Father Ted- Father Jack Gives Up Alcohol
Sir Stephen Muckle | MySpace Video
Last week I observed that Tesco were playing the "minimum price of alcohol" game, and warned that National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) were sniffing around too.
Well, as expected, this week NICE have come out fully in favour of a minimum price of alcohol, claiming that it will reduce "problem/binge" drinking.
To my understanding of what Nanny claims to be "binge" drinking, this occurs when people are out and about in pubs and bars. Setting a minimum price will not affect these places, all it will do is push up the price of booze in supermarkets and off licences.
NICE also want more advice pushed down our throats about the dangers of booze.
The BBC, for good measure, interviewed some hapless/hopeless female this morning who had walked on some broken glass when pissed.
Boo Hoo!
She claimed that had she been given more "advice" about the dangers of booze, then the accident might not have happened.
For fark's sake!
When you drink 20 pints, or the equivalent, you know full well that you are pissed. In the event you walk on broken glass, or fall flat on your face you have no one to blame but yourself.
How stupid and irresponsible are people these days?
When I am pissed I immediately summon my sedan chair to convey me from bar to bar.
Does NICE really think that people with this level of "intelligence" will ever heed more advice (from which we are already drowning)?
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if there's one thing I know from having spent a fair amount of time in Scandinavia, it's that simply raising the price of alcohol does not stop binge drinking.
ReplyDeleteManc well said!
ReplyDeleteI lived in Stockholm for over 4 years, and worked in the Nordic/Baltic region.
Minimum prices do not stop people binge drinking.
I recommend Oslo and Helsinki for the best examples of drinking to excess, despite there being prices on booze that are criminally high.
BTW, there is also a very healthy "home brew" market (and I don't mean beer) in Scandinavia.
It’s strange that in countries where alcohol is cheap, with fewer restrictions on the purchase, that the problems of ‘binge drinking’ do not really exist.
ReplyDeleteHere in Spain, kids learn about alcohol at an early age without any advice from the state. The overwhelming majority of bars are kid friendly and it is not uncommon to see youngsters with a glass of wine (often watered down), when with their parents in restaurants. Almost all bars serve food and many give away tapas with every drink. It would be unusual for a Spaniard to go out ‘on the piss’, they would be more likely to go out for food and enjoy a few drinks at the same time.
There is a problem here when people come on holiday from the UK, unable to handle the large measures and captivated by the cheap prices.
I think that the drinking culture in the UK could and should be changed, but the State, and especially NICE are not the right people to implement changes, and a minimum price for alcohol is simply a ruse to raise revenue.
If the message is that alcohol is bad or dangerous, then kids will be motivated to experiment in private.
If people are constantly told that drinking is ‘naughty’, then the normal adolescent reaction is to go out and do it to excess.
I suspect this is more about taxation as I doubt Nanny will not allow supermarkets to keep the extra profit without giving her her cut...Kerching!!!
ReplyDeleteWhen Mr Cameron-Blair was campaigning, one of his messages was that he intended to roll back the Nanny state....Yeah right!! I also see that his government announced new rules this morning to make NHS trusts publish infection figures weekly rather than yearly...Yeah, that'll help trusts while budgets are stretched!!
The single issue groups have achieved their goals in relation to smoking, now they are going after the drinkers; fatties will be next....Perhaps a minimum price on calories;-)
If Nanny wanted to stop crime associated with a small number of drunken muppets, she needs to enforce existing laws....Assault, whether whilst drunk or not, is a crime....Criminal damage is too.....Being drunk and unruly is already a crime....Selling drink to youngsters is a crime as is a youngster trying to buy booze....Let's enforce existing laws rather than punishing everyone.....Isn't price fixing in a free market illegal?....Doesn't interfering in how a business sets its pricing policy go against Conservative ideology and thought?...Oh yes of course it does but Mr Cameron-Blair isn't Conservative but Blue Labour....I hate Nanny!!!
Message to Mr Cameron-Blair; It is not government's role to manage the population, it is government's role to protect the population from those the population cannot defend themselves against, it is the states role to provide education and healthcare....It is not your role to Nanny us, interfere in every area of our lives nor to socially engineer us....You should not farm us neither!!!
