The Government has produced a new strategy on the alcohol problem, involving voluntary agreements on labelling, promotion etc, and this has been opposed by some charities, led by Alcohol Concern, whose Chief Executive, Don Shenker, has said 'it's all carrot and no stick for the drinks industry and supermarkets'.
Nothing new there, then.
I have mentioned before my belief that the UK's alcohol problem is caused by the break up of the family and by the substitution of the state for any moral authority, but I wanted to highlight what is going on here, because it is very strange.
In my post about the Big Society a while back, I mentioned fake charities, which you can read about here, and of course Alcohol Concern is one of them. It gets most of its income from the State (that is to say from the taxpayer). Now this is suspicious enough when it is pushing government to adopt its policies, but even odder when it disagrees with the government: we elect, and pay for, a government to make policy, then a 'charity', which lists under its aims the making of policy, argues against it, and we pay for that too.
The government should cut off the supply of funds to an organisation which is acting anti-democratically. And Alcohol Concern should be a bit more honest with us, and, if I may suggest, with itself.
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