In a major victory for health campaigners, Lord Doherty ruled last Friday that the Scottish parliament was within its powers to introduce Europe's first minimum pricing law on all alcoholic drinks because it would protect health.
On 3 May, the SWA lost the first round of the legal battle when the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled that the minimum pricing law, which concerns alcohol sold in supermarkets and shops, was legal.
Scotland's first minister Alex Salmond led a minority government then but he was re-elected in May 2011 with an overall majority and enough clout to make minimum pricing law.
And the threat gets worse: the Northern Ireland government is taking steps to be the first European nation to introduce minimum pricing laws on alcohol to "tackle binge drinking and anti-social behavior," according to a Financial Times report in early March.
There's now an effort to repeal the minimum pricing laws and, y'know, actually have a competitive free market for alcohol, but small store owners are protesting it of course, because if the government was basically making it impossible for other businesses to compete with yours you'd protest too.
Porsche signalled that a takeover wasn't its immediate goal when it offered shareholders the minimum price allowed by law, but the manoeuvre solidified its strategic control of VW under the assertive hand of Ferdinand Piëch, VW's chairman and a member of the Porsche family.
Last year the 10 councils that make up the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities announced they would be looking at introducing a 50p per unit minimum price on alcohol using a by-law against "nuisances' to tackle disorder and health issues from alcohol.
Interpreting the WiHo in Figure 1 as cohabitation-WiHo and assuming traditional gender roles, CLM laws set a minimum price of WiHo, i.e. ymin.
Certainly price floors--or "minimum price fixing," which is banned by law--make sense, they said.
A minimum price for fluid milk was fixed by law in April , 1933
