Tim Worstall

Middle Class Anti-Social Behaviour

God, it’s a terror, isn’t it? All those middle class types getting liquored up and disrupting the general peace and quiet of the country:


Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make
drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking, The Times has learnt.


Under the plans published today, a fresh audit is to be conducted by the
Government into the overall costs of alcohol abuse to society and the
National Health Service.


“We want to target older drinkers, those that are maybe drinking one or two
bottles of wine at home each evening,” a Whitehall source said.

No, a serious problem you’ll have to agree. People simply cannot be allowed to choose their own path to perdition, that’s entirely unacceptable. We’ll have to ban wine cellars, as this allows people to have too much alcohol in the house. All wine racks will have to be replaced so that only one bottle in a 24 hour period can be used, corkscrews  fitted with a timer so that again, only one use per 24 hours is possible.

Of course, that won’t be enough, for what of the renegades who will buy two wine racks, or two bottle openers? A full complement of Council Alcohol Officers will have to be hired and trained. Sherry and Port  will no longer be for sale in those oversized 0.7 litre bottles, for they allow excessive consumption. Sales of screw top wine (shudder) by the case must of course be banned.

Once such measures are in place, the CCTV cameras placed over every drinks tray, State approved watery beer served only to those who have fulfilled their quota, then, finally, we will all be as free and as happy as it is possible to be! Songs of praise and peans of joy will ring out across the land as we give thanks to those who will save us from ourselves!

Alternatively, we could insist upon our right to pickle our livers as we wish and tell the lot of them to fuck off. But that would never do now, would it, for the kiddies might suffer from passive drinking.

Won’t somebody think of the children?

In

22 responses

  1. Kay Tie Avatar
    Kay Tie

    The Swedes used to have alcohol rationing: a quota for each individual, based on the body mass so that everyone could have an equal state-approved amount of insobriety. The fact that the plan, and implementation, had all the practicality of a steaming heap of foetid dingo’s kidneys makes it a rather fitting New Labour project. Let’s see if we can’t get Polly to suggest it, the IPPR to follow it up and Broon to make it policy.

    Reply
  2. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    The problem of soaring mortality in Britain from alcohol-related diseases is evidently worse in Scotland, which may help to explain the recent surge in the enthusiasm for independence there:
    “Excessive alcohol consumption is being blamed for a big rise in deaths from the liver disease cirrhosis in Britain. While deaths from the disease are falling elsewhere, a Lancet study shows they have soared in England, Scotland and Wales since the 1950s.
    “Total recorded alcohol consumption in the UK is estimated to have doubled between 1960 and 2002. . . The researchers . . found steady increases in death rates in Scotland, England and Wales during the 1970s. This accelerated in the 1980s, and again from the nineties onwards. In contrast, death rates for both men and women in other European countries declined by 20% to 30% from the early 1970s. Between the periods 1987-1991, and 1997-2001, male deaths from cirrhosis in Scotland more than doubled, and in England and Wales they rose by over two-thirds.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4581530.stm
    At least that illuminates for the rest of us why public spending in Scotland needs to be so much higher than in the rest of Britain:
    “Scotland’s public spending has long been higher than that of England – a historic advantage being slowly eroded by the Barnett Formula, used to divide up the UK budget.”
    http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=460732003

    Reply
  3. Bruce G Charlton Avatar
    Bruce G Charlton

    I agree that people should be allowed to intoxicate themseves – but it is government policy which ensures that the only legal intoxicant is alcohol.
    Killing yourself is one thing, killing other people is a different matter – and the big problem with alcohol is not self-inflicted illness but the massive effect binge drinking has in increasing violence and road traffic accidents.
    Aside from the libertarian angle, there is some evidence that if marijuana was legal, significant numbers of people would switch to it as being safer and less antisocial than binge drinking, and that this would reduce violence and RTAs.

    Reply
  4. tired and emotional Avatar
    tired and emotional

    Not when latent schizophrenia comes raging out of our teenagers’ skunk-addled brains it won’t. Dope also kills ambition stone-dead (if you’ll forgive the pun), at least getting pissed causes damage which is reversible until chronic stages, once the brain chemistry is affected, it stays affected, once the mind is unbalanced it never really gets back to where it was.

    Reply
  5. magnusw Avatar
    magnusw

    It occurs to me that maybe in the UK as we get richer we become more drunk, which is perhaps the opposite to the traditional view that the poor drink more to forget their troubles.

