The Wardman Wire

Rumbold on Pickled Politics (who’s attitudes are on rare but memorable occasions as delightfully crusty as the Are You Being Served version) reports that the Liberal Democrat Health Spokesman Greg Mulholland is proposing that we should have an enforced requirement for wine to be available in 125ml size glasses in restaurants:

Liberal Democrat Greg Mulholland is to propose a bill in the House of Commons calling for the reinstatement of traditional 125ml measures.

The MP for Leeds North West argues that larger glasses are making customers “less aware of how many units of alcohol they are drinking”.

Many licensed premises only sell wine in 175ml and 250ml measures.

Rumbold is on form in his dismissal of this regulation for the sake of regulation:

A society that needs great swathes of law is sick (in the medical sense). Not because it needs so many laws, but because when it has them this breaks down our essential humanity. There will always be people or groups who fight to retain a particular law, which is why it is so hard to take laws off the statute book. We need a reformation of mentality, shifting from a society that welcomes new laws to one that distrusts them, and which can be persuaded for the need in very few cases.

Indeed - too many laws about minutiae undermine the need for individuals to act like grownups and take some responsibility.

But he is insufficiently vitriolic in his condemnation. This tendency is a poisonous multi-headed hydra that feeds on the need for politicians to justify themselves.

Presumably there will be a Man from the Ministry with a white coat and a pair of mini-jackboots, who will contribute to the productive value-adding work in our society by coming around with a measuring device to ensure that all restaurants are obeying the delegated regulation. Presumably in their spare time, these diversity profiled wine glass size enforcement operatives will moonlight monitoring the diameter of the glass balls in cats eyes with micrometers.

Or they could enforce a standard tolerance in the colour of red tape.

My alternative suggestion is that speeches by Lib Dem MPs on this sort of subject should only come in one length - 125 seconds, and that the relevant benches in the House be fitted with time delay ejector seats as a measure to improve the Health of listeners to Today in Parliament by lowering our bloood pressure.

Alternatively Mr Mulholland should only come in 5 foot 6 inch units, and that if he doesn’t fit he should have the requisite section chopped off the bottom of his legs.

Or maybe in this case the top of his head.

Tags: greg mullholland, wine glass size[tags]greg mullholland, wine glass size[/tags]