Minimum alcohol pricing
As we mentioned on our last show, there was a propaganda push last week in support of 'minimum alcohol pricing', the idea whereby if alcohol was made a little/much more costly, problems such as 'binge drinking' etc would disappear overnight..
The push took the form of reports that alleged close government links 'to the drinks industry', implying that any perceived lack of support for the proposals would be due to backroom deals or somesuch. It's the same bullshit thats been applied to many other issues, such as "anybody who disagrees with my authoritarian proposals to combat global warming is in bed with OMG BIG OIL!".
Minimum pricing won't work; its yet another situation where supporters are claiming that prices will rise very little (so as not to affect the price of YOUR pint) but will also rise massively (and only affect OTHER people). Its exactly the same as for Road Pricing (driving will still be cheap for you, but so expensive for everybody else that the roads will be clear). As well there is a very real 'slippery slope' effect, whereby once price controls are introduced there will ALWAYS be pressure for prices to increase a little more. After all, it's only a little more, isn't it? Add to this the fact that elsewhere in the world very high taxes/prices for booze haven't done anything to reduce problem drinking or alcoholism (Norway being a case in point).
The Devil's Kitchen covers the issue wonderfully here.
Footballers to get ID Cards
The Register reports that the unpopular, unnecessary, massively expensive and potentially authoritarian national ID card is to be rolled out to 'Tier 2' foreign nationals, including a large proportion of Premier League footballers. This adds an estimated 40,000 cards to the 130,000 already issued.
Now, I'm all for inconveniencing footballers, but I hope that these developments don't give ID cards some kind of prestige among the many mouth-breathing football fetishists out there...
For more information about the national ID scheme, please look here http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/
Economy measures
I spoke to the managing agents of the block of flats I live in yesterday, to report some problems with the electrics. Basically the 'Economy 7' circuit timing is all to cock, the storage and water heaters are coming on in the day instead of the night, meaning everything is cold when I get up for work, and everything will be running on expensive day rate electricity.
Anyway, I phoned them back a little later because I remembered that the heaters in the communal areas haven't worked all winter, so I'm getting cold draughts under the front door etc etc. The conversation went something like this..
M "The heaters in the corridors haven't worked for some time.."
A "Yeah, we pulled all the fuses for them, they were costing a fortune in electricity"
M "Well, I'm not happy at all with that"
A "We asked all the property OWNERS and they agreed, you're just a tenant [emphasis hers], you'll have to complain to your landlord"
M "Well I only LIVE there.. what's next, are you going to turn the lift off to save money?"
A "Ah but the heaters aren't essential; most of the developments we manage don't have them, and the lift IS essential.."
M "But the heaters are fitted, and were there when I moved in, anyway the lift isn't essential, there's stairs..."
I strongly suspect that after my advice, next week the lift will be switched off..
I'm still trying to figure out how pissed off to be about this, it's not so much about the ambient temperature in the corridors (I dont exactly linger in them) as the fact that my heating bills are going up because my hot air is leaking away. My bedroom backs onto the stairwell as well, so thats colder now; the wall in question is freezing.
Thinking about it, what probably happened is that the agent wrote to the service charge payers, saying something like "Due to the rising cost of energy, the service charge will rise by X% next year, unless....". The (supposed) net reduction in the charge will reduce upward pressure on rents, so possibly my rent is lower now than it would have been, etc etc but my own electric bill has now risen by a certain amount as a result...
The main reason that I'm miffed is the fact that I didn't even know; they could have at least put a poxy notice up (after all, they have put notices up after the smoking ban that imply that we can't even smoke in the flats, which is incorrect). It would of course be poetic if in the future they had to shell out to repair damp and mould problems, caused by the lack of heating...
They DO earn back 0.1 Martin Point for NOT trying to 'enviro-bullshit' their way out of it, I expected some bollocks about "reducing our carbon footprint" (it's amazing how often this desire happens to mesh perfectly with the organisation in question saving money..).
Thoughts?