The Alcohol Bill appears to be being discussed by the Scottish media simply in terms of minimum pricing, which is exactly what the Government wants you to do. That there is other stuff in the bill that people might find objectionable (or not, of course) is simply not being mentioned anywhere other than in the last paragraph of every fifth BBC News Online article.

The good thing about the Scottish Parliament is that all new bills are uploaded online as PDFs (the bad thing is that the website is very poorly designed), so you can read it for yourself, with a full explanation also available. For those who don’t really want to because it’s written in jargon, here’s a summary interspersed with occasional ranting:

• Minimum pricing for alcohol

The minimum price-per-unit is specified by ministers, and is calculated as a measure of (minimum price*(ABV percentage/100)*volume in litres*100). The explanatory document specifies that the minimum price could be 40p/unit, but of course it doesn’t have to be. Nevertheless, this won’t affect spirits or pub prices very much; taking a bottle of 12-year old Highland Park, this works out as 0.4*0.42*0.7*100 = £11.76. Highland Park usually sells for ~£20 in supermarkets.

The killer is that a multipack price must be at least (n items*minimum price), which means no more BOGOF/3-for-2 wine offers as well. So for a  12-pack of 440ml 5% Stella Artois, this would be (0.4*0.05*0.44*100)*12=(0.88)*12=£10.56, which is a bit more than this usually sells for.

What the bill does is make multipacks, for the most part, uneconomical.I find this somewhat annoying because I buy a large pack of beer, put a few cans in the fridge at a time and tend to drink even a 12-pack over a couple of months – it harms reasonable drinkers more than it harms those who are abusing it – but it’s not lethal.

• Explicitly banning BOGOF/3 for 2 in off-sales

Just in case you didn’t notice the bit above.

• Banning alcohol advertising outside designated areas

Almost certainly means that off-licenses will have to cover their windows (just after we finally admitted it didn’t help for bookies) and means that supermarkets won’t be able to promote in windows. The current alcohol laws mean that all alcohol offers must be in the designated area anyway, so all this’ll do is mean that offers can’t be promoted outside Row X. This doesn’t apply to non-alcoholic beer-branded merchandise, so supermarkets can sell you a Guinness glass in the glassware area.How thoughtful.

• Requirement for age verification

Scottish licensees already do far too much age verification as it is; I was refused alcohol at an open-air Radiohead gig in Glasgow because I didn’t have any ID they found acceptable (despite being 23 at the time).

As I don’t drive and don’t carry my passport around with me, this is a perennial problem; I do carry quite a lot of identification, but no-one cares about my photo bus pass, credit cards (over 18 only, verified by your bank) or so on; it’s just passport, driving license, the national ID card that isn’t going to happen or the Portman Group give-us-your-personal-details blackmail card. The bill requires Challenge 21. As it’s already a crime to sell to someone under 18, quite harshly punishable, there is absolutely no need for this.

• Allows ministers to add to and remove from the law at will

So they don’t have to shove any changes through the Parliament again. This is by far the sneakiest segment of the bill, a very New Labour-style measure fron the SNP. This will allow them to bring back the over-21s stupidity again…

• Licensing boards can ban under-21s in their own area

…oh. Apparently this involves a “detrimental impact statement”, but section 9 gives them the power to do it unilaterally.

A thoroughly infantilising measure. Most of the worst thugs I’ve seen in pubs are Begbie types who are far older than 21, although that is of course a personal opinion rather than purest fact. Students can be annoying, but generally not too vicious; and in any case, a good proportion will be over 21 anyway. And how are you going to tell the difference between 21 and 18? It’s harder than 18/non-18.

See Challenge 21 for details. Grr.

• “Social responsibility levy”

Licensing-board imposed fines for “bad” publicans, which could just be being in a “bad” area, or the Western Isles. A fine piece of spin from the Alistair Campbell Big Book Of Machiavellian Delights.

So there you go. Surprisingly, there isn’t a big Q&A article on the BBC News website with this information in it linked off every article about the Bill, without the ranting, as there is with most controversial Westminster issues. There’s certainly no excuse for the Herald or Scotsman, past the fact that Johnston Press don’t care about anything other than cash (most certainly not their website). I guess  that’s the Scottish media for you: media by press release, complacent and incompetent all.