David Cameron’s pronouncements on the drink ‘scandal’ last week* inevitably provoked renewed calls for minimum alcohol pricing. In the political dictionary of intention, the prime minister’s private view on whether we should introduce this measure is reported to be just shy of ‘minded to’. He risks conflict with other members of the Cabinet if he goes further than that.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government is pressing ahead with a minimum unit pricing plan, although it’s been warned it should run it past Europe first, in case it flouts competition law.

Interestingly, the NHS is taking the prospect seriously. The other day it released a briefing paper on how it intends to evaluate minimum pricing in Scotland, crucially important since the Scots will be pretty much pioneering the idea, notwithstanding the Canadian examples, which aren’t especially comparable, and the much-vaunted Sheffield University model, which is only a model.

The NHS paper suggests it is aware of the complexity of minimum pricing’s potential impact, paying attention to different populations and unintended consequences.

It’s the intended consequence, a reduction in alcohol consumption and, with it they hope, alcohol harm, that could prove the tricky one to assess, bearing in mind drink sales are falling pretty steadily, and especially in the off-trade over the past year. How will they be able to to tell the part minimum pricing is playing in that?

Among the unintended consequences is likely to be a boost in profits for the supermarkets which will effectively be able to engage in legalised price-fixing. They might even be inventivised to promote alcohol even more than they’re doing now, since it will become a more profitable product for them.

What worries me more, though, is the impact on addicted drinkers. Defending minimum pricing against the charge that it penalises moderate drinkers, its supporters have argued that heavy drinkers will be hit most. Which makes sense – until you come to the kind of heavy drinkers who aren’t put off doing it when the next drink might kill them, let alone by paying a few extra pence.

Minimum pricing won’t work for these people, the Sheffield academics have admitted. But will it have a negative effect? As unemployment and poverty deepen, we’re already seeing a growth in illicit booze, including industrial alcohol bottled as vodka.

It’s possible the addicted drinker, priced out of the official market, will turn to these cheap but dangerous alternatives. For them, a higher price might amount to prohibition, and all the troubles that come with it.

*You can read my views on this at www.philmellows.com

I’ve been reading stats that indicate more pubs are screening sport. If this is true, and my own observations suggest that it is, we’re seeing the reversal of a trend.

A few years ago many pub companies and brewers were cutting back on their Sky subscriptions, and a lot of the pubs that have been closing have been businesses that relied, over-relied perhaps, on football and rugby to get customers through the doors. It began to look as though live games would become the preserve of a small minority of specialist sports bars.

Sky can take some of the blame for this. I remember a trial stint on the Publican news desk, when I was going for a job there, when I was lucky enough to scoop a leaked story on Sky subs increases that were about to soar above inflation.

That was in the summer of 1997. And a similar story was to break on an annual basis; until last year when Sky froze pub subscriptions.

Another factor is foreign satellite transmissions of dubious legality. The high price of Sky, and some dodgy sales techniques, have driven struggling licensees to take a chance on screening games through channels that are not only considerably cheaper but allow them to show 3pm kick-offs on Saturdays.

I’ve been surprised at how many pubs have taken the risk, and confess to watching a few games myself, or parts of them before getting frustrated at being unable to identify the language the commentary’s in, let alone understand it.

Sky and the Football Association insist that these broadcasts are illegal, and licensees have indeed been convicted. Only last week an Essex pub was fined £19,000. And the prosecutions continue.

The Karen Murphy test case has, however, confused the matter. In October, following her apparent success in the European Court of Justice, the mainstream media was full of stories about pubs being able to show any games they like, a conclusion which was, at best, premature.

Murphy is back in the High Court later this month, and hopefully judges will reach a clear verdict and we’ll know where we stand.

Whatever the result, though, the latest evidence suggests that sport can continue to play a big part in the success of many community pubs, and that it’s worth the investment. I used to think that the growth of food was incompatible with screening football but I was wrong. Good pubs can do both. And they are.

Just over a year ago on these pages I wrote a rash and foolish post agreeing with something the government had done. I should have stuck to my principles.

I was suckered in by a decision to redefine the product so that so-called ciders with less than 35% juice content would not get the duty break proper ciders benefit from. I thought this was a good idea, not because it might directly reduce harm among street drinkers but because producing drinks like this purely as a vehicle for alcohol undermines the respect we should have for a wonderful concoction.

It turns out, though, that the 35% threshold has had barely any impact on the white ciders on the shelves because most of them contained more juice than that anyway.

I was made aware of this by a new report titled White Cider and Street Drinkers* by Alcohol Research UK which questioned drinkers themselves as well as the people who work with them on the park bench frontline.

It identifies white cider as a particular problem, something I haven't been entirely convinced about before because I believe addicted drinkers will simply switch to the next cheapest hit - and the research seems to confirm this, up to a point. Not surprisingly, price comes top of the list of reasons for buying a white cider.

