This Month's Items Include:

• Record Waste of Police Time Hailed Great Success
• New Stealth Tax to Hit Small Brewers
• Police Demand New Drink-Drive Powers
• The Electronic Red Flag
• Smoke Ban Landlord Sells Up
• Nanny State Body Abolished
• Price War to Hit Pubs - Not!
• Metrication by Force
• A Great British Retail Success Story

Complete News Index

• Record Waste of Police Time Hailed Great Success

  In the first 12 days of December last year, officers from Cheshire Constabulary spot-checked 4,119 drivers. Of these, just three showed positive for excess alcohol - a detection rate of 0.073 per cent. But, despite complaints from some motorists about the results proving the spot-checks are worthless, Cheshire Police insisted they showed their tactics were working. Surely there must come a time when the police realise that these oppressive tactics are a complete waste of time. Either the scale of the problem has diminished so much that less attention should be paid to it (and indeed 1998 saw drink-related road deaths fall to a record low), or the police tactics are inappropriate for detecting offenders. But, of course, breathalysing innocent motorists is a lot easier than catching burglars, muggers and rapists - or, for that matter, apprehending hard-core drunk drivers.

• New Stealth Tax to Hit Small Brewers

  Britain's independent and family brewers have pledged to fight a new "stealth tax" on traditional cask beer which could lead to price rises at the bar. Instead of charging duty on the nominal capacity of a cask, brewers will have to pay for the actual contents. This will require them to acquire expensive measuring equipment and will effectively increase the cost of a pint by at least 2%. Following protests, implementation has been put back by "a few weeks" from the beginning of January. The government may claim to support small businesses, but in reality they lose no opportunity to burden them with new costs and petty regulations.

• Police Demand New Drink-Drive Powers

  Police have renewed calls for more powers to combat drink-driving despite figures showing there were 10% fewer positive breath tests during the Christmas and New Year period. The Association of Chief Police Officers has called for the drink-drive limit to be reduced and for officers to be given a new power to stop "hardcore" offenders. Surely the right response to this news should be to welcome the improvement. Since the police already seem to stop and test any motorist at will (see the first item), it is difficult to see what difference any additional powers would make. They must spell out exactly what extra powers they want and in what circumstances this would enable them to make arrests that they can't at the moment. And, as an AA spokesman said, "The hard core of drink drivers will ignore a lower limit just as they do the present one." Since it is the hard core over twice the legal limit who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of drink-related accidents, the only effect of a lower limit would be to criminalise law-abiding, responsible drivers - and to close thousands of pubs.

• The Electronic Red Flag

  Compulsory electronic speed limiters that would prevent drivers from exceeding the legal limits could be fitted in all cars within 10 years if ministers accept the findings of government-funded research to be presented to John Prescott next month. It's disturbing that such totalitarian proposals actually get a serious airing at all. Of course in practice this would lead to an increase in road casualties as it turned drivers into inattentive cruise-control zombies - there's already plenty of anecdotal evidence that this is the case with the mechanical 56 mph speed limiters on HGVs. And, unless there was compulsory retro-fitting, it would cause a dramatic peak in car sales before it was implemented, and then a severe slump that would last for many years and probably wipe out the domestic motor industry.

• Smoke Ban Landlord Sells Up

  John Sims, the landlord of the Three Fishes public house in Shrewsbury, who banned smoking and mobile phone conversations in his pub, has decided to sell up. He blames lack of support for provoking his decision. While it may well be in the interests of licensees to provide non-smoking areas if there is a demand, this shows that a total smoking ban in pubs is impractical and deters trade. There clearly wasn't enough business to support even one entirely non-smoking pub in a substantial town like Shrewsbury. And I can vouch from personal experience as a non-smoker and non mobile phone user that the Three Fishes was a congenial pub that sold some good beer.

• Nanny State Body Abolished

  THE Health Education Authority is to be closed and half its staff made redundant or moved as part of a shake-up in the way ministers inform the nation on how to lead healthier lives. The Government has decided to abandon "nannying" campaigns, warning of the dangers of sitting in the sun and drinking too much, in favour of focusing on specific targets for reducing cancer, strokes, heart disease and suicide. It is to be replaced with a streamlined Health Development Agency, which will focus more on research into improving public health and correcting inequalities. This can only be welcome news for everyone who has suffered at the hands of the nanny state, being told not to smoke, how much to drink and what to eat. However, it remains to be seen to what extent the new agency really will take a different and less patronising approach, and the basic instinct of this government remains one of nannying rather than liberating.

• Price War to Hit Pubs - Not!

  Brewers and pub companies are reported to be preparing for a New Year price war which will see at least a third knocked off the price of a pint of beer. A wave of savage price cutting is set to hit the pub business in a move being dubbed "bar wars". The price war is being led by operators such as Tim Martin, chief executive of JD Wetherspoon, and David Thompson, chief executive of Wolverhampton and Dudley. Somehow I doubt whether this is going to change the price of a pint of bitter in my local pub. It will only apply to selected beers in a handful of pubs in city-centre locations - otherwise the price of a pint keeps going up and up. Unfortunately the mass media never venture out into the suburbs, let alone the countryside, and unquestioningly swallow this stuff.

• Metrication by Force

  A butcher in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, is to be prosecuted by Southend Trading Standards for refusing to sell meat in metric rather than imperial weights. Surely if the metric system was so superior, the two systems could be allowed to slug it out and see which won. But we all know that customary measures would triumph as they are much more meaningful for everyday purposes. To bring criminal sanctions against traders who refuse to go metric is grossly disproportionate - it is comparable to making it illegal for Welsh people to use their native tongue, something now rightly judged completely unacceptable. And don't Southend Trading Standards have anything better to do - like pursuing pubs for serving short measures?

• A Great British Retail Success Story

  Smuggling beer into the UK from across the Channel has become one of the fastest-growing retail businesses of 1999, a survey has said. Figures compiled by the Brewers and Licensed Retailers Association (BLRA) estimate more than 100,000 heavily-laden vans will have made the journey from Calais in northern France during the year. It says this is an increase of almost 12% on the 1998 figure, and almost twice the number of six years ago. Despite a few high-profile cases, Customs will make no serious inroads into this trade until there is significant progress towards harmonising beer duty. The huge gap that currently exists is a blatant incentive to organised crime.

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