People ignore government “limits”.
Around 2.5 million people in Great Britain – 9% of drinkers – consume more than the new weekly recommended limit for alcohol in a single day, latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show.
The 2014 data predates the new limit of 14 units of alcohol per week for men which began in January.
To which I say; so what? we are free agents are we not? We own ourselves, do we not? We are well aware that alcohol carries risks if consumed to excess, do we not? And if people choose to drink more than the government thinks is fit, that is their decision and theirs alone. So what?
I also take exception to the term “limits”. Who the flying fuck do these people think they are, defining limits for others to imbibe a perfectly legal substance. None of their damned business.
Although habits may start to change, experts say the figures are concerning.
No, they aren’t.
The chief medical officer says there is no safe level of regular drinking.
Which goes to show that she is as unfit for her office as her vile predecessor. The “limits” are pulled from the collective arseholes of the puritanical temperance fucktards that came up with them. The “no safe limits” bullshit has no basis in science and is, therefore, something to be treated with contempt along with the ignorant control freaks who peddle it.
The ONS figures show 58% of people – 28.9 million – drink some alcohol in a typical week.
So? Time to do away with the ONS, frankly. Or, as I did, refuse to take part in any of their stupid, prying surveys.
This figure is lower than a decade ago but has remained stable over the last few years.
So, er, we don’t actually, have a problem…
Jackie Ballard, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said:…
…”We need to raise awareness of the health harms.
“When it comes to alcohol, there are no safe limits of consumption.”
The biggest risk to our health is raised blood pressure caused by the stress of having to put up with paying for fake charities such as Alcohol Concern to spout this risible bullshit. And, as usual, “raise awareness” is code for “give us more money”.
Public Health England said it was looking at the best ways to help tackle problem drinking.
How about fuck off and leave us alone to live our lives as we see fit?
Is there cholera in the water supply? No? Well, there isn’t a public health problem, so fuck off and die. Soon, please.
Fuck me!
I thought they’d have the decency to wait a few months before ‘ever increasing numbers exceed safe guidelines’ headlines…
But no, straight in. They have no shame or self awareness…
If only they would “fuck off and die” as you so eloquently put it. Preferably choking on their non alcoholic lager and steamed vegetables.
An excellent summation. Succinct and to the point. I couldn’t agree more.
As you point out, Public Health should be about dealing with communicable diseases and ensuring that the sewerage system is fit for purpose.
What we choose to do in our private lives is emphatically not within their remit. Particularly given that they themselves are the ones setting the bar at the height they (in their puritanical mindset) deem ‘healthy’. One wonders what sort of lives these people lead, since pleasure never seems to enter the equation. It’s all sackcloth and ashes, and bitter remedies.
“One wonders what sort of lives these people lead…”
Not in the least bit healthy I would suspect. I doubt very much that they embrace the kind of lifestyle that they recommend for everyone else.
> I also take exception to the term “limits”.
Indeed. Since they’re actually “guidelines.” Even the fucknuggets at the fake charities don’t call them limits.
Just following the tobacco control template. Not long before The Messages appear on the bottles, “Drinking causes….ageing of the skin/erectile dysfunction/liver disease…..”
I remember one new year about three years ago I heard an interviewee casually refer to the ten units of alcohol in a bottle of wine – when the day before there had been six!
(I’m told that patients are so reluctant to see their GP to review medication that they’ve stopped issuing it until the patient makes an appointment – I wonder if it’s got something to do with the perpetual nagging…)
Maybe I should offer myself as poster boy. Like most others I did the expected teen and twenties “drink until you can’t stand” rituals. Now, many years on, if I drank anything like the “recommended” daily amount I’d fall over.
Ditto – 12 pints a night wasn’t unusual: now my consumption is really occasional, and on the odd few times now when I might stretch to four pints (of 3.6º bitter) I really know I’ve had a drink. Beer in the fridge often stays for months before it’s touched but I insist that as I own my body, I’ll put into it whatever I damn well like!
Mrs D and I are doing our best to keep the numbers up…
Quite. OK, so I might get completely snotboxed once a week, and might enjoy tobacco products more than I should, but then I do that in the privacy of my own home. It doesn’t affect anybody else. It’s my life, I own it, nobody else, just me. Just who the f*&K are they to presume to tell me what I can and cannot drink, eat or smoke? Yes. Longrider, you know exactly where they can stick their illiberal shite!
One of the committee that came up with the original 24 units per week figure, has admitted that it is a complete back of an envelope guestimate, based on no scientific research whatsoever. Now they have almost halved it? Also based on no scientific research whatsoever?
I know a lady who could have gone shot for shot with Dylan Thomas or Richard Burton, and still not have slurred by the end of the whiskey tasting, but give her half a Cider and she falls sideways. It’s down to bodyweight and genes and all sorts of stuff. Humans are not homogeneous. Why on earth do “experts” keep insisting we are?
> One of the committee that came up with the original 24 units per week figure
Richard Smith:
“[He] recalled that the committee could find “no decent data” on the subject, but felt obliged to make a recommendation nonetheless.
He said: “They weren’t really based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee.”
> Also based on no scientific research whatsoever?
“Research” yes. Scientific, not so much. They’ve figured out that people lie to them when they ask them about their drinking habits, so they’ve spent time figuring out the fudge factors they can ‘use’ to adjust upwards the figures they do get from their surveys.
For example: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2988046?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
(A search for [yesterday drinking research] will dredge up more examples of this fuckwittery)