Via Mr Eugenidies and The Devil’s Kitchen, this little gem from our lords and masters – this time, the unelected buffoons in the EU:
Dr Peter Anderson, the report’s lead author, who has a background in the World Health Organisation (WHO) and plays a leading role in Tobacco Free Initiative Europe, tells me that the concept of social harm takes the alcohol debate beyond the traditional limits of individual choice and addiction. ‘You can make the argument that what an individual drinks is up to them, provided they understand what they are doing and bearing in mind that alcohol is a dependency-producing drug…. But when you talk about harm to others then that is a societal concern and justification for doing something about it. I think that is an important argument. If there was not harm to others then the argument gets a little less powerful’
And, naturally, he will go on to point out that there is harm:
‘The total tangible cost of alcohol to EU society in 2003 was estimated to be €125bn (€79bn-€220bn), equivalent to 1.3 per cent GDP, and which is roughly the same value as that found recently for tobacco.’ The report further highlights the broader social cost of drinking, with the proviso that ‘these estimates are subject to a wide margin of error, [and] they are likely to be an underestimate of the true gross social cost of alcohol’.
See? Told you.
Here we go again, the health fascists who, not satisfied that we are given sufficient information with which to make an informed decision about or lives, how we live them and the chemicals we choose to imbibe, feel that the state should decide for us. Dr Anderson goes on to lecture us about the cost of alcohol abuse (never mind the millions who merely drink socially):
‘The intangible costs show the value people place on pain, suffering and lost life that occurs due to the criminal, social and health harms caused by alcohol’, says the report. ‘In 2003 these were estimated to be €270bn, with other ways of valuing the same harms producing estimates between €150bn and €760bn.’
Er, if it is intangible, how did they manage to measure it accurately enough to put a figure to it?
I have some experience with alcohol abuse and it isn’t pretty. It can destroy lives. Certainly, it will make them miserable while the addiction is at its height. As a consequence, I hate alcohol immensely. Not as immensely as I detest interfering busy-body doctors and politicians who try to tell me how to run my life, though. Take away alcohol, however, and the underlying problem will not go away, the addiction will simply feed off something else. Presumably the health Nazis will go after that, then, whatever it may be.
The assumptions in this statement are pretty rich:
Drink is responsible for 2,000 homicides, four out of 10 of Europe’s annual murders. ‘The economic cost of alcohol-attributable crime has been estimated to be €33bn in the EU for 2003….while the intangible cost of the physical and psychological effects of crime has been valued at €9bn – €37bn.’ Children, too, are passive victims of drinking. ‘Many of the harms caused by alcohol are borne by people other than the drinker responsible. This includes 60,000 underweight births, as well as 16 per cent of child abuse and neglect, and five to nine million children in families adversely affected by alcohol’, says the report’s summary.
Wow. But, er, what about all those folk, like Mr Eugenidies (and presumably DK) who simply drink socially without beating their wives/girlfriends et al?
I have never beaten my girlfriend whilst drunk (nor, for the avoidance of doubt, whilst sober). I do not have any children and do not abuse any. I have never got into a fight in a pub. I have never committed a crime drunk. I have never, at the time of writing, killed anyone, drunk, sober, or stoned. Kept neighbours awake? Well, maybe once or twice in my salad days. Fuck them, they were disagreeable old bats.
Quite. It is none of the state’s business whether people drink alcohol or not. Once more we have doctors interfering where they have no business. They are there to cure the sick, not tell us how to run our lives. If we choose to ignore their advice when in the surgery – where they are perfectly entitled to dish out their opinions, well, that’s our concern and we pay the price. So be it.
It seems, though, that not only do we have a problem in the EU with obsessive health Nazis, Australia faces a similar difficulty. Some nincompoop – Senator Nigel Scullion, to be precise – is proposing alcohol cards:
ALL Northern Territorians should be issued an electronic photo ID card to buy takeaway alcohol, a Federal politician said yesterday.
CLP Senator Nigel Scullion said: “It would be a small price to pay to reduce anti-social behaviour.”
He rejected claims that Darwin and Alice Springs were too big for the system to work.
“It wouldn’t hurt to carry an alcohol smartcard,” Senator Scullion said. “We carry several other cards with us all the time.”
The ID card is expected to be tried out in Nhulunbuy later this year.
Ye gods! Where will it end? I suppose, given that politicians have a limited purpose, they feel obliged to manufacture more and convince us that it is for our own good. I’ll go along with a cull – first politicians, then as recommended by The Devil’s Kitchen, the civil service, followed by any doctors who think that politics is a part of their role.
The problem, though, runs somewhat deeper than either Mr Eugenidies or DK mention, as illustrated by this discussion over at the UK Bike Forum:
How the feck an open faced helmet like they all wore restricted their view is beyond me, anyway, I had this argument with one of them who was spouting the freedom of choice bollox and my argument was that if he had the freedom to not wear a helmet then fine. If he wanted to over cook a bend and smash his head open on a 3 foot wide oak tree great. But if he ends up on the wrong side, I have the choice that my children don’t get traumatised when they see someones head split open on my windshield. Seriously, if I was in charge of laws, riding a bike without FULL protective clothing would be an offence and would earn you 3 points.
Any motorcyclist reading this will realise that nickr6 is fairly mainstream in his opinions. Most serious riders are appalled by those who don’t kit up properly (myself included). This is not the first time I’ve heard riders call for legislation to control those who choose to ride without the proper gear. My response was fairly acerbic:
So where do the rules stop? There is a significant proportion of the population who believe riding motorcycles is dangerous, stupid and irresponsible (they probably feel the same about mountaineers, hang gliders and jet skiers) and that they should be banned. There are, doubtless, politicians who would listen favourably to such lobbying.
They don’t want to pay their NI contributions towards people who have had an off whether properly kitted out or not – it makes no difference to the uninitiated.
That, of course, is the rub. There will always be something that the majority will disapprove of and there will always be a vacuous, vote hungry politician ready to pick up the reigns of a bandwagon when it rolls into town. Just stop for a minute and ask yourself how many times does a news item involve some ill-informed idiot trotting out the mantras such as: “the government ought to do something”, “it should be banned” or “there needs to be a law against it”. Well? Sound familiar? How many people are complaining about the tobacco ban? Are there protests in the streets decrying the infringement of liberty that it represents? No, the darkness creeps upon us stealthily. Our liberty dies with barely a whisper. Already the group mind set is impregnated with the hyperbole about binge drinking and anti-social behaviour. Frankly, the likely outcome of a law regarding passive drinking will be welcomed.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is the root of our problem. It isn’t the EU, it isn’t Westminster – it’s our fellow man.