a lot closer than just a couple of days ago.