They just can't leave us alone, can they?

Firstly, the Scottish "Government" wants to raise the age at which alcohol can be legally drunk to 21. Why? Because "we all know that Scotland as a nation has a drink problem and the implications of this are very serious - not least for our health." So because of the potential of some health problems caused by a few youngsters habitually over-drinking, they are considering banning all under-21s from drinking alcohol completely. And what exactly will stop them crossing the border to England - assuming the Union still exists - and getting drunk there and then coming back? Nothing.

And on the English side of the border the British Government - as we're not allowed an English one - wants to ban all cigarette vending machines and force cigarettes to be sold from under the counter. Like I said when this idea was originally suggested, banning the sale of cigarettes from vending machines or making them being sold from under the counter won't prevent under-aged - or just "young" - people from smoking. They have already banned smoking in public places and raised the smoking age from 16 to 18, but now that just isn't enough for them. It really is just a case of Nanny State bansturbation.

We can't they just leave us alone? It is our health and our money to do with as we please. Bansturbation won't help, and will just make the problem worse by increasing the mystique of smoking and cigarettes. The only way to reduce the bad effects of smoking and excessive alcohol consumption is through education about the effects it has on our body. Then leave us to make our own choices, whether they be good or bad.

I fully support this cause, and encourage other pubs to follow the example of this Scottish pub:

All pubs should show this poster created by Devil's Kitchen in order to show their displeasure at yet more taxes being showed on booze.

Even though it's 17th March, otherwise known as St Patrick's Day.

This is because Easter is so early this year, the earliest in 200 years, and the week before Easter is the Holy Week and this takes precedence over any other religious holidays.

But even though St Patrick's Day doesn't exist in the Catholic Church's calendar, it will still be celebrated all over the world with a large number of drinks.

St Pissup Patrick's Day will still be celebrated, even if the Catholic Church is being a party pooper.

A unique blog post title for this blog. And one which will almost certainly never be reproduced.

Pretty much the only two good laws that have been passed by Labour in the last decade are in the news today.

First of all, the news that 24-hour drinking will stay. 24-hour drinking is just a good thing. All the complaints about it are exactly the same that existed beforehand. 24-hour drinking has just meant fewer fights in city centres due to different places closing at different times, and less of a need to drink lots of alcohol quickly in order to get drunk before time is called. It is just a good thing.

Secondly, the creation of legally recognised civil partnerships for gay couples, allowing Tory frontbencher Alan Duncan to be betrothed. Congratulations to him and his partner! Hopefully he won't be the last Conservative MP [or MP of any party] to take advantage of this opportunity to have their relationship legally recognised.

So Labour have passed two good laws. What a legacy for more than a decade of government!

Supermarkets sell alcohol. They have an entire section set aside for it, well marked and often sud-divided and sign-posted by type - beers, wines, spirits... - and people then choose to buy them because they want to drink.

Apparently it is a bad thing that they are allowed to do this.

It seems that us mindless proles just aren't clever enough and don't have a strong enough will be steer clear of these well-marked sections, and are instead "lured" into buying alcohol. After all, we're not Professors, so we couldn't possibly be able to resist the call of supermarket advertising and make our own decisions about what we want to purchase.

Alcohol is cheap - and often sold as a loss-leader by supermarkets - because people want to buy it. They don't want to "lure" people in to buying a product which will reduce their profit margins. The best people for that are the idiots who purchase "organic" and "free trade" produce, on which supermarkets can make up to 25% profit.

We all know that alcohol is bad for us should we drink way too much of it over a long period of time. We all know that. But we drink anyway, because we want to. Like the British Retail Consortium says, no-one buys alcohol accidentally. It is a conscious choice made by a rational human being.

It's not up to anyone else to tell us that we can't buy alcohol at a supermarket any more. Especially based on such a ridiculous basis as "health" or to "combat Britain's binge-drinking culture".

Just bugger off leave us alone, Professor le Grand.

Also go and read Mr Eugenides take on this story. Well worth a read.

Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland has been accused of "unparliamentary language" after this little outburst in the Commons [via Tory Radio]:

Greg Mulholland: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Lewis: We are all fed up with it. I return to the substantive issues.
Greg Mulholland: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Lewis: I will not give way.
On regulation costs, I shall consider the question of the consultation that the Healthcare Commission is undertaking—
Greg Mulholland: He’s an a*******.