Half the drinkers, though, knew it was harming them and agreed it should be banned or priced out of their reach. Others thought it should be even cheaper or made available on prescription, as methadone is for heroin users, a recognition that addiction is a problem that can't be solved by pricing.

The research goes on to ask, though, whether super strength ciders are more harmful than other alcohol, such as super strength beers, and points to the more severe stomach problems suffered by cider drinkers, presumably something to do with the acidity.

So, as a harm reduction measure, there might be something in making sure white cider is priced in such a way that it isn't the natural choice for street drinkers. Which will probably mean it won't get made at all.

For that to happen, though, the government will have to get the juice threshold right. Why didn't it the first time? Was it badly advised or was it another case of being seen to do something without actually doing anything?

*http://alcoholresearchuk.org/2012/02/01/white-cider-and-street-drinkers/

Signs that the Portman Group, the drinks industry social responsibility watchdog, is to play a more active and effective part in the alcohol debate came at Drinkaware's annual conference last week.

Henry Ashworth, the organisation's new, and young-ish, chief executive, took the platform alongside the acknowledged leader of UK medical temperance Sir Ian Gilmore to call on the health lobby to get involved in the responsibility deal.

As you'll remember, several bodies pulled out of the deal, saying it wasn't tough enough on the drinks industry, a fair point but not really a good enough reason to walk away from the table.

Behind it lies the view of large sections of medical temperance that companies that produce alcoholic drinks are intrinsically incapable of taking any action that will reduce their sales. Not only does this make the industry not worth talking, it means it must be kept out of alcohol policy altogether.

That's why the health lobby has boycotted the deal.

Perhaps aware of this, Ashworth made the point that "alcohol misuse is a massive commercial threat to the long-term sustainability of producers". This is putting it a bit strong, although I suppose it depends what you mean by 'misuse'.

What's true is that for hundreds of years the drinks industry has operated within a regulatory framework within which it has had to temper the drive for sales volume in favour of other ways of making a profit.

It's also true that the on-trade, at least, has a commercial interest in managing and controlling drinking behaviour because of the threat of disorder to the business. The vast majority of pub-goers do not feel comfortable in a room of drunks. Or even one drunk.

Gilmore's response to Ashworth was that "the problem is a practical one of getting changes and pledges together that the health bodies agree on".

This is indeed a problem when you look at the kind of bodies Gilmore is lined up with. He is, for instance, the chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance which has among its founding members the Institute of Alcohol Studies, a group with links to international prohibitionist network the Independent Order of Good Templars.

Unless the legitimate health lobby can distance itself from these kind of ideological hard-liners Ashworth has got his work cut out in bringing it back on board.

Consultation has opened on legislation that will roll back many of the gains in flexible opening hours that came as a result of the 2003 Licensing Act. The government wants to give powers to local authorities to impose a levy on pubs and bars opening after midnight, and to introduce EMROs, or Early Morning Restriction Orders, a return to blanket closing times for certain areas.

The measures are part of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act which will also increase the powers of various authorities to object to licences.

The Daily Mail was quick to celebrate, declaring that 10,000 pubs and bars will have to revert to traditional closing times, and all thanks to its own ‘Say No to 24-hour Drinking' campaign.

This campaign - a rum idea since Fleet Street journalists are one section of the population who have always been able to drink for 24-hours in clubs dedicated to that purpose - was launched in 2005, after the Licensing Bill was passed but before it became fully implemented in November of that year.

The Publican, the trade magazine I worked on at the time, fought back, calling on licensees to boycott the Mail (our surveys said that as many as 60% of publicans read the paper) and pointing out that 24-hour drinking was a groundless prognostication. As it so proved.

Amazingly, the Mail backed down – or at least it changed the name of its campaign to reflect reality.

But the myth clearly persists, with the Tories appealing to their natural fan base in this latest attack on modern civilisation. In a blatant one-law-for-you, one-for-us concession it suggests that pubs in villages of less than 3,000 people could be exempted from the late-night levy. That is, the places where Tory voters live.

All that even the best managed pubs in towns cities can expect is a small discount if they're very, very good.

It's a quite outrageous piece of class politics. And, of course, an attack on pubs being able to organise their business to give customers what they want – which isn't necessarily drinking at four o'clock in the morning.

In fact, it has prompted a lot of pubs to think about who, exactly, their customers are and what kind of licensing hours are appropriate. Many now don't open till the evening while others focus on a day-time trade.

Alcohol consumption in general, and binge drinking in particular, has declined steadily since 2004. That has nothing to do with flexible licensing, but you certainly can't claim it's made people drink more.

The 2003 Act isn't perfect, and its implementation was a chaotic affair. But it has been a clear step forward in making the world a better place and must be defended.