    Reply
  6. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    Some comments:
    Tired and emotional – try this link:
    “Use of street drugs (including LSD, methamphetamine, marijuana-hash-cannabis) have been linked with significantly increased probability of developing schizophrenia. This link has been documented in over 30 different scientific studies (studies done mostly in the UK, Australia and Sweden) over the past 20 years.”
    http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/streetdrugs.html
    magnusw: “It occurs to me that maybe in the UK as we get richer we become more drunk, which is perhaps the opposite to the traditional view that the poor drink more to forget their troubles.”
    The trouble is that alcohol related diseases and mortality have evidently been rising in Britain while falling in the rest of Europe despite rising affluence – from the message above: “death rates for both men and women in other European countries declined by 20% to 30% from the early 1970s”.

    Reply
  7. Philip Thomas Avatar
    Philip Thomas

    Tired and emotional, I have a fair few friends and the vast majority smoke weed. Judging by my admittedly personal experience, the mental health problems acerbated by marijuana are wildly overstated and the use of it in my young demographic is vastly underestimated.
    People have and will aways want to alter their state of mind through drugs. Having alcohol be the only legal one, when it is known to be one of the worst for aggression and motor impediment, is bizarre. Better behaviour was deflected to less harmful substances, such as ecstasy.
    The big problem, again at least in my working class area, is that people don’t seem able to diversify from a night on the tiles. People need greater education and experience, not greater restriction. Boozing away is great fun but a narrow alley to always walk.

    Reply
  8. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “Killing yourself is one thing, killing other people is a different matter..”
    That’s true but….
    ““We want to target older drinkers, those that are maybe drinking one or two bottles of wine at home each evening,” a Whitehall source said.”
    …doesn’t look like the idiots that drink & drive are the desired audience for this campaign, does it?

    Reply
  9. Blithering Bunny Avatar
    Blithering Bunny

    I always said that as soon as they get the pub smoking ban ready to go, they’ll move on to attacking drinking.

    Reply
  10. zorro Avatar
    zorro

    “Not when latent schizophrenia comes raging out of our teenagers’ skunk-addled brains it won’t. Dope also kills ambition stone-dead (if you’ll forgive the pun), at least getting pissed causes damage which is reversible until chronic stages, once the brain chemistry is affected, it stays affected, once the mind is unbalanced it never really gets back to where it was.”
    Utter bollocks. Complete and utter bollocks. So alcohol causes no irreversible harm does it? To the liver? Or the victims of drink driving? That’s all ‘reversible’ is it? No its fucking not. You twat.
    I know plenty of people who have smoked for years, some of them quite old now. None of them have any mental issues. So I agree with Phillip, those ‘mental problems’ associated with Marijuana are vastly overstated.
    Obviously you didn’t read the recent literature in the Lancet about the relative dangers of various legal and illegal drugs? Because if you had you wouldn’t make yourself look such a tit on a public forum…

    Reply
  11. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “So alcohol causes no irreversible harm does it? “
    Err…
    “..at least getting pissed causes damage which is reversible until chronic stages..
    Pretty sure that bit was actually covered, zorro.
    And: “I know plenty of people who have smoked for years..”.
    Ah, but has cannabis stayed the same strength as in the sixties..?

    Reply
  12. sortapundit Avatar
    sortapundit

    Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking, The Times has learnt.
    But these kinds of articles aren’t about making such behaviour socially unacceptable, are they? Rather, they preface moves to introduce new laws to restrict availability of potentially harmful substances.
    The final goal – taking the government’s efforts to ban smoking from public houses, workplaces and even our own vehicles as an example – seems to be not to encourage us all to examine our own behaviour and make an informed decision about our bodies, but to slowly but surely make that behaviour a crime against the state.
    Further down the article:
    “We know from international evidence that it’s measures that tackle price and availability where one can really make a difference. There is a very clear link between price and consumption.”
    So the aim is clear. Raise taxes on booze. Price people out of the market, and force them to adopt a mode of behaviour decided upon by Whitehall. Encourage the development of a stigma against drunkenness, foster anger in the general public by highlighting the cost of medical treatments, the cost of vandalism, the cost of lost working hours and all the other costs associated with drinking. Restrict the sale of alcohol to public houses. Ban its sale in supermarkets. Introduce quotas, and ensure that nobody ever gets too drunk again.
    Is there a country in the world where I can still sit in a pub unmolested and enjoy and pint and a smoke among friends? If so, does anyone fancy going halves on a house there?

    Reply
  13. KB Avatar
    KB

    “Total recorded alcohol consumption in the UK is estimated to have doubled between 1960 and 2002. ”
    And most of that increase occurred within the 60’s and 70’s with a flattening out as we entered the eighties.
    It’s almost as if the total amount drunk showed a big increase in the time period it became more acceptable for women to go out drinking…..
    As blithering bunny points out this was totally predictable. Now the war on smoking has been won with only some mopping up left to do, the vast array of publically funded ‘healthy living’ functionaries need a new target and quick , before their funding dries up and they have to get proper jobs.

