Alcohol price ~ after the bang, the whimper ...

So the minimum price of alcohol is to be defined as duty plus VAT. It won't include the costs of production, transport, storage or advertising, so after all the tough rhetoric, this really is something of a damp squib, and will make little difference. I suspect that the government has realised that minimum pricing is a legal minefield because of UK and EU competition law. The anti-alcohol campaign herd has condemned the decision, but they are scarcely whiter than white themselves, a point made by Curmudgeon on his blog that you can read here.

The BBC item can be found here, although I'm irritated that their video clip shows pictures of pints in pubs which were never going to affected by a minimum price anyway, mainly because the price of drinks in pubs is far from minimal.

I've written about this issue before and anticipated some of the problems minimum pricing entails ~ click on 'minimum price' below if you're interested.