| Tuesday, February 04, 2003 |
 | Things to do in Sweden when you're dead; our foreign correspondent brings news of Sweden's state-owned alcohol monopoly. It's an interesting idea - rather than taxing the free importation and distribution of alcohol through premises licensed for off-sales, just take control of the whole darn thing. It also has the advantage that it makes drinking much harder - if the offy is only open 9-5, Monday to Friday, you don't find yourself, presumably, wandering down to the local 24 hour place to get a carefully-concealed bottle of white wine at 2am because your party has run out of booze but you can still walk.
It is, of course, a block on free trade, but then if Europe had embraced free trade whole-heartedly we wouldn't be the nanny-needing sissy-boys that the warbloggers have so correctly identified us as being. Then again, it turns out that, as a nation, Sweden could drink any steak-eating New Yorker pantywaist under the table. 46 litres of spirits a year? Dude!
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