Roy Beers: Don't let the Libservatives make your business 'a nice little earner'

And also, it has to be said, not a little confusion. In Edinburgh Alex Salmond's minority SNP government is hell bent on delivering minimum pricing, but all the unionist opposition parties - including the Libservatives - are totally against it.

However in England these same two parties are now planning a ban on selling below cost, which sort of sounds like min pricing by a different route.

Meanwhile Labour in Scotland, unable to come up with an alternative to the SNP plan, has set up a commission charged, more or less, with finding ideas that do the same job as the SNP proposals but which are somehow different.

Recently a political activist for a mainstream party (doesn't matter which one) said to me on this subject: "It shouldn't be a politics issue. Someone should be banging their heads together, because at the moment they're all locked down into point scoring."

Wouldn't it have been great if some great UK supra-national committee had met three years ago to agree a comprehensive "British" way forward? Scotland has different licensing laws, to be sure, but there's absolutely nothing to stop Alex, Nick and Dave (ie, Cameron) signing a joint policy concordat covering both sides of the border.

Get the Libservatives in agreement with the Nats at Holyrood, and add a bit of Green garnish, and the Labour opposition - everywhere - would have to go with the flow.

Even so, there's obviously plenty of ideas-sharing going on away from the news headlines limelight - no doubt they all toddle off to the same routine national conferences.

For example enshrined in the Libservatives action plan is the intention to allow councils to levy extras fees from late night city centre licences - precisely the manoeuvre already being attempted (albeit cloaked in vague small print) in the latest SNP-run drinks Bill currently meandering glacially through Holyrood.

It will seek to impose a "social responsibility levy" - a neat piece of linguistic sophistry for "entertainment tax" - on "some" premises. A consensus of late traders I've spoken to consider this simple banditry, and fear the worst.

But shouldn't big venues which attract large numbers of bibulous revellers have to cough up their fair share? Of course - and so they do, through swingeing business rates, unjustifiable licence costs and rigorous after-midnight security measures.

So long as they are operating their licences legally and responsibly, why should they have to pay twice for exactly the same service? It would be more logical to charge customers gate money for getting into a particular area - but not exactly a vote winner.

If someone calls the police to tell the students next door to turn their music down at 4am I don't get charged extra for those officers being called out. It's all factored into my exorbitant daylight-robbery council tax.

Meanwhile note the uncanny synchrony of thinking between Scottish nationalists, the Tories and the LibDems. Scotland's justice minister Kenny MacAskill has stopped uttering the mantra "the polluter pays" of late, but it's definitely the political subtext of his party's stealthy attempt to extort more money from the trade.

Don't let it happen in England. Let them footer about with the way supermarket beer is sold - Big Retail will doubtless mount a robust defence - but don't let them empower councils with the means to fleece you of more of your hard-earned profits.