We don't have a drink problem just too many disapproving people

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Yet again, when the actual facts about alcohol consumption in the UK are revealed, we see a very different picture from that portrayed by the BBC, the Daily Mail and the righteous prohibitionists that over-populate our public sector.

In 2003 70% of 16- to 24-year-olds told interviewers they had had a drink in the previous week; by 2010 just 48% had. The proportion of 11- to 15-year-olds who had drunk in the previous week halved over the same period. Heavy drinking sessions are down too. 

So why are we spending time debating control measures, minimum pricing and such? How come hundreds of column inches and hours of air time are given to temperance campaigners (even if they are doctors) and anti-booze campaigners?


The Guardian reading middle-classes disapprove of working class lifestyles. For all their left liberalism and recycled paens to the workers, these people are not really any different from the Daily Mail reading bigot when it comes to eating, drinking and smoking - perhaps worse. It's not really about health - as witnessed by the Guardian and BBC giving over so much space to celebrations of (posh) grub and expensive booze.

For my friends on the right, there's a different sort of disapproval fuelled by a view that people shouldn't be out enjoying themselves. This is the 'twitching curtains' party, filled with tutters and complainers. And it's an easy win to do the "binge-drinking is destroying our town centres" line even though it's mostly nonsense. This is the party of Cllr Audrey Lewis and Westminster Council's licensing department - pulling the plug on music, clamping down on al fresco drinking, shorter hours.

We do not need further clamp-downs - let alone ones that are directly and specifically aimed at the poor. Yet this is what we appear to be getting - the evidence doesn't support minimum pricing, we'll have to spend millions getting it through the European courts and, while this is happening, the public will carry on moderating their drinking. The strategy of liberal licensing, good quality health advice and targeting resources at those who need help has worked. We have fewer drunks, young people are drinking less and - over the coming few years regardless of policy decisions - ill-health caused by drinking will decline.

So let's smile, relax and learn from a old Muslim poet:

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
But who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

From The Tavern, by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273) - found here

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Entering an Age of Disapproval

Over the weekend my reaction to the news that David Cameron was insisting on introducing a minimum price for alcohol fluctuated between resignation, anger and cynicism. Resignation at the seeming inevitability of the nannying fussbucket’s victory. Anger that a Conservative prime minister thinks it OK to muck about with prices for the purpose of social engineering. And cynicism in that Cameron appears to be chucking some red meat to the health lobby ahead of the final stages of the Health Bill’s progress through parliament.

With the new week came the dawning realisation that Cameron is merely a mirror of a depressing age – his championing of nannying fussbucketry reflects his penchant for government by dinner party and a resulting tendency for Mumsnet-style kneejerk reactions to perceived problems in “society”.

It’s not just minimum pricing for alcohol, the PM has moaned about chocolate oranges in W H Smiths, the “premature sexualisation” of girls (but for some reason not boys) and has proposed ‘fat taxes’ on the ‘most unhealthy foods’.  Whenever Cameron wants a positive headline he turns to the judgement of other people’s lifestyles and other people’s choices. And in doing this he is simply reflecting the age in which we now live.

We have entered an “Age of Disapproval” – after several decades of growing openness, personal freedom and choice, society has looked at itself and decided it doesn’t approve. Where once liberalisation was applauded, it is now seen as license, as an encouragement to decadent hedonism. We have created a new set of sins – things of which we disapprove.

A few years ago a good night out was something good – a chance to blow away some cobwebs, let our hair down and enjoy ourselves. Now it’s binge-drinking and it's unhealthy - a terrible burden on society and especially on that most sacred of sacred cows, the National Health Service.

There was a time in all our lives when the thing that hit the spot was a full English breakfast – bacon, sausage, fried eggs, hash browns or fried bread, maybe a bit of black pudding and perhaps some beans. After that big night out this great meal set us right again. Now these meals are cancer-giving, artery-clogging and sinful – we disapprove of such indulgence with talk of rising obesity and, you’ve guessed it, the great cost to the NHS of such a terrible diet.

Not so far back in time, we saw smoking as a bad habit but tolerated the smoker – it was their choice after all. We liked the fact that places made provision for smokers while allowing non-smokers space as well. Today, smoking sits as the thing we disapprove of the most. And we don’t stop at condemning the sin – we ostracise and exclude the sinner as well, casting them out into the cold and rain, making them second-class citizens, like pariahs.

Everywhere we look, we see disapproval – complaints about the covers of so-called ‘lads mags’, frowning criticism of models for being too thin and condemnation of mothers for putting a cream egg in their child’s lunchbox. Politicians, doctors, scientists, journalists and pundits fall over each other to express disapproval of the choices other people make. And this disapproval is followed by calls for action to prevent such evil from spreading – whether we’re talking about school dinners, the ‘sexualisation’ of children or me having a very large whisky at the end of a long day.

Right now the pendulum is swinging away from personal choice and private freedom towards a controlling state and society. The “Age of Disapproval” chalks up a new victory with each passing day – with every one of these little wins making society a little less free and life for so many a little less pleasant.

But this is fine for the New Puritans, prohibitionists and healthy living fanatics – it means that people are directed towards an approved, purposeful and sober life and away from indulgent, hedonism and pleasure for the sheer joy of its experience.

It isn’t a better world. It is a dreary, depressing, controlling culture where we may live a little longer but that extra will be free from pleasure, without the chance of indulgence.

It truly is an “Age of Disapproval”.

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