The Scottish Government’s Alcohol Bill is over the first threshold of its passage into law but notice has been served by the opposition parties that they are determined to remove the specific measure imposing a minimum price on alcohol.
There has been incessant and expensive lobbying on this issue by drinks corporations and it would be naive to ignore the influence this can buy.
The weight of professional opinion among those who have to deal with alcoholism and its consequences – the medical, health, police and social service professions – is strongly in favour of minimum pricing but hey, what do they know?
What does it take to make politicians suffering from the altitude sickness of living with their own stratospheric egos understand what life – and death – is like on the streets where it counts and doesn’t count.
We have seen a string of violent attacks, deaths and murders in Argyll recently and some of these are known to have been alcohol fuelled. We use the term ‘fuelled’ advisedly as the engines in question were, in some cases, already given over to off-road, all-terrain operation.
The taking of a life is, in any circumstances, an awful act and a breathtaking moment. The loss of a life is a loss to the sum of humanity.
The fact that alcoholism costs Scotland anywhere between £2.4 and £4.6 billion per annum is a heavy prompt to action but the destruction and loss of lives is the biggest cost of all.
So if there are politicians out there who find the seductive words and the promises of the drinks lobby - the biggest, most heavily funded and most determined voice of which is Diageo’s – of greater value than the preservation of life, there is no other argument to be made.
And if there are politicians out there who put the value of life second to the transient advantage of damaging a serious and well found political initiative from a government patently working to confront the most serious and difficult issues that confront Scotland today, there is nothing that will redeem politics from the pit which it has chosen to inhabit.
Over to Holyrood. It is on trial here.
