Minimum alcohol price = Good

Sadly it's too difficult for the public to understand and for that reason will fail.

The chief medical officer has said there should be a minimum price per unit for alcohol. The BBC and all other news organisations have been busy rubbishing it for the last few days. Gordon Brown has popped up saying he doesn't think it is a good idea.

He's wrong in my opinion, and since this is my blog that's all that matters.

At present supermarkets sell drink at less than cost price. They do this to encourage people into the store, not because they like you. To make profits the loss on this product is simply added to the price of others in the shop. It's a simple process called a "loss leader" and has been an established method of drumming up trade for many years.

What this means is, if you don't buy drink in the shop you are subsidising those walking out with a carrier bag of cheap lager. You might as well go up to them and hand them cash out of your pocket.

It also encourages people to drink at home unsupervised instead of in pubs where there are at least other people around. Travel out of any town after 10:30 in the evening and you'll see people going in having tanked up up home. They start the evening borderline drunk and just get worse as in the early hours.

I like pubs and don't think it is a good thing that so many of them are under threat. If you say a lot of this is the fault of the breweries then I won't disagree with you but it certainly doesn't help when people say they can have a beer for a quarter of the price at home. This leads to a nation sitting on their own watching telly and get pissed.

Of course the supermarkets won't like this. Doubtless Gordon Browns appearance rubbishing the research is due to a phone call from Mr Tesco or similar. Why bother with evidence based suggestions when you are worried about your job prospects once the nation dumps you in 18 months or so ? Why employ scientists to advise the government at all when you patently aren't interested in the results ?