Yet again the nagging nannies want to regulate our lives to the point of what happens in our own homes. Not content with over 3,000 new offences on the statute book, Alcohol Concern wants to add more. Maybe they would like to introduce telescreens so that big nanny can watch our every move while they are at it.
Parents who give alcohol to children aged under 15 should be prosecuted, a charity has said.
The call comes in an Alcohol Concern report on the government’s Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy.
My parents introduced me to alcohol at an early age. Their rationale was that it would encourage me to drink in moderation. So I had the odd glass of wine with a meal and a glass of cider at special events. Indeed, their approach was similar to thousands of French parents who introduce their progeny to alcohol in a responsible and adult manner. It is parents, after all, who have the responsibility for bringing up their children, not the state and not the interfering busybodies at Alcohol Concern.
Fortunately, the government appears to be resisting this call and a good thing too. This comment from Caroline Flint is a remarkable outbreak of common sense from a government minister:
I don’t think passing a law to ban alcohol for those under 15 would be enforceable or necessarily effective.
But certainly one of the things that we do need to think about is how we all, as parents with families, do what we can do to have a sensible drinking message within our own homes.
Quite. That is achieved by parents introducing their offspring to alcohol in a managed way; a way that they consider suitable for the children concerned. It is none of the state’s business and it is certainly none of Alcohol Concern’s business. Or as Mr Eugenides points out when discussing the same story:
By what authority do Alcohol Concern presume to tell me how to raise my child? Fuck off.
Exactly.
Interestingly, having tried alcohol as a child, I stopped drinking it by the time I left my teens. I never acquired the taste, I suppose. Certainly my parents introducing me to it before the age of ten didn’t turn me into a binge drinker…
Update: The Devil’s Kitchen has a somewhat more sweary response to Alcohol Concern’s concerns… Read and enjoy 
And this is sublime.