Although Labour Minister Ivan Lewis may well be almost certainly is an "a*******" - I can't say for sure because I know bugger all about him, but the fact that he is a Labour Minister means that more than likely he is - I'm going to call Greg Mulholland an a******* as well.

For suggesting this:
Erm, no it doesn't - well unless they're a retard, of course. Anyone with even half a brain can tell how large the glass of wine they have is, either on (a) it's size; (b) the amount of liquid in it; or (c) the length of time it is taking you to drink it. Or, of course, they could always ask how big it.

The reason that "[m]any licensed premises only sell wine in 175ml and 250ml measures" is because those are the sizes that people want. Why have pubs and bars stop selling 125ml glases of wine? Because people don't want 125ml glasses of wine.

The a******* - Greg Mulholland, that is - should stop trying to interfere with what individuals and private business do [of course, so should the other a*******, Ivan Lewis]. People do know how much they are drinking, at least pretty much. But it certainly isn't up to anyone, let alone an a****** of an MP like Mulholland to force pubs, bars and restaurants to serve 125ml glasses of wine. "Liberal" Democrats my a***. But then again, they're hardly "Democratic" either...

Why won't they just leave us alone?

Why is it any business of the government what price supermarkets sell alcohol at? Why? If there was even one good reason, it might be acceptable to even a slight extent. But a good reason for this doesn't exist. At all.

If I want to drink alcohol, I will. And I am as I write this post. And yes, this is beer bought from a supermarket at their "cheap" price. If they want to sell alcohol as a loss-leader, that is their prerogative as a private business. If I want to buy and consume lots of cheap alcohol, that is my right as an individual.

And they blame the one good law that Labour have brought in in the last decade: 24-hour drinking. Not that it actually exists anywhere...

It's not up to the Nanny State what I do with my own body, whether or not they think it's bad. It is my work that earns me my money that I use some of to buy alcohol from the supermarket at the price which they want to sell it to me at. At what point in that is the government involved? I already pay tax on the money I have earned, and then more tax on the alcohol when I buy it.

I don't care that "[f]igures released last week showed that half a million people or 1,200 people every day - are being admitted to hospital each year after drinking too much." That's the choice of that tiny number of people who drink alcohol. They have drunk too much at that time. But so what? Everyone does it at some point. Anyone who claims never to have drunk too one at one time is either lying or seriously boring.

Supermarkets choose to sell their alcohol as a loss-leader [or to offer wine coupons] because they want to. And why is it anything to do with the government? It's their business for crying out loud!

Why won't they just leave us alone? Please?

The government wants to indoctrinate children as young as five on the "dangers" of alcohol.

Why do children as young as five need to be taught about alcohol at all? They won't have drank more than a sip, if any, at that age. What is the point of teaching them about it? There is none. The only intention possible is to indoctrinate these children into considering that alcohol is bad. Also, are these "safe drinking levels" that these kids are going to be indoctrinated on going to be real levels or just guesses?

We all consider indoctrination to be bad, right? So how could this be deemed acceptable at all! I have no problem with teaching children that alcohol can be bad, but it must be a balanced picture, including alcohol's position in society, and health benefits in small amounts.

Instead of telling them that alcohol is bad, tell secondary school children what constant abuse of alcohol can do to your body. Getting drunk isn't in itself a bad thing - but doing it every day is, and that is what they should be told - the truth, not a convenient lie.

Source: The Telegraph

It's just pointless and stupid. Taxing alcohol won't reduce the amount of people who drink or the number of drinks they have. Cigarette tax was been raised constantly, yet the number of smokers didn't drop off because of it. Putting a higher amount of tax on alcohol won't stop anyone drinking. It wouldn't stop me, for one. Those who want to drink will continue to do so unless the tax hike is absolutely huge - and a tax increase of that size would be electoral suicide.

As it is, we already have the second highest rate of tax on alcohol in Europe! As if paying a bit more will actually prevent people from buying it! All it will do is mean that people readjust their expenditures to spend less on other things.

