by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/YkDmnADemIQ/official-there-really-is-no-booze.html
Official: There Really Is No Booze Britain ‘Epidemic’ It’s a tough job being an anti-alcohol trougher these days.
You see, they have to try to sell the idea that Britain is in the grip of a booze epidemic despite the incontrovertible fact that alcohol consumption has been declining here for a decade now. It’s a regular theme of this blog that – very inconveniently – official statistics show our booze intake is reducing at the same rate as the hysterical shrieking from alcohol prohibitionists is increasing. So it must come as a knife in the back to this miserable, beleaguered group that even their fellow health obsessives – the unelected WHO – have now weakened their hand further.
On Monday, the WHO launched their latest report on global alcohol use and, you guessed it, they confirmed that there is no ‘booze Britain’ epidemic worth its salt. Not only does it show once again that alcohol consumption has been falling in recent times, it also proves that – far from there being a catastrophic rise in alcohol abuse – there has been no real change in our habits for at least 40 years.
File that in the drawer marked things you won’t read in the mainstream media.
What is worse for alcohol controllers, though, is that their usual excuse for declining consumption has also been blitzed by the WHO.
Sadly, the BBC don’t keep radio recordings for more than a week, but if you’d tuned in to Radio 5 in November last year you would have heard regular anti-alcohol mouthpiece Nick Sheron dismissing the fact that consumption is going down by saying that much of the reduction is due to the greater proportion of ethnic minorities – many of whom shun alcohol – in our society.
It’s a trick often used by those in the temperance movement, as illustrated by the Institute of Alcohol Studies when trying to explain why youngsters are increasingly not drinking according to ONS figures.
The report does not analyse the findings in relation to religion or ethnicity and so it is impossible to gauge the impact of the growth in the numbers of schoolchildren from non-British indigenous backgrounds, some of which proscribe the use of alcohol. In 2011 the Department for Education announced that in England around 25% of children in state schools were from ethnic minorities, and the proportion is growing rapidly.
However, the Economist has produced a very interesting graphic which blows this hypothesis out of the water. Using WHO data, instead of focussing on just per capita consumption it also illustrates the amount consumed per drinker … and the UK is way down in 95th position.
As Snowdon notes at the IEA, this is a bit of a problem for Alcohol Concern.
Per capita consumption in Britain is the 25th highest in the world – which is still considerably lower than the Daily Mail would have you believe – but it is only 95th when you look at it per drinker. This interesting statistic was entirely ignored by the spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern when she was asked to comment….
Emily Robinson, Deputy Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern told Huffington Post UK via email: “It’s a tragedy for every one of us that the UK is wallowing amongst the worst 25 countries in the world for alcohol intake.
“Because of this lives are being needlessly lost and even more ruined by ill health. Sadder still is that the Government knows what needs to be done to turn this bleak picture around…
She then called for minimum pricing and advertising bans, as her job requires, but it is odd to complain that the UK is “wallowing amongst the worst 25 countries in the world” just because it has more (moderate) drinkers. Groups like Alcohol Concern claim that they are against excessive drinking, not drinking per se. If so, the ‘consumption per drinker’ figure is much more relevant to their cause. As the blue dots on the left side of the chart show, per capita consumption figures are as much a measure of the number of teetotallers as anything. The problem Emily Robinson identifies could be solved by a surge of Islam and Methodism, but that would not affect heavy drinkers.
So the WHO has quite brilliantly skewered the ethnic argument from the likes of Sheron and Robinson because they simply can’t have it both ways. If they want to look at just the rates of those who drink – that is, strip out the people who are teetotal – there are 94 nations with a greater ‘booze epidemic’ than us.
However, if they insist on sticking to the per capita ranking to advance their agenda, we are 25th but – by their own admission – the proportion of ethnic minority children in schools who will grow up to reject alcohol is “growing rapidly” so our rank will swiftly improve.
Nothing, then, for alcohol campaigners to do but sit and wait, eh? Or maybe we could sack some seeing as their job is being handled by demographics without their input.
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All too true.
Trouble is, the facts never really matter with this kind of campaign.
If that were the case, we should never have had all the internet censorship, drug, gun, paedophile or smoking hysteria foisted on us over the years.
Even if one exposes one of the “facts” used by the alcohol prohibitionists as a lie, all that will happen is that they will declare it unimportant and come up with a new “fact” that again “proves” their case.
Bearing in mind that politics is not fundamentally about facts or logic, but rather an appeal to low information/low attention span masses, this tactic has proved quite succesful.
“…there has been no real change in our habits for at least 40 years….”
Hmmmmm. 40 years ago lager was a girl’s drink – draught lager was just coming onto the market, and the term ‘lager-lout’ was yet to be invented. 40 years ago public drunkenness would result in a night in the cells and a charge of being ‘Drunk and Disorderly’. Today the police, instead of arresting drunks, engage in stunts such as handing out flip-flops to girls who are too drunk to stand in their stilettos. Today it is quite normal for young men and young women to get drunk and vomit in the street with impunity. 40 years ago there were no ‘alcopops’. 40 years ago girls and young women drank Babycham or Cherry B. No self-respecting girl would allow herself to get drunk. Today otherwise respectable young women deliberately set out to get ‘smashed off their face’ on a Friday or Saturday night.
I know some of this relates to social change rather than alcohol consumption, but I’m sure these new drinking institutions that have replaced our traditional pubs make a damn sight more money from the sale of alcohol than the old pubs ever did.
I’ve never understood why women aren’t supposed to get drunk. Getting drunk is enormous fun, which is why we do it. I see no reason to deny this pleasure on the basis of sex.
Perhaps Hugo will enlighten me.
So just too many people out on the town are just being silly arses then. As was always the case. And most times people being silly arses are, more often than not, drunk. I do not think it is so much a booze culture – looking back on my own family history my grandmother as a child had to go to the pub to get a few pennies from her dad for food as he was always in the pub like so many men of his day. Booze was a relaxant against very hard times, as was the ciggy. The latter is seen as the only way one can enjoy a night out, but how many peeps doing so are a menace to themselves and society? Not that many me thinks. The former is now considered very anti-social by those who don’t smoke and is banned by law in public areas of entertainment and social resting places as the pub.
The real problem is one of cost of responsibility of actions. The law and its enforcers make ordinary, non drunk or not so drunk peeps, afraid of telling a pisshead to “bugger off home”. Because in an altercation, that might occur, the pisshead can claim hi rights have been violated by someone pushing him out of their garden whilst he was peeing…oh yes seen that.
Its not the booze that’s the problem its the nature of the boozer that is the problem. And heard mentality is worse when the persons involved are led by their discombobulating brains through being intoxicated by booze or more so by drugs and booze combined. But that has always been the case – I was young and a boozer once, and so were my friends. As always the very small minority of pissheads.
jan Sent using Hushma
Given the propensity of a small but unpleasant minority of women to get drunk, seek out a casual shag and next day proclaim themselves rape victims, female drunkenness is a dangerous state for men to be around.
Ian – I wasn’t so much issuing an injunction as making a social observation. But now that you mention it, I know of at least two girls of my close acquaintance who make a habit of getting drunk, getting pregnant, then having abortions. Five or six abortions between the two of them, so that’s one reason.
I also used to enjoy getting drunk, till I nearly died from alcoholism. These things can creep up on you. That was 1982 & I’ve not had a drink since.