Press Freedoms and Alcohol Pricing.

As I was drifting off the sleep last night it occurred to me that I should probably write up some of the things the UK has been putting out as part of it's big push on Syria. The problem is that the vast majority of this is pointless and contradictory with the only point being to spread confusion and cause annoyance.

Take the Danny Nightingale case as an example. Nightingale is a sniper with the UK's elite Special Air Service (SAS) who was sentenced to a 18 months detention after being convicted of the illegal possession of a handgun which had been given to him as a gift by Iraqi troops he's helped train. Due to my habit of popping up in war zones with devastating effect I suppose I could be compared to a sniper. Also as my world can be a dangerous place there has been a long running debate over whether I should be allowed to keep and use firearms for personal protection. Yesterday Nightingale had his conviction overturned at the civilian Court of Appeal. In his defence Nightingale had argued (rather credibly I might add) that due to memory loss sustained after being put in a coma he simply forgot that the handgun was in his possession. The issue of memory loss obviously links into my grandmother's Court of Protection case. Although his conviction has been overturned on a technical aspect of the initial military trial (undue pressure to plead guilty) Nightingale has not been acquitted and must face a retrial. Therefore the verdict could be interpreted as the UK saying that rather then the Attorney General moving straight to criminal prosecution of those involved in my grandmother's case I must instead launch a case in the Court of Appeal because obviously my previous experience of British Courts has gone so well.

Then there is the trial of Micheal Philpot over the death of six of his children following an arson attack on the family home in Derby, UK in May 2012. Although Philpott is clearly a man motivated by an almost pathological need for attention he was encouraged to carry out the crime to provide a way for the UK to admit that it was the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA) that carried out the al-Houla massacre in an effort to smear the reputation of the Syrian government. The trial of Philpott brings up all these issues again and as he is more then likely to be convicted will ultimately serve as a sort of apology designed to convince us the SQIA have changed. However in order to confuse things in the meantime there's been lots of lurid details about Philpott's colourful sex life along with his theatrics in the witness box yesterday. I think the 'collapse' was supposed to create speculation about my health. After all considering how much I drank on Tuesday quite a lot of people were expecting me to collapse on Wednesday. Myself included.

Although nothing has been officially confirmed it was strongly rumoured yesterday that the UK government is to abandon it's plan for a minimum price for alcohol. As this has always been more of a proposal for discussion rather than a concrete policy it's quite difficult to explain exactly what the plan is. However generally it involves the government setting a minimum price for every unit of alcohol sold. So for example a bottle of beer containing 1.4 units of alcohol could not be sold for less than 70 pence.

While the two issues are entirely separate this could be interpreted as a nod towards the British pub industry which has been lobbying the government hard to drop the so called alcohol duty escalator from the upcoming budget because it means roughly 50% of the price of a pint of beer in a pub is tax making beer so expensive it's killing the pub industry.

However much like New York City's sugary drinks ban the alcohol pricing plan is a debate about freedom, corporate tyranny and government tyranny because on one side you've got health campaigners pushing for the plan while in the other you've got manufacturers and retails opposed to the plan. The fact that the plan's been dropped should come as no great surprise because it's quite a clear example of government fixing prices in a free market - something that is forbidden by World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.

After 19 years of negotiation Russia finally joined the WTO in August 2012 so these arguments have a particular resonance with them as they move from a Communist style command economy to a Capitalist style free market themselves. The Russians also consume alcohol at a rate that would make even the Irish blush having only recently reclassified beer with less then 8% alcohol as a type of alcoholic beverage rather a foodstuff.

Also yesterday there was the collapse of negotiations between the three main political parties over plans to reform the press in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry. This is a multi-party negotiation between the three main parties and the press itself therefore again it is quite difficult to nail exactly what is going on. However the issue that caused the collapse of yesterday's negotiations seems to have been over the statutory basis for any regulation. The totalitarian wing of the Labour Party backed by the "Hacked Off" who are a nasty bunch of Communists and perverts want statutory regulation while the libertarian wing of the Conservative Party want voluntary regulation backed by a  Royal Charter. This is stronger then the system we've got now but stops short of statutory regulation. As always the Liberal Democrats seem to be having trouble making up their minds.

Again this an argument about freedom, corporate tyranny and government tyranny. On one hand you've got groups like Hacked Off claiming more regulation is needed to protect the ordinary citizen from multinational media barons such as Rupert Murdoch who have seemingly endless resources. On the other you've got people who are opposed out of a legitimate fear of becoming a society where the media is only allowed to report the news that the government permits it to. If you've been following the Defamation Bill or watched the BBC News channel recently you'd realise that world is closer than you'd think.

These sort of arguments should have particularly confused the Russians because as a hangover from the Soviet days and due to endemic capitalist corruption since there isn't really a concept of press freedom in Russia.

In a related development France has today gone public with the news that it will be joining Britain in pressing for a vote on renewing the EU arms embargo on Syria to be moved forward from April. As both the UK and France have the power to veto a renewal of the embargo this is the clearest signal yet that the embargo is going to be scrapped and EU nations led by the UK and France are going to start supplying the SQIA with weapons. Also despite their objections at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) it appears that the Chinese have been supplying the SQIA with weapons for quite some time. So as they clearly can't outspend the Gulf states it looks like the US is going to be the nation with the least say in a post-Assad Syria.

Therefore the only course of action left open to the US seems to be to cancel the Chris Brown/Rihanna operation in order to take the pressure off Mali. With less pressure on Mali other nations may be tempted to cut the US some slack on Syria. After all the only objective the US look likely to achieve from the Chris Brown/Rihanna operation is to remind everyone just how much they dislike the US.

17:10 on 14/3/13.