Apparently, according to the latest scare statistics the cost of alcohol and the way it is promoted are responsible for the epidemic of liver disease now sweeping the country.
Putting things into proportion here, as the Portman Group points out among all of the screeching and gnashing of teeth, most people who drink do so sensibly.
If Britain has a drinking culture, it is nothing to do with pricing and nothing to do with advertising. It’s been with us for an awful lot longer than the Saatchi Brothers. Hogarth’s Gin Alley dates from 1751. It portrays the drunken poor who had easy access to cheap gin, leading to the Gin Act of that same year, which brought about licensing for liquor sales. The fact that some will drink to excess to the detriment of their own health and the lives of those around them has been around for a long time now – a lot longer than Hogarth. And as history tells us, changes in the law may bring about a brief change in behaviour but it will change back with time.
Still, the facts of history are immaterial to the new puritans who would have us all follow their chosen path to purity. No, drunkenness and its associated health problems are a new phenomenon to them and therefore something must be done – even if that something is illegal under EU law. Funny how they can consider breaking it when it suits them, eh?
Balance, the campaign group (fake charity?) that has brought us the latest set of scare statistics tells us that:
Balance’s figures found 189 hospital admissions for 30 to 34-year-olds in 2010, compared with 37 in 2002.
What they don’t say is that A&E will ask if you have been drinking and if you say yes, then your admission is drink related even if it isn’t.
The Portman Group state in the BBC article the UK already has strict advertising codes in place. Given this, we really don’t need more, nor do we need minimum pricing. As Mrs L said when watching the piece on the box earlier today, higher prices will simply mean poorer alcoholics…
“latest set of scare statistics tells us that – Balance’s figures found 189 hospital admissions for 30 to 34-year-olds in 2010, compared with 37 in 2002”
Let’s see the yearly breakdown – has there been a change in drinking habits since our pubs started closing Fast)?
Not too sure about the cheap gin though, LR. The stuff does my head in. Cheap whisky now ….
I am over fifty now but in my teens and early twenties I used to drink like an idiot and, as a consequence, often acted like one. Then I discovered martial arts and, as a consequence, stopped drinking altogether. Can anyone guess which activity resulted in the most hospital admissions?
For a couple of decades I was very much into keeping in shape, karate swimming and cycling were my favourite methods. Now that I have slowed down a bit, I enjoy a drink on a regular basis but hardly ever get drunk. I am much fitter than other men my age apart from having painful joints which the less fit don’t appear to have.
One thing that I have never done is try to force my supposedly healthy lifestyle on other people, I have nothing but contempt for those who do. When governments turn nasty, they would be powerless without people willing to carry out their dirty work. When you look at these health fascists you can see exactly where such people are found.
One more point, alcohol is really easy to make. I have a fairly modest lifestyle and I am happy with it. If the government really decides that it is a good idea to seriously restrict alcohol, I will be moving into a collossal mansion and buying a fleet of classic cars and motorcycles just to prove a point.
I agree with JH, I would rather be sober than drink gin 😉 I do a great deal of exercise, mostly because I enjoy it, and sometimes because I find it uncomfortable to have a big stomach. And at weekends I drink beer, and sometimes we go out and drink whisky, because we enjoy it too. I am not easily categorised. Very few people are, and the technocrats who like to control us will eventually learn this.
XX I am not easily categorised. Very few people are, and the technocrats who like to control us will eventually learn this. XX
They have the answer. Can’t categorise? Then ban it totaly and remove the doubt.
There is only one way to beat a technocrat, and that is to blow it’s bloody head off.
Balance is the new Alcohol Concern. It is the taxpayer funded vehicle for yet another media studies graduate with an axe to grind and rent to pay. The Shenker is dead, long live the Shenker. I would have thought that NHS money would be better spent on frontline services?
Higher prices won’t just lead to poorer alcoholics, of course. It’ll also lead to poorer casual drinkers and more smuggling and illegal production. Funny how policies that actually make things worse seem to be more easily tolerated than a few people choosing to drink more than is good for them.
Hogarth did an accompanying picture to Gin Alley. It was full of healthy stout yeoman drinking healthy English beer. Gin Alley was never against all acohol just the evils of gin compared to good wholesome beer.
Quite so. The point I’m making by invoking Hogarth’s Gin Alley here is that none of this is new.
“What they don’t say is that A&E will ask if you have been drinking and if you say yes, then your admission is drink related even if it isn’t.”
Are you sure about that? I seem to recall (but can’t find it at the moment) that those statistics are fudged another way – each admission (regardless of cause) contributes to the figures for ‘drink related’ causes.
I’ll keep rummaging for it…
Ah – that didn’t take as long as I thought.
Drink and disease: how figures can confuse:
“Alcohol-related admissions are calculated in such a way that if you are unlucky enough, say, to be involved in a fire and admitted to hospital for the treatment of your burns, it will count as 0.38 of an alcohol-related admission – unless you happen to be under 15, when it won’t count at all.
If you drown, it counts as 0.34 of an alcohol-related admission – though most people unlucky enough to drown aren’t admitted to hospital. Getting chilled to the bone (accidental excessive cold) counts for 0.25 of an admission, intentional self-harm to 0.20 per cent of an admission.“
That one is news to me. If you find more info. then let us know.
That was quick…
Bloody hell-fire. How can they possibly make a fire related incident drink related with absolutely no evidence whatsoever? That’s not “fudging” that’s making it up in its entirety.
Or this?
Fuck me!
Thought you might find the rest of the article… enlightening 😉
XX Or this?
So a third of all admissions for cardiac arrhythmias, for example, are attributed to drinking, even if the sufferer happens to be a teetotaller.
Fuck me!XX
You should know that they have been fiddling the casualty figures for motorcycle accidents in a similar way for decades LR.
“He had a motorcycle twenty years ago, that must be the cause of his galloping atheletes foot!”
Sounds like the figures for alcohol related A&E admissions comes from basically the same source as the guidelines for weekly alcohol intakes: someone’s arsehole.
LR,
I wasn’t trying to belittle your point at all. I was trying to say that this picture is quite often dragged up by banstubators as the road we are heading down whilst completely ignoring the other picture which encourages drinking shed-loads of beer.
Yes, I realised that. Beer Street was the accompanying image you are thinking of. It was intended to be a comparison between healthy home grown ale and the evils of the foreign gin.
The bansturbators try to claim that binge drinking and public drunkenness in the streets is some sort of new phenomenon that needs tackling with bans and more laws. Hogarth is evidence that it is not new and that more laws and restrictions don’t work. After all, the Gin act may have caused a reduction in consumption at the time, but here we are discussing precisely the same issue and there will always be those who drink to excess.
That’s good. I didn’t want you to think I was having a go! 🙂