In Solidarity with Drinkers

This may seem like a strange campaign for a tee-total to join, but as a tee-total pub-goer (the guys in the office head to the local bar for Friday lunch, and I've attended so regularly that the ringleader has conferred on me the status of 'hardened drinker'), I'm more than happy to join the campaign supported by the most excellent Reactionary Snob.

The idea is simple. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has jacked up the duty on beer and wine. He's also jacked up the duty on spirits. Now in this age of binge drinking, you'd think that anything makes drinking harder is good. But the problem is that the cheap stuff, the stuff that gets you off your face and is at the heart of the problem, will remain cheap, even after a duty rise, and the expensive stuff is getting more expensive. So if you want to drink, it's now far more tempting to go for the cheapo nasty bingey stuff (i.e. stuff that tastes like cat's piss, it's so cheap that you can drink enough not to notice by the mid-point of the session) than to treat yourself to a moderate enough of the quality stuff. Therefore, the Chancellor has made it harder to drink sensibly than it was. As he has made it harder for you to drink, the proposal, initated by a bar in Leith, is that is should become impossible for him to drink. The mechanism to achieve this is simple: Darling should be barred from every pub in the UK.

It's time to lobby your landlord. And DK has created this poster, which your friendly neighbourhood barkeep may wish to display:



In solidarity with my drinking friends, I hereby endorse this campaign!