A jaundiced view of life from the darkest recess of the saloon bar...
There’s a particularly obnoxious article in today’s Independent from Steve Richards in which he argues that the government should use the example of the smoking ban as a blueprint for alcohol policy. Of course, when the smoking ban came in, all its supporters argued strenuously that smoking was a special case and the principle was never going to be extended to other areas. Well, that really worked out, didn’t it?
Needless to say, he is robustly taken to task in the comments.
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"The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end." (David Cameron, 2008)
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." (H. L. Mencken)
"The final nails have now been hammered into the coffin of the freedom to smoke in enclosed public places. This piece of legislation must be one of the most restrictive, spiteful and socially divisive imposed by any British Government." (Lord Stoddart of Swindon)
"Raising taxes on alcohol to prevent problem drinking is akin to raising the price of gasoline to prevent people from speeding." (Edward Peter Stringham)
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." (C. S. Lewis)
"People who deal only in 'craft' beer do not care about some dirty old pub and the dirty old people who are in it and the dirty old community that it holds together." (Boozy Procrastinator)
"The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies." (Robert Conquest)
"A Puritan is someone who lives in mortal fear that somewhere, sometime, someone is enjoying himself." (H. L. Mencken)
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!" (Hunter S. Thompson)
"No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare." (Kingsley Amis)
"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves,
For you will have lost the last of England." (Hilaire Belloc)
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Any proposals of marriage will be given serious consideration - there must be some cash-strapped drunk cat ladies out there!
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A far more positive view of call me Daves attempt to deflect attention via smoke and mirrors from the plummet our economy is taking is available here
ReplyDeleteAlistair Campbell is making a film about middle-class binge-drinking called 'Hidden Alcoholics', and he's done a piece for today's Times. Good antidote to the anti-working class imaqery promoted by the BBC etc when they do reportage on the costs and consequences. The sub-text to it all is obvious and depressing. The feckless sub-classes spend all their fiddled benefits on getting drunk and causing social mayhem. I expect Campbell's piece is behind a Murdoch paywall, however...
ReplyDeleteGot some great stats from SIBA....
ReplyDeleteDespite falling beer consumption in the UK, we contribute 40% of the total beer excise revenue raised by 27 EU nations, whilst accounting for only 13% of total EU beer volumes
I found Alastair Campbell's piece online yesterday but on trying again today, it's vanished behind Mr Murdoch's paywall. Interestingly, he quotes a liver specialist who says that only 5% of his patients did their drinking in pubs. Make of this what you will...
ReplyDeleteAlastair Campbell will be presenting an episode of Panorama - a show with a long track record of anti-drink hysteria - next Monday on Britain's Hidden Alcoholics.
ReplyDeleteSurely a proportion of middle-class people have always been alcoholics - Asquith, Dylan Thomas, George Brown etc - and they aren't going to be remotely affected by minimum pricing.