Did you read this article from the BBC informing us that due to the serial recklessness of the sinister “alcohol industry” Government in the loathsome form of SuperNan Dawn Primarolo, may have to consider banning happy hour, banning larger wine glass sizes etc to help save the NHS?? Note how the article is contrived to establish the central proposition that individuals are NOT responsible for their own actions and need our benevolent government to step into the breach and “help” them. The advance of the neo-Puritans in the form of Labour seeking to ban as many of our choices as possible is given an easy ride by the servile BBC. Time for bed now, lights out…lie back and think of the Great Leader as he selflessly considers what to ban next….
IT’S (not) HAPPY HOUR AGAIN…
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Except we fund the happy hours in the House of Commons bars.
And wasn’t it Nu Labour that introduced lax licencing laws?
House of Commons bars? Yup, subsidised with £5.5 million of taxpayers’ money apparently.
http://www.order-order.com/
A BBC writer is openly promoting the governments fascist drinking policies while denigrating individuals here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/07/britain_has_a_drink_problem.html#commentsanchor
Single mothers go to jail for this nonsense!
wasn’t the premis behind 24/7 drinking
that people would suddenly despite the increased access to booze take control of themselves and only have a small glass of wine of a Friday evening sitting on a rustic bench outside the pub watching happy multi generation and multi cultural crowds enjoying the cheerful city centre night life.
I don’t know about the posh bits of London where these idiots live, where I live it did not quite work out.
It was more of the thicko left wing liberals to make us more like the French and Italians and all one big EU happy family.
Nick Higham put in a priceless performance on the BBC 1 TV news at ten this evening. Rarely can a BBC shill have sold the ZaNuLabour line so plainly or so hard.
As was said on another thread here just yesterday, the BBC is now out of control.
House of Commons bars? Yup, subsidised with £5.5 million of taxpayers’ money apparently.
http://www.order-order.com/
bodo | 22.07.08 – 10:03 pm |
Interesting that the H of C and the beeb are about the only institutions left with publicly subsided booze outlets in the workplace.
https://www.bbcclub.com/club.php?r=172
Your BBC – We play, you pay
Primarolo has also called for all teenage girls to be steralised. Thats her pedigree.
I saw it anyway. “Shocking Figures” according to Hughs teleprompt. I thought 2 billion was pretty cheap.
I bet the police spend more mindlessly chasing drunks around the city centre.
Now the idea that cases rise 20% year on year is made for tv nonsense.
Although i think we may have found our missing crime stats, labeled under alcohol related incidents.
Hi Ron and Martin,
Are you suggesting that relaxing the pub opening hours was a bad move?
Hi David,
The current article does not suggest to “ban” happy hours. It rather states that “curbs” should be possibly introduced.
Not sure how “curb” is defined in your language of moral clarity dictionary is defined, but the Cambridge dictionary offers those clarifications:
curb (CONTROL)
verb [T]
to control or limit something that is not desirable:
The Government should act to curb tax evasion.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=18985&dict=CALD
Nothing in the article about larger wine glasses either. Never mind you assertion that this should help saving the NHS.
As to your:
“Note how the article is contrived to establish the central proposition that individuals are NOT responsible for their own actions and need our benevolent government to step into the breach and “help” them.”
One can not help to be puzzled to read :
“Obviously individuals have to take responsibility for their drinking, but others, including the industry, also have a role to play”
Dawn Primarolo, public health minister
I also found this interesting:
“But she dismissed suggestions that the relaxation in licensing laws had made the situation worse.”
Well, and before I forget it, KPMG the marxist-stalinist public company is all behind it:
“On labelling, the industry was first asked to display the number of units in each drink back in 1998, but a recent survey by consultants KPMG showed 43% of products did not display the information.
The review also revealed that just 3% were displaying the labelling scheme in its entirety.”
There is a certain group of people who have seen their jobs go,their nicotine habit persecuted,their pubs and clubs closed down,their eating habits scorned,their holidays taxed now they are being hounded about their alcohol consumption.
Who are these people? Why Labour voters of course!
Gunnar,
Got an update on tractor production to share?
“NHS Information Centre data had suggested the figure for hospital admissions was just over 200,000 last year.”
“But this only covered illness caused directly by alcohol such as liver disease.
Department of Health figures for England showed that when deaths from cancer, heart disease and strokes were taken into account the total topped 800,000 last year. ”
It sounds like guesswork – where does it say that these cancer deaths etc was caused by alcohol – no details on age ranges.
