Now that she's decamped to the USA, Louise Mensch erstwhile MP for Corby and, I'm told, a Tory has become a fussbucket. A full blown nannying fussbucket.
Strangely - perhaps Louise believes the bully pulpit of the media more effective - the lovely Mrs Mensch is featured often in the British press. And she's on about bossing women about drinking:
Mrs Mensch attacked the British "culture" of drinking, arguing American women are happier and healthier as they do not drink wine as often as their UK counterparts.
I missed that culture of drinking but I guess it's a hangover from the 'chick lit' that Mrs Mensch used to write. The truth - something that passes by the fussbuckets of this world - is that British women are remarkably abstemious:
The ONS said the proportion of men drinking on five or more days a week fell from 23% in 1998 to 16% in 2011 and that of women from 13% to 9%. But the drop only began to be seen after 2007.
So the "have a glass of wine after a hard day" line that Louise Mensch peddles is simply untrue - even if the figures from the ONS are an underestimate and should be doubled that means that over 80% of women simply aren't conforming to this 'Bridget Jones' stereotype and sloshing back the vino big time. For sure, the Americans drink less (roughly half what we do) but there's no evidence that they're any happier or healthier as a result.
So Louise Mensch is beautiful, successful and slim - despite plenty of vino. This doesn't qualify her - not even a little bit - to give advice on alcohol consumption especially not in such a nannying way. Most especially because she is ill-informed about the science and ignorant of how much British women do drink. Worse still Mrs Mensch seems to want us to embrace that horrible puritan American culture that thinks it OK to give 16 year olds a fast car but a terrible thing to let them have a glass of wine.
Frankly she's welcome to it. Stay in girls, have a glass of wine and stick two fingers up at fussbuckets like Mrs Mensch.
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