    Reply
  14. Kay Tie Avatar
    Kay Tie

    “Is there a country in the world where I can still sit in a pub unmolested”
    Is there a country in the world where I can walk up to a table of diners in a pub and piss all over them? I can’t quite see the difference between smoking (stinks, clothes need washing) and pissing on someone (stinks, clothes need washing). Both are legal activities in the right place, and both are anti-social in the wrong place. Oh, I forgot: urine is sterile whereas smoke in your lungs can give you cancer.
    There you go. Pissing on people is safer than smoking.

    Reply
  15. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    Does this blog have a strict No Smoking policy?
    I’d just like to know if readers and any contributors are permitted to smoke while they surf here.
    Personally, I gave up some years back but I try not to be intolerant.
    We all have to pay for the downstream consequences for the NHS of treating alcohol and drug abuse as well as for the consequences of smoking.
    “The number of alcohol-related deaths has increased by nearly a fifth in four years, figures show. The Office for National Statistics data revealed deaths in England and Wales rose by from 5,525 in 2000 to 6,544 in 2004 – an 18.4% increase. The highest increase was in Yorkshire and the Humber which saw a 46.5% hike.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4152772.stm
    Btw the latest annual figures for road accident fatalties in Britain were c. 3,200 – twice as many are now reportedly dying from alcohol-related causes than from road accidents but even so road accident fatalities among young drivers are rising against a general downward trend:
    “THE death rate among young drivers has doubled in the past five years, prompting demands for greater restrictions on those who have recently passed their tests. The steady improvement in road safety across the general population is masking a sharp increase in the number of drivers aged under 20 having fatal crashes, despite a tougher driving test.”
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3223-2116254,00.html
    On the face of it, seems to me there’s a strong case building up for prohibition but the brewers and distillers are powerful lobbies.

    Reply
  16. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    Time to plant a few vines, I suppose.

    Reply
  17. walt moffett Avatar
    walt moffett

    Here in the States, I hear that Carrie Nation will be making a come back tour.

    Reply
  18. Tim Newman Avatar
    Tim Newman

    Is there a country in the world where I can still sit in a pub unmolested and enjoy and pint and a smoke among friends?
    Russia. Bizarrely for a former totalitarian state which still retains some of its characteristics, this place sometimes seems like a libertarian paradise.
    Want to smoke in a bar or club? Go for it.
    Want to drink beer on the street? Go for it.
    Want to buy alcohol 24 hours per day? Go for it.
    Want to stay in a club until 7am? Go for it.
    Want to go to a 24 hour casino? Go for it.
    Want to make a barbecue at the side of the road, or indeed anywhere you please? Go for it.
    Want to swim in a river, pond, or lake despite the warning signs? Go for it.

    Reply
  19. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    “Ah, but has cannabis stayed the same strength as in the sixties..?”
    Neither’s the booze…
    Tim adds: Sadly, nor are my lungs nor liver the same strength they were.

    Reply
  20. sortapundit Avatar
    sortapundit

    There you go. Pissing on people is safer than smoking.
    Though arguably less satisfying. I pissed on my dad once, and we’ve never seen eye to eye since. Sure, I was in nappies at the time and had little control over my bladder, but I’ll never forget the look of shame in his eyes.
    Joking aside, we’ve all heard the arguments for and against pub smoking, and it comes down to a question of personal choice. If you want to drink in a smoke free environment there should be non-smoking pubs to provide it. If you want to smoke, there should be smoking pubs to provide that, too. If there is a market for pubs in which water sports is acceptable I’m sure some enterprising landlord in a free society would gladly furnish us with wipe-clean furniture and an understanding temperament.
    if you don’t want to get pissed on you don’t go to the Wet’n’Wild pub. If you don’t want to get cancer you steer clear of Smoky Joe’s Drinking Den. That’s just common sense. It’s when these things become a matter for the state that freedom lovers tend to become wildly enraged. We get the urge to piss in anger, in fact, in the direction of the closest politician/Guardian columnist.
    Russia. Bizarrely for a former totalitarian state which still retains some of its characteristics, this place sometimes seems like a libertarian paradise.
    Time to stock up on earmuffs and develop a tolerance for vodka, then.

    Reply
  21. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    “If you want to drink in a smoke free environment there should be non-smoking pubs to provide it.”
    And the smoking ban — introduced early here in Wales — has kind of shat on bars whose particular attraction was that they’re non-smoking. Small ones, usually.

    Reply
  22. sortapundit Avatar
    sortapundit

    And the smoking ban — introduced early here in Wales — has kind of shat on bars whose particular attraction was that they’re non-smoking. Small ones, usually.
    Good point. I know of several pubs here in York whose only real appeal is the fact that they are smoke free. Other than that they are pretty dire places for a night out, and with the smoking ban I see little hope for their survival.

    Reply

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