“Doctors said drinking levels were now a major health concern. ”
Doctors – which doctors all of them in unison?
“The evidence clearly makes this the right time to consult on a far tougher approach to the alcohol industry.
“Obviously individuals have to take responsibility for their drinking, but others, including the industry, also have a role to play.”
What tougher rules? Expect higher taxes on alcohol.
Hi David,
You ask:
“Got an update on tractor production to share?”
Do you mean making stuff up or reporting what is actually happening?
Jon writes: ”
It sounds like guesswork – where does it say that these cancer deaths etc was caused by alcohol – no details on age ranges.”
There wouldn’t be. What gets put on a death certificate is a matter of fashion as much as medicine – and that’s what fuels the statistics used by the government.
The New Model Army of neo-puritans and healh Nazis works hard attribute all the diseases medicine still cannot treat to causes it cannot control – obesity, smoking, alcohol.
It is, of course, a wonderful paradox. People are not to be blamed for stealing cars (he had a troubled childhood), benefit fiddling (life’s so hard on a sink estate), single motherhood (insufficient sex education – it doesn’t begin until they are seven years old!), mugging (they is discriminated against, isn’t it?)…
And yet one too many burgers, or drinking slightly less than the average for a GP forty years ago and one is responsible for the collapse of western civlisation.
Jon: Funny that the BBC use hospital figures to tell us that there isn’t an epidemic of knife crime, but there is for alcohol.
Looks like McBean is more interested in booze than knife crime.
“…BBC Home Editor Mark Easton said that in Manchester and Liverpool, according to hospital figures, gunshot wounds were a bigger problem than stabbings…”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7502180.stm
And of course Easton has blogged on this very subject today.
Isn’t it odd that his blogs ALWAYS agree with Government figures or policy? Strange that. You’d think he might come down on the side of the public once in a while?
Perhaps he’s looking for a nice spin doctor job at Downing street?
gunnar writes: ”
Do you mean making stuff up or reporting what is actually happening?”
Oh! You mean like the BBC’s coverage of the AGW debate?
That’s certainly the former.
Martin writes: ”
Perhaps he’s looking for a nice spin doctor job at Downing street?”
Good point. He’d hardly be the first Beeboid to scuttle off to work for ZaNuLabour, would he?
Hi CCooper,
Bit of a long shot from alcohol to the AGW debate.
However, are you saying the BBC is reporting the AGW debate or making it up?
The “officials” of any interested party can easy push statistics as fact – and the reason they are given prominence by “journalists” is because they don’t understand them.
“Journalists are not very good with figures. The great majority come from an arts or social studies background. I studied maths at A-level (I failed) but most of my colleagues will not have grappled with a differential equation since their early teens. Basic statistical concepts – confidence intervals, standard deviation, probability and so on – are alien to them. Most journalism training courses do not have modules on how to handle numbers. Literacy is considered essential for reporters – or at least their subeditors – but not numeracy.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/05/mondaymediasection.pressandpublishing
Gunnar writes: “However, are you saying the BBC is reporting the AGW debate or making it up?”
Stop playing the naïf. You might amuse yourself with this game, but everyone knows you for the troll you are.
The BBC (along with its brothers in Christ, the Independent and Graduina) is driving the AGW agenda, by pretending there is no debate.
In other words – it is lying.
This is typical of NuLab and the hate campaign against Britain´s indigenous working class. It was discovered by the left that Britain’s working class didn’t want revolution and overthrow of order. They wanted things like their own houses, holidays, a reasonable wage for work done, and opportunities for their children to advance. In short, the working people wanted the things that the Islingtonian clique already had. This was viewed by the clique as treason and they have since waged war on British workers by, inter alia: attacking grammar schools and eliminating student grants, exporting jobs overseas, importing foreign workers to do the jobs which could not be exported, and attacking all of the simple pleasures that working people get. The final measure in the war is to replace the British working class as the force which elects Labour MPs by others, mainly the immigrants who have been given the jobs formerly done by Britons, but also by establishing what could best be described as the coercive class – the hundreds of thousands of jobsworths needed to enforce NuLab´s diktats. As is evident, the BBC is the broadcasting arm of the campaign.
I say – allow 24 hour drinking. What business is it of the state to dictate when we can and cannot buy or serve alcohol?
But there is one condition. End the NHS.
Once people have to pay for their own health care via private health plans, and once they realize that those health plans don’t cover “being taken to hospital to have stomach pumped”, “having stitches after drunken falls” or anything else alcohol related, then they’ll soon be drinking in moderation.
