Drink ... Feck ... EU

One of Labour's few, very few, liberal policies was liberalising the licensing laws so as to allow later drinking rather than the traditional (since world war one that is) dash to get as much down as possible just before 11pm as possible. Unfortunately The EU now seeks to restrict drinking, all in the name of making our lives healthier of course.

The EU proposals are based on a report entitled ‘Alcohol in Europe’, which was commissioned by DG SANCO from Dr Peter Anderson and the Institute of Alcohol Studies, a UK-based organisation hosted by the temperance-promoting Alliance House Foundation. It has called for higher taxes on alcohol, restrictions on cross channel shopping as well as a restriction on licensing hours

A temperance-pomoting organisation claims that drink is bad for you, now there is a turn up for the books. As this slowly churns through the EU decision making process do not expect any protestation from the government, yet more tax and one where the blame lands somewhere other than Gordon Brown.

One of the (few) benefits of being in the EU is freer trade and yet now the EU wants to restrict trade. A trade restricting free trade area. But then the EU never was supposed to be a free trade area, that was just an excuse, it has always been heading towards statehood and nothing else.