
Nanny, the media, the butchers' profession, Tesco and other "experts" have been working themselves up into a bit of a frenzy recently over booze and its "alleged" effects on people's behaviour.
In Nanny's view, booze is the root cause of many of society's ills eg; violence, crime, anti social behaviour etc.
Now herein I would like to present a counterpoint, based on my own modest contribution to the "booze debate".
On Friday I dined in Londinium with an old chum of mine from my days in KPMG. An excellent evening was had by all, first in the Red Lion then in Le Boudain Blanc (I will be adding a review about that to my
Restaurant Reviews site in due course); an elegant sufficiency of booze was consumed by all.
I personally rounded off the meal with an Irish coffee (in honour of being half Irish, and it being St Patrick's day on Monday) and four double Remy Martins (the singles looked ridiculous in the glass).
After that I wended my way back to Croydonia, using the underworld railway and Network Snail.
Now, despite having consumed an elegant sufficiency of alcohol, I still managed to get home perfectly safely
WITHOUT:
1 Assaulting anyone
2 Stamping on anyone's head
3 Vomiting or collapsing in the street
4 Passing myself off to police as Euan Blair, or a minor member of the royal family
5 Pissing against a wall
6 Vandalising the tube or train
7 Inflicting any form of anti social behaviour on my fellow passengers
8 Putting my feet up on the seats
9 Swearing loudly, or talking on my mobile phone
10 Being attacked, mugged, robbed, assaulted or buggered about with in any way

Now the thought occurs to me, if I a shy, retiring, reserved, middle aged accountant (who wouldn't say boo to a goose) can manage to do that, despite having consumed more than Nanny's preferred/recommended quantity of booze, why is that the yoof of this country (who are less than half my age) cannot manage to do the same having consumed a few water based, fizzy, sugar added shitty drinks flavoured with sub standard vodka?
The answer my friends is this...
It's not the booze, its the personalities that causes the trouble.
The badly behaved scumbags that litter the streets of Britain on Friday and Saturday are badly behaved, because they are badly behaved per se. They are ignorant yobs who have not been brought up properly by their parents to respect others, to respect themselves or indeed to be able to drink in a sensible manner.
The root cause of Britain's behavioural ills lies not with booze, but lousy parenting.
Curing that will require a lot more effort than merely farting around with headline grabbing taxes on alcohol flavoured fizzy water.