If people wish to drink themselves to death, that’s their business. Just as long as the taxpayer doesn’t have to pay for their stupidity.
I do however wonder how much of an influence shows like the BBC’s Eastenders have on public drinking habits. Everyone in that show is sloshing them down in the Vic on a daily basis. Even lunchtimes.
TV in general has dumbed people down to the point where they have no imagination to do anything else but get wasted during their hours of recreation.
When someone’s idea of a “good time” is to stand toe to toe in a crowded bar/nightclub, drinking excessively because the (crap) music is so loud they can’t even have a conversation with anyone…you know something’s wrong. I personally think that half the people who “rave it up” in bars and nightclubs don’t even really enjoy it – they’re only there to partake in a kind of ritual, the absence of which leaves them feeling that they’re somehow “missing something”, or depriving themselves of a social life.
I do not get drunk because I’ve weighed the enjoyment/suffering equation over the years and found that it’s just not worth it.
“…BBC Home Editor Mark Easton said that in Manchester and Liverpool, according to hospital figures, gunshot wounds were a bigger problem than stabbings…”
This is because guns are more readily available in those cities.I am sure that given the choice,the stabbing classes would prefer a gun.
This suggests a remedy for “knife crime”, give the stabbing classes guns.
“Patience has now worn very thin as the true cost of alcohol to British society becomes ever clearer”
Just love these pull quotes from …. Auntie at the BBC.
Then we get from the horse’s mouth – “Red” Dawn herself:
“Obviously individuals have to take responsibility for their drinking, but others, including the industry, also have a role to play.”
What on earth does she mean ? It’s either the responsibility of the individual – or it isn’t. Is my health reall a joint responsibilit between me and various industry bodies and trade association – maybe even unknown to me ?
Anyone with time to spare can google for “Red” Dawn’s role in the Inland Revenue property sell-off fiasco. The Revenue sold off its entire property portfolio at a knock-down price to a Bermuda-based tax dodger. You couldn’t make it up – but you don’t have to. “Red” Dawn was censured for lying to Parliament about this deal.
Google for “Mapeley Steps”.
“I do not get drunk because I’ve weighed the enjoyment/suffering equation over the years and found that it’s just not worth it.”
I’ve found quite the opposite, and thoroughly enjoy (ahem) “raving it up”. However, I’m quite prepared to take responsibility for my own actions whilst inebriated. Licenced premises are already governed by laws preventing them serving people who’re already hammered and generally allowing their patrons to bother their neighbours. Why not just enforce these rather than dictating to private businesses how they make their money.
Jason | 23.07.08 – 1:09 am | #
Jason, you must break this habit of writing EXACTLY what I am thinking….and before I do it too…
It’s too weird….your creeping me out ;o)
p.s. you do it better than I would anyway.
What’s wrong with a halfway house?
The NHS can stay intact (???) if the populous wants it but all treatment required by the abuse of…..well any substance really, why pick on one… is charged to the recipient at the full cost. This to include all police time and materials to get them to hospital etc.
I’m pretty sure this works, many years ago I worked in Germany and if there were any street fights at all they were usually limited to slapping each other around.
This was because anyone causing damage through a fight had to pay all the hospital costs of the person they injured, they also had to stump up for all their lost time earnings etc…. quite a hefty sum for using fists and not walking away.
This idea could easily be tweaked to bring some “Individual Responsibility” to binge drinkers and drugs users. Or I am I just being naïve in looking for an answer that does not target an “Industry” (already sounds evil, dunnit?) where additional tax can be brought to bear on their “Irresponsibility”??
100% support for what Field.Size says.
D.
The government should bear some of the responsibility for binge Drinking.Nu Labour has sucked all the pride out of the nation. By destroying the national institutions,erasing the indigenous culture,snooping spying and controlling,Nu Labour has turned Britain into a drab miserable place.Remember the Soviet Union,remember the old saying the “Drink was the quickest way out of 19th century Manchester”.
Well Primarolo believes passionately in state education for all, except her son of course, who attends one of the most expensive private schools in London.
Quote (I kid you not) ‘What I’ve done is indefensible so I won’t try and defend it.’
So presumably when talking about banning alchohol she means for us proles and not for her champagne swilling socialist crowd.
Dawn’s previous triumphs are nicely summarised here. It’s just been one success afetr another.
http://everything2.com/e2node/Dawn%2520Primarolo
Oh well, at least the BBC won’t be repeating this alcohol related event..
