After much shilly-shallying and a fair bit of faffing about the Scottish Government has introduced a Bill that, if passed – and if the EU doesn't decide it's against competition law – will enforce a minimum alcohol unit price.

There is no doubt the world will be watching. It will form the first real test-case for minimum pricing and if it looks like it works other governments will probably follow suit.

Certainly the Scottish Government and the health lobby believe it will work, and most of the pub industry, too – though for them it's not so much about reducing alcohol harm as getting people back into the pub.

I doubt whether it will have much impact on anything. I doubt, too, whether we'll be able to tell for sure what impact it's having, so many other factors are involved in alcohol harm and pub-going.

Of course, it depends on the unit price that's decided on. At the moment Sheffield University, which produced the piece of research on which the hopes for minimum pricing are almost entrirely based, is updating its findings and a number will come out, probably 45p or 50p.

If it's much more than that, say 70p, it will hit quite hard, but with unpredictable results. We're already seeing a steep increase in cheap bootleg booze being brought illicitly into the country, some of it quite dangerous.

But at 50p what will happen is that people will make a decision on whether to buy based on what, exactly, they get out of drinking. Like anything else they will ask whether it's worth the money.

At a Westminster Forum on alcohol the other day Dr John Holmes, from the Sheffield University research team, argued that minimum pricing will affect heavy drinkers disproportionately. Under questioning he admitted that his heavy drinkers did not include dependant drinkers. The most vulnerable group will carry on drinking themselves to death.

But what about, say, young binge-drinkers? They're a worry, too. But they also have a high emotional investment in drinking. Their social lives are so important to young people it's probably worth the extra cost – even if you have to nick the money.

No doubt some people who don't enjoying drinking so much will conclude it's got too expensive and drop it. More are already abstaining as cuts and unemployment bite.

For others the solution is to drink more. Really heavy drinkers find structure and sociability in drinking, and they aren't going to give that up easily.

This week is British Pub Week. Unusually for weeks it lasts 10 days, but no shame in that when you're celebrating a great cultural institution. Obviously one doesn't like to be cynical about such a well-meaning event but somebody's got to do it and I'd rather it was somebody who loves pubs and wants to see them thrive. Like me.

So what's wrong with Pub Week? For a start, how many people know it's happening? I mean ordinary people. It's my job to know about it. But how about those the message of Pub Week needs to reach – the lay pub-goer and, perhaps more important, lapsed pub-goers who might take up the habit again, given the encouragement.

No one I know, no one I go to the pub with, has mentioned it. Nobody mentioned it last year either. I haven't raised it in conversation, I admit, but it's not exactly front-of-mind for me either.

This may be a local anomaly. Here in Brighton this week is a big one for pubs anyway. Brighton celebrates Hallowe'en like no other city in the UK. They've even hived off the Zombie Walk to the previous weekend to ease congestion. Saturday night was White Night, a kind of all-night party that takes advantage of the clocks going back. Then we've got Bonfire Night. Brighton likes its fireworks too, and the biggest firework party of them all takes place just up the road in Lewes.

So there's probably not much time down here for Pub Week. No doubt there are pubs around the country that are using it to put on extra events, but you could hardly say it's gripped the public imagination.

The most successful Pub Week activity is the one where pubs invite the local MP along for a free pint and a bit of lobbying on issues facing the pub. This is good for PR with a story and picture in the local paper guaranteed if you do it right.

Whether it has an impact on decisions made in Parliament, though, is doubtful. MPs, whatever their party, will make syrupy comments about how splendid pubs are then go back to the Commons and continue to vote through measures that make it more difficult for pubs to survive.

Three days before Pub Week got under way the British Beer & Pub Association released its quarterly Beer Barometer. It showed sales of beer in pubs down 4.3% against last year in a beer market that's 1.6% up.

Chief executive Brigid Simmonds blamed taxes that have risen 35% since 2008 thanks to the duty escalator.

Pub Week, I suspect, will not help solve this problem. Pubs will have to keep working hard to give people reasons to visit and make them feel it's worth it when they get there.

And they have to do that all the time. Every week has to be a Pub Week. There are no shortcuts.

My jury is still out over 2.8% beer. As you'll know, the government's new low duty band for brews at that strength and below came into force this month, and we've already seen a modest flurry of new brands seeking to take advantage.

I sampled a pint of Fuller's Mighty Atom in the Red Lion, across the road from where our MPs make these sort of decisions, and was soon wishing I'd ordered a half of the same brewer's splendid Bengal Lancer IPA (5%) instead. I would have been drinking something with slightly less alcohol with a much bigger character at a much smaller price (£3.30 for Atom is too high, I reckon).

Then again I might have been tempted into the other half of Lancer and ruined the whole thing.

More research needed, I think.

