Minimum alcohol pricing is nigh

Many in my friend group are doing the same, from all the home brewing and border purchasing next year AAI are gonna have a ball claiming they were directly responsible for any drop in consumption

I am a FG support as such (in the absence of anything else I can identify with).

but.

Listening to Leo’s “many of us have drank more at home during the pandemic, I know I have” speech made me rage very **** hard.

Me and the wife have decided a trip to Newry will be made every 3 months to stock up. Its about 1hr 45 mins so not so bad. Hard to know the logic behind mup. An alcoholic with an addiction will always find the means to drink every penny. Its the families of these people, women and children who will most suffer.

Yeah we will wait and see.

Same goes for the home brew and trips up north.

Its being discussed on the Home Brew page and one opinion is that the only people who end up doing home brew long term are the people who are actually interested in home brew.

It's not a simple process and many who just do it for cheap booze tend not to last long at it.

With regards to trips to the north have people fully figured out the cost involved ? It does not affect me as I live too far way from the border (5+ hours) to make it an option.

But there was a post earlier about someone makeing the 1hr 45min trip each way every 3 months.

Have they included the price of fuel, stoping for food (it would be a 3h 30m drive alone not to mention the shopping time so you would need to eat) and also the exchange rate and the cost of the exchange (if any).

Plus would they have the car capacity for 3 months worth of drink, and the storage capacity at home.

Then would the 3 months supply last 3 months, or would it be gone in two and a half months as it might be consumed quicker because "it's there".

All these would have to be taken into consideration before deciding if there were real savings to be made with a trip.

No doubt it will be feasible for some who are closer to the border, but if you could imagine a line across Ireland to show the demarcation point where is stops becoming feasible, that line has moved north a good bit in the last few months with increased fuel inflation.

It will happen initially, but in the long run it will not be significant.

People who are initially gung-ho for it will realize it's not as economical as they thought and others will be too lazy to put in the effort after a few trips.

Obviously for the people very close to the border it will be good, but how much thir habits will affect the overall economy will be negligible.

Wait until you see there will be loads of men in white vans selling Nordie beer. You won't have to go to The North yourself, Smugglers will do it for you. It's like the cigarettes. Load of people I know just smoke Polish tobacco. It's the same for coal. Nobody I know buys Coal in the south anymore.

Well as you know it's all a big FG conspiracy to help pubs, because they said that in their manifesto from 2011.

So FG managed to get almost every TD and Senator from all parties and none to back them in their cunning plan to save the pubs.

It's all parties. The publicans have the power on all sides, that's why you never see any positing to this. That and the inability to protest in any meaningful way.

Any new government can review it, repeal it or change it.

That they previously supported it doesn't mean SF, Labour or the other opposition parties can't campaign on a policy of repealing it - but that depends on it becoming a serious issue amongst their potential voters.

My prediction is that in 2024 SF will eventually campaign on a policy saying that MUP is fine as a concept, but that the actual price chosen was completely wrong and it should be reduced by ~20%.

I'd see it that an election campaign is generally ran on a) what is a good policy and b) what is a policy that is good for votes. They aren't always the same thing, they sometimes they don't have a huge lot of overlap, and oftentimes you have to choose.

Reducing MUP would seem to me something that is good for votes in the SF catchment area. Especially when it has been set as a price point that can be claimed to attack the '€6 wine/€1.20 a can' hard-grafting working class voter who likes a few drinks at home on a Friday night, as opposed to the well-off middle class voters with their not increased €12 bottle of posh wine and craft beers (I'm hyperbole-ing quite a bit here). Some in SF may well believe as you say that MUP is a good thing and is correctly priced, but the realpolitik is that there is surely votes in being somewhat against it at campaign time.

It's just my prediction, I've been wrong about loads of stuff.

That's a valid point.

It would also enhance their standing with the young vote even more.

But it's high risk, they could be torn to shreads by the other parties on it from the health standpoint.

Is that the best you can do ?

Accuse me of being AAI just because I don't go with the groupthink around here.

I'm all for drink in any surrounding pub or home.

I was thoroughly annoyed with nanny state moves in the past like the ending of 12:30 closing on a Thursday or the 10pm off license closing.

But I'm not convinced that MUP is just some sop to the VFI/LVF and I do believe in the long term it will reduce alcohol consumption and thus have positive health results.

Is it perfect, no, but I think it's positive.