The real outrage is how come bottled water costs more than booze or petrol

But a whisky bottle can't foot it with water bottles when it comes to providing footwear for poor people.

Dunno what the latest booze fuss is supposed to be about.

But a report at Stuff highlights research showing alcohol is so cheap that it costs less per drink than bottled water and only slightly more than milk.

So why doesn’t the research emphasise that water is now so outrageously over-priced, it is more expensive than booze?

More expensive than petrol too. Much more expensive.

The researchers from Otago University’s Wellington campus – a right rum lot, Alf suspects – are turning their preoccupation with the low price of plonk rather than the high price of water to a political purpose.

Berl, the booze bill and a backdown

Because boozing is among his favourite activities (he prefers to call it networking), Alf has been interested in the brouhaha over a study by Berl.

The NBR kicked it off, at least in terms of news media coverage, and Business Roundtable executive director Roger Kerr today gets in on the act in the NZ Herald.

Sobering words for wowsers (but they never listen)

Good stuff on booze and booze laws in the Herald’s editorial today.

Every so often Parliament feels a need to “fix” the liquor problem with adjustments to the legal age of purchase or licensing hours or permitted outlets, or all of them. The repair never works. Before long, it is apparent that the social evils associated with alcohol are as rampant as ever and pressure mounts for another legislative remedy.

The pattern has been the same whether the repair was in the direction of prohibition, as it was for most of the first half of the 20th century, or, permissiveness. Since at least the 1960s, when a 6pm pub curfew was lifted and wine permitted in restaurants, the guiding principle has been that easier access to alcohol would produce a more civilised drinking culture.

There is not much doubt that it has done so…

Here’s hoping fellow MPs read this, along with the cranky health zealots and wowsers. Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, too, as he buries himself in a study of our liquor laws.

Why it’s wrong to be over-protecting our privates

The principal of Christchurch’s Rangi Ruru girls school, Julie Moor, needs re-educating. Preferably, at charm school.

She was clearly miffed to be questioned by news media about aspects of a Law Commission paper about private schools.

“A private school is a private business, isn’t it, at the end of the day. That’s my statement. There is no therefore. I’m just saying at the end of the day, it is actually a private business,” Moor said.

Hmm. Maybe she is willing to forego whatever public money is coming her school’s way.

Here’s more law on liquor and construction

The new legislation keeps coming. Liquor and building bills came into play yesterday.

Justice Minister Simon Power introduced The Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill, which received its first reading in Parliament last night.

It has been necessitated by the drunken antics of louts and drunks in communities other than Eketahuna, but our good people will feel its embrace anyway. There will be rumblings of discontent.

Among the provisions, grocery stores will continue to be restricted to selling beer, wine, cider and mead.

Mead? What wanker goes to his grocer for a bottle of mead, let alone consumes the stuff?