What I'm really bothered about is the simultaneous creation of a higher duty band for beers of 7.5% and above. It reflects a great ignorance of what's actually happening in the beer market at the moment – and how it's affecting our maligned drinking culture.

Of course, what our law-makers have in mind is hitting the super-strength lagers that tend to be drunk by people with an alcohol problem. But a higher price isn't going to stop those people drinking. They'll merely switch to whatever's cheapest. It's a simple bangs-for-bucks equation for them.

What it could damage, though, is the vibrant and growing craft beer market that's playing a major role in developing an appreciation of how gloriously various and interesting beer can be.

These beers, from Belgian trappist ales to US boutique brews to the kind of things coming out of the new brewing movement over here, aren't produced to be any particular alcoholic strength (BrewDog's efforts being an irritating exception), they are principally produced for taste and flavour, for the organoleptic experience of the drinker.

Alcohol has a role in carrying and enhancing those flavours, and more complex beers may have an ABV in excess of 7.5%. But the extra duty in this case is penalising not alcoholic strength but flavour and body.

This is important. If we do have a drink problem part of the solution lies in people acquiring an appreciation of drink that means they want to savour it before it hits the bloodstream. It's not so much what people drink as how they drink it. If the government insists on seeing drinks as no more than alcohol how can they expect us to do otherwise?

There's a petition against the 7.5% you might want to sign: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/18346

My local council here in Brighton & Hove has launched a Big Alcohol Debate to find out what people think about drinking. It started with a 24-hour tweetathon (#bhdrink if you know what that means) – beginning at 3pm on Friday afternoon.

Not surprisingly the twittersphere was soon clogged with all sorts of nonsense, Nick Griffin - not the fascist one but the boss of the Pleisure pubco which runs pubs on the south coast – at times fighting a seemingly lone battle against the anti-alcohol brigade.

One of the points he made was that if you’re going to start something like this on a Friday afternoon most of the people with a healthy, postive attitude to drinking are going to be heading down the pub after a hard week’s work.

When I popped out a couple of hours later Brighton’s pubs were indeed packed with people too busy social networking in the flesh to bother tweeting.

The next morning the local paper’s reporters were out and about on a "special investigation" trying to catch people drinking before the sun was over the yard arm. That was unfortunate timing, too, as quite a few pubs had opened their doors early for the Rugby World Cup semi-final between Wales and France. So, yes, on this occasion there were people drinking at 9am.

They also found some poor street drinker with a bottle of cider. Big scoop that.

And as somebody pointed out, for nightshift workers it's actually the end of the day. There have always been pubs that cater for that market.

There are a few pubs here, too, that open at 10am for older people who, as the licensee pointed out, "have no one at home and just want the company. It's not really about the alcohol".

I wasn’t going to get involved myself – until I saw a tweet advising us that 75% of suicides have been drinking. That really gets me that one. If you were going to top yourself, wouldn’t you need a drink first? Honestly.

But it's all a bit pointless this sort of thing. Opinions flying in all directions when what is really needed is a calm, measured assessment of the benefits and problems drink brings and then some thought about how we might create the right conditions to increase the former and lessen the latter.

I'm all in favour of democracy, but there’s no place in alcohol policy for public opinion. In that, it's like hanging.

My local council here in Brighton & Hove has launched a Big Alcohol Debate to find out what people think about drinking. It started with a 24-hour tweetathon (#bhdrink if you know what that means) – beginning at 3pm on Friday afternoon.

Not surprisingly the twittersphere was soon clogged with all sorts of nonsense, Nick Griffin - not the fascist one but the boss of the Pleisure pubco which runs pubs on the south coast – at times fighting a seemingly lone battle against the anti-alcohol brigade.

One of the points he made was that if you’re going to start something like this on a Friday afternoon most of the people with a healthy, postive attitude to drinking are going to be heading down the pub after a hard week’s work.

When I popped out a couple of hours later Brighton’s pubs were indeed packed with people too busy social networking in the flesh to bother tweeting.

The next morning the local paper’s reporters were out and about on a "special investigation" trying to catch people drinking before the sun was over the yard arm. That was unfortunate timing, too, as quite a few pubs had opened their doors early for the Rugby World Cup semi-final between Wales and France. So, yes, on this occasion there were people drinking at 9am.

They also found some poor street drinker with a bottle of cider. Big scoop that.

And as somebody pointed out, for nightshift workers it's actually the end of the day. There have always been pubs that cater for that market.

There are a few pubs here, too, that open at 10am for older people who, as the licensee pointed out, "have no one at home and just want the company. It's not really about the alcohol".

I wasn’t going to get involved myself – until I saw a tweet advising us that 75% of suicides have been drinking. That really gets me that one. If you were going to top yourself, wouldn’t you need a drink first? Honestly.

But it's all a bit pointless this sort of thing. Opinions flying in all directions when what is really needed is a calm, measured assessment of the benefits and problems drink brings and then some thought about how we might create the right conditions to increase the former and lessen the latter.

