Forget A Minimum Alcohol Price, Let's Put A Minimum Price On Paid-for Tupping

Yorkshires finest sex workers of Spencer Place

I've been thinking a lot about this minimum pricing lark and I've reached a conclusion; I like it. I fact I like it so much I can think of a number of other area we could apply it to:

- Receding hairline matt varnish.
- Vaseline intensive care eye-lid moisturiser.
- Cocaine and related products.
- Samuri swords.

For as you know a minimum price will have the following effects:

- it dissuades frivolous uses of those products it's applied to, leading to a much snazzier kind of user.
- it leads to better quality product as providers of poorer versions quickly go under.

Examples:

Receding hairline matt varnish

Ye gods the light! It burns!

VIC eye-lid moisturiser

Moisture. SO MUCH MOISTURE!

And clearly the last 2 examples never saw anything crop up as a consequence of raising the minimum price to, say, ooh 5 years in jail minimum.







Oh.

Well never mind that I have a rather elegant proposal we could apply minimum pricing too which would kill 2 (fat) birds with one stone.

We legalise prostitution and apply a minimum price for services rendered by sex workers; I can see it now (or hypothesise on the impact as my wife doesn't let me out after dark; it's scary out there) - beautiful, scantily clad maidens fair wandering the darker reaches of Leeds' Red Light District scanning for work, Roxanne will put on her red light tonight.

But wait Tom it just won't be that way you say? Why not - surely higher quality poontang will be in the offing if we raise the minimum price Bertha charges versus some lithe eastern European competition; it'll be safer too - the bottom-dwelling echelons of the market for sex will no longer have the cash to partake, prostitutes will be cleaner and safer as their violent cheapo-stinko punters disappear.

What do you mean that will put Bertha on the dole? She was on there already - why does it matter if she can't afford that Sky TV anymore? She was already finding it difficult to attract punters as it was, particularly since you banned smoking in her work place.

And wait your telling me those violent, dirty disease riddled punters just found other ways of getting rowdy, assaulting folks, drinking alcohol hand gel and sniffing glue? What - they managed to shack up with one another?

Then,

For what reason do you think pricing the violent, unwashed masses out of the drinking market will have an impact on their behaviour?

And even if it did why would you allow the purveyors of alcohol to keep the artificially raised profit from this activity?

There is no economic justification for creating a minimum price; there is no legitimate moral argument ultimately - your just spreading the misery on the lowest earners from the top.

But, by forcing the revenue onto the industry, which will see some companies who went for premium product not affected by minimum pricing, whilst killing other groups who sold alcohol to the lowest paid (and I believe we would be lucky to see this be neutral in aggregate on the alcohol industry) you create the least good, most destructive justification of them all: a political one.

Raising taxes is always unpopular, artificially raising prices further along the supply chain (whether it be money, booze, fags...) mitigates the effects of that unpopularity, moving it onto other groups (read big alcohol/tobacco/finance etc.)

Time we started focusing blame where due.