I have booze on the brain at the moment, as I’ve just given it up for Lent. One suspects, in this new Age of Austerity, a lot of fellow atheists will be giving things up for Lent this year – spending money, mostly. Anyway, the Scots - showing yet again their conviction that the state knows best – are mulling over banning the sale of ultra-cheap alcohol, by placing a minimum price per unit on booze. Bad news for those retailers who enjoy the footfall caused by hawking 24 cans of lager for £7.

On the face of it, things do look fairly grim up North of the border. Official figures apparently show that there were 42,430 alcohol-related discharges from Scottish hospitals in 2007-08, a 20% increase over five years. The Scots also have the eighth-highest level of alcohol consumption in the world. This is a tricky issue for the Scottish executive, because the malaise it suggests needs rectifying reinforces the stereotype of the country as a latter day Hogarthian Gin Lane, peopled by Rab C Nesbitts and politicians who get smashed and then set other people’s curtains on fire.

The answers suggested could also be unfair – the Tories have already labelled them horribly flawed. Minimum prices are unlikely to affect members of the Cloudy Bay swilling classes, but those lost souls in search of a cheap hit in tough times on a Saturday night.

There’s little doubt that our whole nation has a booze problem, though. A large chunk of our number still drinks to get legless rather than to enter a milder, more convivial mind-altered state. There will come a time when the teetotal tax-paying masses rise up in protest at the colossal bill that the alcohol-dependent run up. It takes one of the more foresighted alcohol producers like Diageo to realise that its reputation is going to require careful attention over the coming years as the heat moves away from tobacco to the demon drink as Public Enemy Number Two (Fred Goodwin and his friends in banking will retain the top spot for some time yet). You won’t find Diageo’s brands being destroyed by insane price-cutting.

The problem with fiddling with alcohol tax is the extent to which consumers will try to get round it. The Scandinavians have been struggling with this for years.  And remember the days of smuggling beer across the Channel and into Kent, when the milkman was able to provide 20 cans of wife-beating Stella with a couple of pints of gold top? Still, it’s all academic for me, as it’s ginger beer for the next four weeks before my bottle of Veuve Cliquot in the fridge gets opened at Easter.

In today's bulletin:
HSBC launches record rights issue as profits slump 60%
I was dumb, says Warren Buffett
Editor's blog: The great British booze problem
Ryanair: in for a penny, in for a pound
Do it right: Seven ways to manage team morale