I'm all in favour of democracy, but there’s no place in alcohol policy for public opinion. In that, it's like hanging.

The ban on pubs screening football matches beamed from a foreign satellite channel must be one of the most flouted laws in the country – along with the six pickets rule and that one about taxicabs having to carry a bale of hay in the back for the horse.

On many occasions I’ve wandered into an unfamilar pub on a Saturday afternoon and tried to work out what language the commentary is. And, indeed, who’s playing. But I never grassed. Hopefully that doesn’t open me up to conspiracy charges.

I have always advised pubs not to do it, though, and that advice continues, even as the euphoria surrounding the Karen Murphy case dies down.

You can’t have missed it. The European court ruling in favour of Murphy and the foreign satellite screenings at her pub, the Red, White & Blue in Portsmouth, was all over the mainstream media. It appeared that the little publican had won the day over the combined might of Sky TV and the Premier League and there would be major repercussions for the deal that sews up a large part of the market for the broadcaster and the sports body.

Except that the ruling wasn’t that straightforward, and we now have to wait months, probably, for the High Court to interpret the findings.

In all likelihood Murphy’s case, and the hopes of hundreds of other licensees who want to get round Sky’s large fees, will founder on a devil of a detail. For while there was nothing in copyright law to prevent her showing the football itself, all the paraphernalia surrounding – and inserted into – the 90 minutes were not allowed to be publicly broadcast.

In practical terms Sky and the Premier League have won. Albeit on penalties.

But the episode got me thinking. Karen Murphy has become an unlikely pub heroine in all this because if she did succeed it would undermine the basis on which Sky and the Premier League are able to make a vast fortune out of 22 blokes kicking a ball around. And that would be a good thing. Not just for pubs but for football and its fans.

The game at the top is bloated with cash. Wage bills alone threaten to bring the whole business model crashing down. Money needs to come out.

But neither Sky nor the Premier League, and not the High Court either for that matter, are going to allow that to happen.

Pete Brown is a useful bloke to have around, straddling as he does the disciplines of marketing and beer drinking. Last week he presented his fifth Cask Report, compiled with the support of an unlikely alliance of brewers.

Market reports are ten-a-penny, of course. Actually, most of them are ludicrously expensive. The Cask Report is free to download, though, thanks to the sponsorship and the genuine desire for people to read it, rather than just buy it.

It’s different, too, because Brown cares about his subject matter, and because it has a grander purpose – to make sure the good news story around real ale that it tells continues.

In the year before the first Cask Report came out cask ale overtook the total on-trade beer market on performance and it has stayed ahead. It continues to recruit new drinkers, especially among women and young people.

The report has played an important role in telling the world about that and also in trying to understand why it’s happening. The new issue includes some interesting original consumer research.

Apparently, though, the mainstream media is getting bored with the story. Good news is no news. At least not at the fourth repetition. If Cask Report makes its sixth edition someone is going to have to come up with a sexy new angle.

Or it could be that the brewers behind it are going to have to step beyond the vanity of media coverage.

In his presentation Pete Brown was most insistent about who the report is aimed at and what it’s trying to achieve. It’s for pubs, the licensees and barstaff on the frontline, and it’s a tool to help them understand what their customers really think about cask beer, and how they can be persuaded to drink more of it. It’s even got a ten-point action plan on the back.

A mention on page 16 of the Daily Mail is nice to have but there’s a practical job to be done. The big thing is to get it into the hands and onto the computer screens of publicans.

Hopefully, the brewers that support the Cask Report see that and won’t be put off by the lack of media attention. They all want the same thing – to grow the cask beer market – and they need knowledgeable, astute and proactive people in the pub frontline to help them do it. And that’s what Cask Report can help deliver.

*You can download the 2011 Cask Report for free here: www.caskreport.co.uk

I haven't had a chance yet to read the full report on pub companies by BISC, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. It's rather long. No doubt I'll get round to it before we get the government's response in three months time. Meanwhile, the main conclusions have been filleted out by others* so, based on that, here are a few initial thoughts.

The headline-grabbing recommendation is for a statutory code of practice to regulate the relationship between landlord and pub tenant. Major pub-owning companies, represented by the British Beer & Pub Association, are annoyed about this since they've spent the last 18 months drawing up their own codes, which could now prove to be a wasted effort.

In the wider scheme of things, though, they should be happy that the beer tie, which lies at the heart of the business model, is not under threat. We are not going to get the ‘New Beer Orders' some feared.

BISC does slam the lack of progress on offering free-of-tie deals, but from where I'm sitting the fact that 16% of new tenants have been offered them is a significant break from past practice. And various loose and limited kinds of tie are also becoming available.