“I do remember… the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. I’ll always remember that”,
Jane Garvey, BBC Five Live, May 10th, 2007, recalling May 2nd, 1997.
Niallster: Nothing new. There is a long list of Nu Labouristes that won’t send THEIR kids to the same shit state schools the pond life English public have to.
Note how the Scots always praise their own education system over that of england. Hmm. Now which Country’s education system is used as a political football by the Scots dominated Labour party?
Sickmaking, Sir Ian Gilmore spouting his predictable preaching then the Beeboid urging Primarolo to be even “tougher” with their assault on the drinking classes. I suppose that, Shaun McGowan completely out of his tree in the “riveting” Sea Shanty report, would be as near to satisfying Ofcom’s search for balance as anything else on the subject
@Jimbob
With new labour: nothing succeeds like failure….
I was watching Working Lunch today. They reported that sales of beer in pubs are down 9% since the smoking ban came in, sales of wine and spirits are also down, but not by as much.
The government loves regulation, it’s what they do. Without regulation they wouldn’t have jobs. The BMA leadership are also statist control freaks, who must all be on well over £100,000 a year. They want the tax on drink to go up. It’s all right for them, they can afford it. The last time I bought a round of three drinks it cost me a tenner, it seems pretty expensive to me already.
Just for once I wish that, instead of trying to engage with these blood sucking bastards, the drinks industry would just tell them to fuck off and do whatever it is they plan to do, but just not have some sort of bullshit “debate” or “consultation” about it. The NuLabor crime family need more protection money, and they are going to put up the tax on drink. That’s all there is to it.
Field.Size | 23.07.08 – 11:43 am |
This idea could easily be tweaked to bring some “Individual Responsibility” to binge drinkers and drugs users. Or I am I just being naïve in looking for an answer that does not target an “Industry” (already sounds evil, dunnit?) where additional tax can be brought to bear on their “Irresponsibility”??
Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Personal responsibility is practically non-existent in discussions like this. The article even starts out with the focus on blaming the drinks industry. Tying this into harming the beloved NHS is almost criminal in its negligence.
Even the sidebar is full of links to tragedies caused by irresponsible boozers. Worse, the article goes on to make a gesture towards acknowledging personal responsibility, before it goes back to a laundry list of suggested “initiatives” which will do absolutely nothing. That’s the real joke in this article – out of one side of her mouth, Auntie says that personal responsibility isn’t enough so the industry must take charge. But then the very essence of the recommended industry actions rely on personal responsibility to actually work.
To balance out the article, the BBC allows a word from the drinks trade boss, who recommends enforcing laws, and educating and informing people even more. It’s absurd on it’s face, since in the end, an irresponsible drunk is going to do what he wants regardless of any education or information or gigantic warning label on the bottom.
Plus we get Easton’s stupid featured quote for added measure. In reality, “the true cost of alcohol” would go down if Mr. Brown reduced the tax so that a pint doesn’t approach £4.
What’s really funny is that aggressive boozing is only going to get worse once cheaper Budweiser floods the market thanks to InBev.
Do drinkers not already pay for any additional costs the English Regional Health Service may incur as a result of the consumption of alcohol?
Outside the BBC it is generally recognised that tobacco duty contributes more to public coffers than the cost of treating those diseases that could be agravated by smoking. This applies even if you pretend that only smokers suffer lung cancer or heart disease, and that there is no pension saving from the premature deaths of smokers.
Has anyone got any reliable figures on the proceeds of alcohol taxes in the UK, and the cost of treating “drink related” injuries and illnesses?
The latter especially need to be taken with a few tonnes of salt; many years ago an acquaintance was invited to a function where alcohol was to be served, so he booked himself a taxi to get home without driving. On the way home later that evening the taxi was hit by a (sober) driver who approached a roundabout too fast. The car hit the passener door, causing severe bruising to the passenger,who was taken to hospital in case he had worse injuries. At the time we were irritated that his treatment had been classed as “alcohol related”; now we know why.
“Do drinkers not already pay for any additional costs the English Regional Health Service may incur as a result of the consumption of alcohol?”
MarkE | 23.07.08 – 4:49 pm |
This was the same argument that smokers make – and it did them no good – every time Labour attack something as being “bad for you” – you can bet that they need more taxes.
If this were not true why does all their solutions firstly have an extended attack (usually through their BBC mouthpiece) and secondly raising taxes, but its for our own good.
“What’s really funny is that aggressive boozing is only going to get worse once cheaper Budweiser floods the market thanks to InBev.”
I don’t think I can agree with that. Surely American Budweiser doesn’t count as beer?
