Hooray. Scotland have announced their plans to create a minimum price per unit of alcohol to try and curb the harmful effects of binge-drinking. Is it just me, or is this just one more example of the ridiculous approach UK governments have to alcohol?
I get the logic. Every weekend A&E departments up and down the country are overrun with alcohol-related injuries and police cells overcrowded with alcohol-related crimes. Brits just don't seem to understand how to have a drink without going mental and drinking themselves to death. Something simply must be done to put a dampener on this. And obviously increasing the price of alcohol means that alcoholics people can't afford as much booze so won't be able to get as drunk while alcoholics' livers will survive a few years more.
Wait a second. If a bottle of scotch is going to cost £4 more, surely that just means your average street-corner wino is going to have £4 less to spend on food. You know, that stuff essential to living that contains the nutrition bodies needs to continue fighting the against the vagaries of alcoholism. Counter-productive much? People aren't going to drink less because booze costs more, they're just going to have less money to spend on other things and be more likely to resort to crime to get it. Duh!
The British attitude to alcohol has gone mad. Instead of sensible and measured discussion, stricter and stricter laws and policies are being introduced in an attempt to pour water on the fire...
Three women walk into a supermarket to buy wine and some flowers for a friend's birthday.
The check-out girl says: "Do you have any ID?".
Two of the girls say: "Yeah, we're 27, here it is."
The checkout-girl says: "I'm sorry but I can't serve you alcohol because your other quite-clearly also 27-year-old friend, who isn't even buying the wine, doesn't have any ID with her. Bring your passport next time."
The bad joke above happened last weekend and illustrates just how crazily alcohol is treated in the UK. Three adult females on their way to a friend's house cannot buy wine and flowers because ultimately the shop are scared they could end up with a whopping fine. Does this mean if I take my six-year-old into a shop I can't buy booze because I might be buying it for him? It's exactly the same.
Civil liberties group the Manifesto Club just published a report calling for the abolition of the ridiculously strict ID policies which argues that over-zealous ID checking is 'infantilising' young adults. Their research showed most people in their late-twenties have been asked for ID more in the last two years than when they were 21. With the Tories plan to double the fine for selling alcohol to an under-age person to £20,000 this is only set to continue.
Instead of accepting that alcohol is a normal part of everyday adult life that requires a learned education from childhood, our policies are antagonising young adults while making alcohol inaccessible to children thereby giving it some undeserved mythical status that leads to a lack of understanding in later years.
Take a trip to France or Spain, and their alcohol legislation is way more relaxed than it is in the UK, yet they don't have the same sort of problems we have here. Ask someone in France what the legal age to buy alcohol is and they shrug and chuckle at the of there needing to be a legal age in the first place.
In the UK most youngsters first taste of booze comes after badgering someone outside the offy to go in and get them 2 litres of gut-rotting 'cider' that they drink while spinning round in circles down the park with their mates. Their second taste is when it all gets promptly brought back up all over the girl they were hoping to get lucky with.
In France the first taste is usually a small glass of nice red wine over dinner with their parents at the age of about 8. Notice the difference?
With a culture where quality is instilled it becomes more about drinking one or two glasses of a nice vintage as opposed to one or two litres of alcoholic chemicals. Quality versus quantity. Enjoyment versus inebriation. Naturally in this environment a responsible attitude to alcohol is fostered.
The whole thing is a fiasco. Local pubs - traditionally a safe environment for youngsters to get an education in alcohol while drinking shandies with their dad - are closing at a rate of knots because duty is so high they can't operate at a profit and there's no way they'd let a 16-year-old sit with their dad learning how to have a social drink. As a result all they can do is learn how to projectile vomit and get into fights after enjoying a bottle of cider down the park with their mates.
Cheap alcohol might be blamed for many of the problems and if people can get pissed on pocket-money then there is an issue there, but the real issue is surely the engendered culture caused by the irrationally strict policies and unreasonable duties. With alcohol prices constantly increasing an affordability gap has emerged that mirrors all of the problems caused by the usual wealth-related social divisions. There's a reason alcoholics drink bargain sherry, super-strength cider and special brew, and it's got nothing to do with the taste. Getting drunk as cheaply as possible will always occur, making booze cost a bit more won't change that, it will just re-jig the order of what is the cheapest to get drunk on.
This whole hysteria needs to stop. It has got to the stage where three women are not able to go into a supermarket and buy a bottle of wine, because one of them, a sodding accountant, hasn't thought to bring her passport with her.
I mean, what is this? Immigration control? We're talking about buying a bottle of wine, not an AK47.
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