Of course, the reality is that these deals come much more expensive in terms of rent and only make sense for a certain type of operator. Given the choice, most tenants choose the tie. For a wet-led pub it actually offers some sort of protection against falling beer volumes. Although they've got to get their sums right in the first place.

Family brewers are especially upset that BISC appears to have ignored their claims to be treated as a separate case. Some of them weren't too happy about having to draw up a code of practice where their informal practices have been part of their culture for generations and seem to work most of the time.

Yet BISC fails to acknowledge this. Nor does it recognise the ways in which the big pubcos have changed over the last couple of years. There has been an admission that the profits that came from pubs have not been properly shared. That landlords have taken too much out and threatened the future of the small businesses on which their model is based.

The answer has been to introduce greater flexibilty and support for tenants. For many, of course, it's too little, too late. And the same could be said about the BISC report. It seems to come from a different era.

Whatever tinkering and bureaucracy results, it will be marginal to the real challenges facing the pub industry today – how to survive an economic crisis that is sapping the spending power of pub-goers by the day. And if the government carries on doing what it's doing it will only get worse.

There are no codes of practice that can tackle that.

*http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/General-News/BISC-report-conclusions-outlined

Since the health lobby made the decision to focus its efforts a couple of years ago on getting minimum pricing on alcohol the whole thing has become a bit of a bore.

Top docs leading the medical temperance movement have repeatedly invoked a single piece of research – the Sheffield University study – to support their claims that a minimum price will reduce alcohol problems and save lives, not to mention money.

The fact is, though, that we don’t really know what the impact will be since all we have are theoretical models, as the person in charge of the Sheffield research at one point admitted.

Still, the Scottish Government, now led by the SNP, has announced it is to press ahead with imposing a minimum price of 45p a unit, a unit being about half a pint of weakish beer.

It may not find it so simple, though. To begin with, Europe might well see the measure as a form of price-fixing and declare it illegal.

Then there’s the matter of public opinion. Consumer focus groups marshalled by Alcohol Research UK, the charity formerly known as Alcohol Education Research Council, suggest minimum pricing will come up against mass popular opposition. A report on the Sky News website was misleadingly headed “Study: 'Cheap Alcohol Ban Won't Stop Bingers'” – but that’s only what people think. It’s not a scientific finding.

So are the people right? Professor, Sir Ian Gilmore, guru of medical temperance and trustee of Alcohol Research UK, expressed his frustration that people don’t understand. They haven’t read the research like he has.

It goes deeper than that, though. Common sense, which isn’t always wrong, suggests that a higher price won’t stop people with real alcohol problems drinking. They’ll find a way to feed their addiction.

Minimum pricing will hit heavy drinkers harder, counter the docs, and they have a point since, by definition, bigger drinkers buy more booze. (And the wealthier ones, presumably, will continue to do so). But there is something slightly disingenuous about this. The goal of minimum pricing is to reduce total alcohol consumption across the population, the theory being that it will, by some mechanism not well understood, reduce alcohol problems.

The likelihood that heavy drinkers will be disproportionately affected by minimum pricing is being used here to swing it with the public, and the public, quite rightly, isn’t having any of it.

Last week, when the Good Food Guide announced it was banning the term ‘gastropub,’ you’ll have heard a small cheer go up from the vicinity of me.

It’s not like the smoke ban, of course. People are still going to use the word. You’re not going to get the food police coming round and banging you up for saying “gastropub.” But it was a bold and refreshing emperor’s-new-clothes moment.

Some of us have for years argued there’s no such thing as a gastropub – just pubs that serve good food. We were drowned out by a buzz that was positive, at least, in drawing attention to the fact that pubs had gone beyond scampi-in-a-basket and serious chefs were coming into the trade.

But too many pubs claimed the name, seeing the chance to add a few quid to their prices. Worse, it encouraged some to go too far down the restaurant route, bringing out the white tablecloths and turning the bar into no more than a service counter.

Rural houses in particular were under pressure to increase their food trade to survive, but many did it at the expense of local drinkers. They put all their quail’s eggs in one spun-sugar basket and lost the very thing that makes a pub a pub.

Smarter operators saw that people like eating in pubs because of the sheer informality of it and the comforting background noise of chatter from the bar. Here was a place you could not only eat well in but relax.

Being a pub, rather than a gastropub, also means you can be more imaginative and flexible about the food you serve. As the Good Food Guide points out, pubs offer everything from bar snacks to a three-course meal without treating the customer any differently. Traditional pub meals mingle with the exotic.

Not least, pubs have made possible the rehabilitation of the scotch egg. “It’s the time of the pub again,” declares Guide editor Elizabeth Carter, perhaps a little too optimistically bearing in mind the present difficulties. But she’s right. We don’t need gastropubs.

A mystery remains, however. Who was it 20 years ago who decided that the Eagle in Farringdon was the first of a new breed? Who called it a gastropub? Come on. Own up.