Socialist Incompetence

Once again, the government has revealed its socialist incompetence with the rise in tax on beer; or rather, as the government would rather, a 'minimum price to combat social excessive drinking'.
There is a list of reasons why this disgusts me, the foremost being that Alistair Darling cares nothing for the future of the British Pub. Already, around 7 pubs are closing every week in the United Kingdom, and along comes a heavily publicised additional setback for every landlord and pubowner in the country. It seems to be utter madness.
Let's look at the pros and hopefully outweigh them with the cons. Firstly, as with smoking, increasing a tax thresold on a heavily consumed and relativiely inelastic good such as beer is a key way of raising money for spending in the economy: a lot of tax revenue for little effect to the consumer. All very well, but this is money which we don't know the future of. Either it will be reimbursed in the same spendaholic fashion that got us into this mess over the next years of Labour government, or it will be accumulating to help pay back some of that gigantic debt overshadowing the country; a debt which, I might add, the government fails to notice the existence of.
Of course, that is the very point. Lumbering the next government with yet another irreversible tax burden.