Quite right Rob.
I have been drinking in America in establishments where the choices were Bud or another concotion I cannot remember the name off which tasted exactly the same.( It was a semi dry county no spirits allowed. Except the holy spirit alomg all the main roads it was McDonalds Church McDonalds Church….) By British standards I am not a heavy drinker yet the stuff had so little alcohol in it my blader would give up long before I even got to the tipsy level.
I estimate I would need at least 5 pints to equal just one pint of tennants super or a whole bars worth to equal a bottle of buckie (the electric soup)
Studies show that we sleep too much at the weekend.
Expect consultations with bed manufacturers and health warnings on pillows. After new taxation on any sleep over eight hours.
Rob | 24.07.08 – 11:09 am |
“What’s really funny is that aggressive boozing is only going to get worse once cheaper Budweiser floods the market thanks to InBev.”
I don’t think I can agree with that. Surely American Budweiser doesn’t count as beer?
That’s why I said “boozing”. I prefer real ale, and have relentlessly teased the couple of Brits I know who really like Budweiser. As the late, great Michael Jackson once said, it’s “a gesture towards beer”.
Tennant’s Super is an unfair comparison, and so is ghastly fortified wine. American breweries can’t legally call a product “beer” on the label if it has more than about 5% ABV. Your average English beer is about the same as Budweiser. Bitter even less so. The quality real ales are a bit stronger, of course.
I’m not defending Budweiser – I hate the stuff, don’t touch it. I prefer real ale and the darker orders, of course. I’m just saying that your average lager lout won’t know the difference between Bud and the usual garbage lagers on tap at an average pub, and too many of them sadly like the stuff.
Better not mention Tennant’s Super too loudly, though. The Nanny State will be after you about health concerns:
UK’s strongest beer ever has campaigners all in a froth.
We’ve got quite a few US products that are much stronger: 14-18%, some of them. I’m going to a place on Saturday which will have a special pin keg of Dogfish Head’s 120-Minute IPA, which is 20-21% (batches vary widely, and are thus illegal to sell in Ontario, Canada). I’m talking about craft/microbrews of course, not the macro crap advertised during ball games.
Drinkers are probably taxed enough to pay for their embarrassment,with so many starting to croak due to liver and kidney failure, i for one am willing to bow to evolutionary pressures and let Darwin sort `em out.
“What’s really funny is that aggressive boozing is only going to get worse once cheaper Budweiser floods the market thanks to InBev.”
They’ve tried the big Budweiser push a few times – it’s never worked. Fosters have cornered that market, but even so it’s the drink of choice for a couple of pints over lunch to leave yourself some chance of doing something constructive in the afternoon.
The binge drinking problem is more to do with the fact that kids have long since worked out that drinking Stella works out cheaper in the long run, whilst turning one into a psycho after 8 pints.
Cockney | 24.07.08 – 4:44 pm |
They’ve tried the big Budweiser push a few times – it’s never worked. Fosters have cornered that market, but even so it’s the drink of choice for a couple of pints over lunch to leave yourself some chance of doing something constructive in the afternoon.
Maybe, but I wouldn’t underestimate InBev. Although I understand it will be an uphill battle against Foster as it’s brewed in the UK by a pretty powerful brewer/distributor. If InBev is able to swing a UK-based brewing license, then it’s a different story.
The binge drinking problem is more to do with the fact that kids have long since worked out that drinking Stella works out cheaper in the long run, whilst turning one into a psycho after 8 pints.
Sure, but guess who owns Stella? If they decide to price Budweiser competitively, then again it’s a different story. Maybe if they brew it in the UK, they can even add another half-percent to the alcohol content. The slobs will eventually figure it out, I expect.
A huge number of traffic injuries are caused by alcohol. To pretend otherwise is ignorant and silly.
What really IS funny is that in America Budweiser is regarded as something that only chavs drink. Here they are trying to sell it as high-end, quality stuff.
“A huge number of traffic injuries are caused by alcohol. To pretend otherwise is ignorant and silly.”
and who is pretending otherwise?
Nearly Oxfordian | 24.07.08 – 11:22 pm |
What really IS funny is that in America Budweiser is regarded as something that only chavs drink. Here they are trying to sell it as high-end, quality stuff.
Just like InBev does in the States with Stella. I laugh, I point. I have a theory that the UK status of Budweiser might be forcibly changed. Will the BBC then blame the nasty US for an increase in alcohol consumption? Considering how they don’t do their homework on any other topic, it’s quite possible.