It was with some trepidation that I watched BBC4's Timeshift documentary on The Rules of Drinking the other night*. I braced myself for the usual scenes of debauchery, the pictures of diseased livers, the police chiefs fearing anarchy on our streets, the doctors warning of alcohol epidemics and imminent death. And, most horrifying of all, another debate on minimum pricing. You know, the usual sort of stuff.

Yet to my immense relief it wasn't like that. To be honest it was pretty thin on any sort of serious, incisive analysis of Britain's changing drink culture, but it made up for it with some fascinating archive footage.

In-between we had the talking heads, which was a bit too much like those cheap nostaligia shows they do where you get comedians you've never heard of making mildly amusing remarks about what life was like before we had mobile phones or something. But at least there weren't any grim-faced hospital consultants. And no apologetic drinks industry spokesperson either.

In fact, there actually was a comedian I'd never heard of – she'd run a pub at some point. The rest were sociologist types, cultural historians and the beer writer Pete Brown who sat there for a whole hour without the pint in front of him going down. Who were they trying to kid?

I wasn't convinced, either, by the remark about working men's clubs being the home of moderate drinking. I've been down the cellars of these places and they had tank beer. That is, it wasn't worth them buying the piddling amounts of beer you get in a barrel so they had it pumped straight into tanks the size of police phoneboxes (on the outside, at least).

There was an inordinate amount of attention given to George Best and journalists from the old Fleet Street days, hardly your typical drinkers. Rosie Boycott, a survivor and recovering alcoholic, speculated that we weren't drinking any more than we used to, it's just more in-your-face. Thanks to the attentions of journalists and television documentary-makers, no doubt.

And if the programme had a conclusion as such, this was more or less it. The narrative arc it drew across the past 100 years suggested that the mid-20th century was, thanks to two world wars, a time of historically low alcohol consumption. All we're doing now is getting back to normal.

The modern advocates of temperance must have hated it. Which is as good a reason as any for me to like it.

*The Rules of Drinking is available to watch on iPlayer until January 22: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b019c85h/Timeshift_Series_11_The_Rules_of_Drinking/

Happy New Year. There's hint of desperation about this season's traditional greeting. A hope against hope under lowering skies as we sink into the long hangover that follows the festivities, the time we call January.

At the risk of condoning self-medication, if there ever was a moment we need a drink, this is it. And, of course, this is also when your pub needs you most.

Yet this is proclaimed the month of detox, to use the fashionable term. People stop drinking, go on a diet and join the gym. As if they're determined to make January even more grim. The fools.

Nevertheless, some of my best friends are detoxers. One of them used to postpone his detox till February because it's a shorter month, betraying a fragile willpower.

There is a sort of logic to it, of course. An ascetic New Year is the price they have agreed to pay for December's indulgencies, the deal they make themselves for feeling free to let their hair down, the opportunity to claw back the weight gains and the cash losses.

And when it comes to drinking, it's a chance to repair their livers.

Or is it? As the nation made its alcohol-related resolutions the British Liver Trust told them they were wasting their time. Or worse.

"Detoxing for just a month in January is medically futile," said Dr Mark Wright, consultant hepatologist at Southampton General Hospital. "It can lead to a false sense of security and feeds the idea that you can abuse your liver as much as you like and then sort everything else with a quick fix."

Now, much as I dislike the idea of a January detox, this is high pomposity. If you want people to take better care of their health you should be respecting their efforts. However misplaced, they are making a public display of their will to behave healthily. Doctors should be embracing the decision, encouraging them, using it to open a dialogue. Not dissing them and making them out to be stupid.

Incidentally, the British Liver Trust is not immune to making daft mistakes itself. In the same press release it calls its own Love Your Liver campaign Love Your Lover. Though that's a good idea, too.

Love Your Lover. I'll drink to that, any time of year.

As Christmas approaches public sector unions are engaged in a fierce battle to defend jobs, services and pensions. Yet in the middle of it all one of them, the GMB, has chosen to launch a campaign… for a full pint.

It's obviously the time of year. Every press office knows the media will lunge for a booze-related story like Santa after a glass of sherry. Indeed, the Daily Mirror was prompted to carry out its own 'investigation'.

As any beer drinker could have told them, nearly every glass was underfilled – apart from one Wetherspoon pub which had bizarrely managed to overfill by 3%. In all but three instances out of 50, though, the pubs were serving within the 95% pint industry guideline. Why should pubs be able to get away with serving a pint that's only 95% of a pint?

A long-standing agreement between brewers and the government accepts that a pint of draught beer includes a head of reasonable size. Most drinkers, especially those north of Burton-upon-Trent, will appreciate that. A beer with a head not only looks better but tastes different when drunk through the foam. There are very few consumer complaints about short-measure pints, mainly because pubs will give you a top-up if you ask.

