Sir, The claim that the “alcohol multi-buy ban has not cut the amount of alcohol bought by consumers” (yesterday’s Courier), contradicts findings previously reported nationally, “Multi-buy ban sees 4.5m wine bottle sales drop” (The Scotsman, May 21).
Using alcohol sales data considered the best available for assessing the impact of policy on population levels of consumption, our study in collaboration with the University of Glasgow found that the introduction of the Alcohol Act (which included the discount ban) in October 2011 was associated with a 2.6% decrease in the amount of alcohol sold per adult in Scotland. This was largely driven by a 4% decline in wine sales.
As similar declines were not observed in England and Wales where the Alcohol Act does not apply, and because we took into account factors such as changes in income and alcohol prices, we are confident that banning multi-buy promotions reduced the amount of alcohol sold in Scotland.
Mark Robinson. Public Health Information Manager, NHS Health Scotland, 5 Cadogan Street, Glasgow.
This country gets madder by the minute
Sir, Three female RAF recruits have been awarded £100,000 compensation each over injuries reportedly caused by marching in step with their male colleagues (The Courier, November 25).
Dan Arnott (Can males claim too?, letters, November 26) quite rightly asks: “Can vertically challenged males now make a similar claim for compensation or am I missing something here?”
Nobody forced these women to join the RAF. They were trained alongside men because of the politically correct insistence driven by women’s lib on putting women in the forces on an equal footing with men.
They want to be on an equal footing, but not when that footing involves marching, apparently.
If it weren’t so tragic seeing our daft courts and authorities paying out such enormous sums of taxpayers’ money in this way, the whole situation would be hilarious. As an example of how daft Britain is today, you couldn’t make it up.
We have four parliaments for a small island nation when one would do and we are really ruled from Brussels in any case.
We have criminal and terrorist illegal immigrants we cannot deport and spend billions helping them fight their cases through our appeal courts. It’s human rights legislation gone crazy!
This country of ours gets madder by the minute!
George K McMillan. 5 Mount Tabor Avenue, Perth.
The same old scare tactics
Sir, I would be a lot more impressed with Danny Alexander’s latest pronouncement that it will cost us £1,000 more a year if we choose independence if (1) he had the slightest clue what he was talking about and (2) his namesake, a certain Wendy Alexander (no relation) had not made much the same doom and gloom prophecy in 2007 that if the Scots were stupid enough to elect an SNP government in Holyrood, it would cost them £5,000 a year more.
Same old recycled scare tactics!
Do they really think the Scots are so gullible as to believe all this nonsense?
If they do, then they have a very poor view of their own people.
David Morrison. Roseneath, Monikie.
An exercise in obfuscation
Sir, The White Paper did not answer key questions on currency, pensions, interest rates, fiscal sustainability, defence, Europe and cross-border access to NHS treatment.
As expected, it is an exercise in obfuscation and Brigadoon unreality based on little more than the First Minister’s favourite incantation: “Anything I say three times is true.”
Thus voters must rely on the Institute of Fiscal Studies: we face a 9% increase in basic income tax, an 8% increase in standard VAT, or a 6% reduction in public spending.
Dr John Cameron. 10 Howard Place, St Andrews.
Windfarms and witches . . . ?
Sir, Is there perhaps a connection between windfarms and witches? Do politicians advocating the spread of windfarms to generate “cost effective” electrical power have access to some arcane knowledge of the ancients?
In old Scotland witches used to raise the wind by dipping a rag in water and beating it on a stone while chanting:
I knok this rag upon the stane,tae raise the wind in the devil’s name,
It shall not lye til I please againe.
Kenneth Miln. 22 Fothringham Drive, Monifieth.