24-hour drinking is the best law passed by Labour in the past decade. We are not at the stage of having a "continental style" drinking culture, and that is primarily because they won't let us. 24-hour drinking is still an urban myth. Few places have a licence to do so, let alone actually do so on a regular basis. Most pubs still close at 11pm, so even so technically 24-hour drinking is possible, in reality it isn't, and there has been no change. How is our drinking culture supposed to change if the opportunity to do so is not there? Even if it was, you couldn't expect it to go through a metamorphosis overnight. It takes time for cultural change to happen - several years, if not more. It's only been two since the law was passed - and it hasn't exactly been fully implemented since then, either.

Doctors who claim that there should be more tax etc. on should, if you pardon the crudity, just fuck off. Your job is to fix us after we make ourselves ill. You can tell us that we can make ourselves ill through drinking too much, but then shut the hell up. We are adults and can make our own decisions about our own bodies. If we want to drink, we will. Advise us how much we should limit ourselves to - and make it better than a guess - then shut up and be there to fix us when we're ill. That's your job, not to police what we do and demand that we don't do anything that might make us ill.

Very simply, taxing alcohol is never going to stop people from drinking, or even make them cut down. To suggest that it will is to ignore human nature.

Sources: BBC, The Telegraph, The Guardian

Well, that's what they are saying. Along with eating red meat [so they want you be a vegetarian], any extra salt intake, and drinking sugary drinks [which presumably includes fruit smoothies?].

Frankly, it's all a load of bollocks.

One report says "don't do (a)", another says "don't do (b), but do do (a)" and yet another says "don't do (c) but do do (b)". It is pretty much all contradictory in one way or another. Just think of it this way - if you don't die one way, you'll die another.

But my problem is less with these studies and more with the way they are presented. They are always portrayed as incontrovertible fact - if you drink alcohol and eat red meat, then you will get cancer is the message they give out, whether or it is actually intended. But, really, none of these make a difference. You could follow the guidelines to the letter and yet still get cancer, or not bother at all about it and never get it.

Whether or not they intend it, it is how it is reported and how people interpret it. I am extremely sceptical about all of these types of reports, especially since it has been revealed that the recommended alcohol limit was just a guess. The "findings" from these reports are of no use to the general public, especially announced like this.

The best way to live a healthy life is to take everything in moderation - except moderation itself, of course.

Well, my kind of Bible:

They didn't know - or couldn't be bothered to work it out - so they just made it up!

So those bastards just made up a drinking limit and then stuck to it. A limit that is stupidly low and, actually, nothing more than a so-called "intelligent guess" made by people who must have been deeply stupid. They then passed off their guess as incontrovertible fact.

It really pisses me off that "a feeling that you had to say something" on behalf of the Royal College of Physicians led to the constant demonisation of anyone who exceed these limits. They "were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all" and yet became the foundations of decades of government policy on alcohol.

What this shows is that these arbitrary statistics on so-called "healthy" levels of various substances are utter bollocks. Based on estimations and on the "average" person, they are next to useless at the best of times, and even worse when they are said to be, or taken as, incontrovertible facts.

Source: The Times

Is Brown going to try and repeal the pretty much only good law Labour passed?

The 24-hour drinking law is pretty much the only good law that Labour have passed in the last decade. The old drinking laws were out of date and causing much of the problems Britain had with alcohol-related crime themselves.

24-hour drinking remains nothing more than an urban myth. Few people want to drink at all times of the day, but what the laws do is enable pubs and bars to set their own closing times. This means that 11pm isn't throw-out time at every pub, and so much of the alcohol-fuelled violence is distilled by the lack of such large numbers of drunk people in the same area at the same time. The longer drinking times also means that few feel so pressured to down lots of alcohol quickly just as 11 o'clock approaches. They can thus take their time, and then end up getting less drunk. The 24-hour drinking laws may not have been a complete success, but the adaption of a national drinking character takes time. But the effects of the change have been positive overall.

And now Brown wants to repeal this law. What an idiot. This shows that his centralist, authoritarian nature is shining through. Let people drink when they want to. And binge-drinking as they define isn't "unacceptable" at all. Constant binge-drinking at that level is, but the level they set binge-drinking at - about 4 pints - is absurdly low. Real binge-drinking doesn't start until at least 7 or 8 pints.

What Brown is doing is trying to exert the power of the state over something which is none of it's business. How much, when, and where I drink is none of his business. Everyone knows the effects that alcohol can have on their body, and they make their own decision based on that how much to drink and how often. It's not the government's job. To even try and repeal the new drinking laws would be a very very stupid idea.

Sources: BBC, Metro