Oh, for Pete?s sake. They won?t give it a rest, will they? Now they?re going to enforce ?government health warnings? on bottles of booze. ?The labels would contain five pieces of information, including a general health warning about alcohol and a reminder to drink responsibly.? Yes, that?ll solve all our problems, won?t it?
The real problem with alcohol in this country is that no one is allowed to tell the truth about it. We all know that these ?units? and the associated ?recommended limits? simply came off the top of somebody?s head about twenty years ago. You won?t get to see any objective scientific evidence, because that is likely to suggest that things aren?t quite as bad as they?re telling us, and it wouldn?t do to have people thinking that. Just like no one wants anyone to know how much one can really safely drink when driving.
Alcohol is the subject of biased propaganda every bit of much as democracy is in places like China. Look at the way the Tories have latched onto the phrase ?24-hour drinking?. Have you ever found anywhere in this country where 24-hour drinking is possible? It?s clever though; anyone who?s been a student has probably done a 24-hour session at some point and remembers the horrible aftermath. I?d waited half my life for a change which would stop people from sending me to bed at 11 pm, which I didn?t like when I was 15 and don?t like now. And now they?re sniping at it. And we drinkers have already seen what they?ve done to the smokers, who seem to have no recognised rights at all.
So we can?t believe a word we?re told, and so come to rely on the evidence of our eyes. And I know there are huge numbers of people in my own position; most of my friends and I have been drinking three or four times the ?recommended limits? since our late teens. We are all now around the 50 mark, we get ourselves checked up regularly, and so far none of us has had significant problems with our major internal organs.
OK, our luck will run out eventually, but, to be frank, what is the State?s interest in having us live into our nineties? We don?t want government agencies saving money by killing us off once we reach retirement age, but if we choose to follow a lifestyle which might see us off in our sixties, I can?t see how the Government has any real duty to prevent us doing so. After all, we?ve got to die sometime, and dying in your nineties is almost certain to cost a lot more.
And so even the argument that drinkers or smokers cost the NHS more doesn?t really stand up. In any case we vicemongers contribute a vast amount of excise duty to the Treasury. I imagine Alistair Darling praying like St Augustine: ?O Lord, make everybody give up booze and fags, but not yet.?
SourceNow the war on smokers is all but won, as predicted the war on drinkers begins... same lies, same tactics...
Warning labels on booze... WTF?
