Witty one-liners from HM Government

And welcome to the next instalment of the Jake Berry letters.

In the ongoing saga of my vain attempts to talk my local MP out of supporting minimum alcohol pricing, my last action was to send him the results of an FOI request I sent to the Department of Health.

The FOI was to query the statement from the home office website:

Alcohol has been so heavily discounted that it is now possible to buy a can of lager for as little as 20p and a two litre bottle of cider for £1.69.

I asked for a source of this information and the response pointed me to Tescos own brand cooking lager that is so piss weak, you would not fit enough in your belly to get you drink.

Anyway, I fired this info off in a little email and asked him what he thinks of the Government massaging, cherry picking and generally fiddling the figures to make its point.

His previous replies have been quite in depth lists of weasel words and off the shelf comments.

This reply was different. It was just one line:

I understand your scepticism over some of the language used by the government and I am sure you will appreciate that this issue is not straightforward. However, I believe that in general, the Governments approach is the correct way forward.

Without further explanation or clarification, I take that statement to mean the following:

I do not deny the Government has lied to further its own agenda. I believe this is the correct way for Government to act. This is because we are in charge, and the people must do as they are told.

The conversation can be found here, here and here.