Oversized lined glasses would, of course, allow you to have your pint and drink it too. There are corners of the country that have them and use metered dispense, too, ensuring an exact pint, or half-pint, are served.

But outside those areas there's a problem. Some years ago J D Wetherspoon converted its entire estate to lined glasses and there were so many complaints about short measures – when there wasn't – the company, at vast expense, went back to rim dispense.

The GMB, however, has its own angle. For the last couple of years it's been trying to unionise pub tenants, with limited success. In the course of that it's discovered a practice well-known in the industry – of budgeting for 95% pints. Tenancy agreements include a rough trade-off between ullage, or waste beer, and short measures.

It's not an ideal solution, but it's a practical one that most can live with. Unless you happen to be a tenant in dispute using it as a bargaining chip.

Which is fair enough, but the GMB is walking into a dead-end by trying to make a campaign of it. Calling for a full pint is hardly likely to win the support of tenants, and on past evidence will fall flat among ordinary drinkers, too.

It should be using its resources fighting for workers rather than meddling in things it doesn't have the measure of.

I went to a dinner party the other night. Of course, I'd always rather be down the pub, but it was great fun and lively company nevertheless.

The curious thing about it, though – which would not have been so curious a few years ago – was that seven of the eight people around the table were serious smokers, smoking seriously.

The non-smoker was me. It's a role I've played on many occasions in the past, really ever since I started working on newspapers at the age of 19. I must have been the only hack I knew who didn't smoke. The office must have been in a constant fog. But it didn't bother me. I thought smokers were more interesting people.

It was the same down the pub. Smoking was a necessary part of drinking. Occasionally someone would remark, as we sat there with streaming eyes, that it was unusually smoky tonight, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Some mornings I woke up with a smoke hangover, usually confusingly mingled with a drink hangover but sometimes, when I knew I hadn't had that much to drink, on its own. My clothes, too, reeked of stale smoke which, in Proustian moments, took me back to my grandmother's coats. She was always in the pub and they always smelled of smoke, even though she was a non-smoker.

I had that a bit after the dinner party. A second-hand smoker's cough and a jumper I chucked straight in the washing machine. Nothing too terrible. But it reminded me that I'm personally quite pleased about the smoking ban.

Professionally I've been more ambivalent. It's got nothing to do with ‘individual freedom'. That, in my view, is a nonsensical notion. We are social beings to the root. In what sense can we behave as individuals? But I worried for the old boys who went to the pub for a bit of warmth and society, and the enjoyment of a fag with their half of mild.

I supported the idea that pubs might, by installing efficient ventilation and air-cleaning kit, ‘remove the smoke – not the smoker' as the slogan went. But over a number of years, as the pub trade fought a rearguard action against legislation, it became clear to me that the world was changing and that people – smokers and non-smokers alike – were ready for a ban.

And so it's proved. The smoking ban, it's true, was the last nail in the coffin for some pubs but the vast majority, and their customers, have adapted to the new circumstances.

Has it made pubs better places? I'm afraid you have to say it has.

While the report blaming rising cocaine consumption on longer pub opening hours is not worthy of further comment (people are taking it so they can carry on drinking longer, you see) another set-piece attack last week on 'booze Britain' is worth deeper consideration.

Soaring rates of alcoholic liver disease, especially in the North East, attracted the tag 'epidemic' and a particular concern that it's increasing among younger people.

This isn't news. It's been the trend for some time. Indeed, the number of alcohol-related deaths based largely on narrow definition dominated by liver cirrhosis dipped slightly last year, although that may not be significant.

The increase in alcohol-related liver disease among the young has also been noted before. The numbers are still very small, handreds a year rather than thousands, but it's still worth taking seriously.

It typically takes 10 years of heavy drinking to develop a life-threatening case of cirrhosis, which does suggest there are more people drinking heavily younger.

Yet the latest stats show that the decline in alcohol consumption the UK since 2004 (the year before flexible opening hours came in, note) has been driven by a decline in consumption among younger people.

What's happening here? Drill down into those figures and you find that more young people are abstaining - and there is a smaller minority drinking more heavily.

From an alcohol policy point of view it would therefore seem to make sense to identify that minority and do something before their health problems get too serious. For instance, alcohol brief interventions, in which GPs and others with medical authority have a structured chat with you and advise you to reduce or stop your drinking, have seen impressive results.

But instead of campaigning for more stuff that's been proved to work, the Newcastle doctors who highlighted the liver disease stats have used them call for an advertising ban, with one saying that the legal age to drink should go up from five to 15 – as if making it illegal is going to make a difference.

I'm really not bothered whether they ban alcohol advertising or not, but it won't address the problem. Like other population-wide policies, the attraction for medical temperance is that it's cheap - at least in terms of state spending. The alternatives - targeted interventions - are expensive. And of course those are the services that are being cut.