Opppps typo....First paragraph should read;
ReplyDeleteI suspect this is more about taxation, as I doubt Nanny will allow supermarkets to keep the extra profit without giving her her cut...Kerching!!!
'When you drink 20 pints, or the equivalent, you know full well that you are pissed. In the event you walk on broken glass, or fall flat on your face you have no one to blame but yourself.'
ReplyDeleteWell said, Ken! The trouble today is that a lot of people always want to blame someone else for problems they themselves have created, aided and abetted by "no win no fee" solicitors and assorted left wing, liberal "do-gooders".
'Does NICE really think that people with this level of "intelligence" will ever heed more advice (from which we are already drowning?'
If they do, they are as stupid as the jerks who drink irresponsibly and no doubt behave thus in other aspects of their lives. In any case, in my opinion, any advice coming from NICE lacks any credibility, since this caring organisation has done so much to deny cancer patients and others from receiving drugs which have been approved by many other European countries. Only this week, they have refused to sanction a new drug which helps children with asthma. NICE? I don't think so!
Tonk. said...
ReplyDelete'If Nanny wanted to stop crime associated with a small number of drunken muppets, she needs to enforce existing laws....Assault, whether whilst drunk or not, is a crime....Criminal damage is too.....Being drunk and unruly is already a crime....Selling drink to youngsters is a crime as is a youngster trying to buy booze....Let's enforce existing laws rather than punishing everyone.....'
I couldn't agree with you more, Tonk. I am also largely in agreement with your views on our new prime minister.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteI also lived in Stockholm for a bit and I can second Helsinki where I have seen some impressive levels of inebriation (and I'm not just talking about myself rolling off the Viking Line ferry).
I'd also recommend Bergen as being even more expensive than Oslo and yet still capable of producing its fair share of drunks every weekend.
This morning on "Today" I was entertained by a fine example of a useless academic from Nice promoting a minimum price per unit of alcohol. Now speaking as someone whose childhood was spent during the 1950s and 60s I would have thought it more sensible to return to the regime in force at the time.
ReplyDeleteStop this nonsense of piling booze high on supermarket shelves for any Tom, Dick and Harry to help themselves, and put it behind a manned counter. Seemples. That way we'd see the end of what I saw on Monday: punters walking out of our local Tesco carrying crates of cheap chemical fizz. In fact I don't know why they don't go the full hog and deliver the stuff on pallets.
Bring back the traditional off-licence, and enforce the law requiring publicans to refuse to serve those obviously the worse for wear. Worked when I was a tadpole.o
Or is that too simple and old-fashioned?
The other possible cause of binge-drinking is the continuing closure of family pubs which encourages couch-potatoes to stock up on supermarket fizz before settling down to watch an evening's televisual drivel.
ReplyDeleteRepeal the ridiculous smoking ban and allow those who want to smoke to have their own room to enjoy their fug, a pint and a chinwag. On the other hand Nanny doesn't want people to socialise and speak to each other, does she?
Getting drinkers off their couches and back into pubs may be just what we need to bring back some measure of responsible drinking. Of course the licenced trade will need to make their prices more competitive but increased patronage would enable them to do that.
"How stupid and irresponsible are people these days?" asks Ken.
ReplyDeleteThe answer to that, I suspect, is that they are as stupid and irresponsible as Nanny wants and intends them to be.
Stupidity and irresponsibility is a prerequisite for a willingness to be nannied. Such people provide Nanny with her raison d'etre. The more of them there are, the more busy Nanny can justify herself to be. Ordinary independent adults going about their business are difficult to nanny and have an annoying tendency to want to decline Nanny's nannying and tell her to go and have a quiet wank. Cue the hand-wringing of government agencies blathering on about people needing information and "support", to make people as helpless as possible so that Nanny can do her job. Not to mention laws (thanks Nulabour) making it compulsory to submit to Nanny's ministrations, so that anyone with half a functioning brain has no "out". Such is life in Nanny's universe.