Island on booze
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talkpoliticsThe last few days were fun! (Flight attendant trainers' meeting in London, etc). UK is truly beautiful at this time of the year. Just after the endless fogs and rains and before the heat steps in, there's this shorty-shorty period when everything is green, the birds are chirping, the bees are buzzing, and the youth are thinking about silly things. And what's the thing that most Britons have been talking about these days? Austerity? France? The Olympics? Haha, NO. Booze! Specifically, the War on Booze:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17482035 <-- Minimum alcohol price planned for England and Wales
A usual scene: it's shortly after midnight on Friday, and Cornmarket Str in central Oxford is teaming with youngsters in high mood. The bar-tender in one of the most popular local pubs has just rung the bell and the waiters are running around the tables, informing the customers they're about to close the pub soon and everyone should be having their last drink. The pub is really nice - old style, almost ancient moth-eaten wooden bar, and simple interior that probably hasn't been touched for centuries. You know, the typical English pub that stinks of old tablecloth and sour ale. It's one of the very few pubs in Oxford that have a permit to sell alcohol at this "late" hour (because 1 a.m. is considered late in UK, you know). Why? Because the licenses for selling alcohol past midnight are insanely expensive, and few pubs could afford it. The customers, mostly students, are gulping down their last pints, pouring the last shots of vodka into their throats, and jumping out of this murky hole. Stuff begins to stink, but the fun is just beginning. Classic scene. Curtains.
But the true Friday night idyll is actually played out in front of the pub. There's already a huge horde there. Dizzy youngsters are leaning against the brick walls of the houses. Barefoot lasses holding their shoes in hand are wobbling on the pavement in their torn pantyhoses. A little further, a lad is sitting on a bench, puking quietly. A wee bit downstreet, a large gang of masked students (Batman, King Kong, Fred Flintstone, Thor) are about to continue their theme party (it's not Halloween mind you, but who cares; the booze tends to sink in more smoothly when you're having fun).
That's a common sight for the youthful Oxford, where one in five residents is a student. Just 100 km north-west of London, neat yuppies in their loosened ties and pretty suits are carrying their laptop bags with the digital notebooks in one hand, and holding a pint of cider in the other. And they're getting back home on all-fours. And if the sight of serious guys in suits behaving like a mob of football hools still doesn't raise your brows sufficiently, what about the sight of young chicks in their night dresses and heavy makeup, wallowing in their own filth at the gates of the nightclubs? Cheers to all!
The so called binge drinking, i.e. drowning in alcohol within minutes in order to intoxicate yourself quickly, is a serious problem in UK. It's drinking for the sake of getting drunk, and super-fast, until you can't take any more.
In the above BBC article, Kate Fox argues that if you pick up any newspaper and skim through the headlines, you'd probably soon find out that Britain is a nation of primitive drunkards who consume too much alcohol, too fast, and while too young. And this makes them aggressive, prone to promiscuity, sociopathic... and overall, quite repugnant. She explains that there are big cultural differences in the way people approach drinking in the various societies.
In some societies like UK, USA, Australia and parts of Scandinavia, drinking is associated with the above described condition, where all social limits fall down. But there are other cultures like Latin America and the Mediterranean, where alcohol isn't associated with this undesirable behavior pattern, but is rather a more neutral and normal part of everyday life, much like tea and coffee. A way of socializing, a mere background for having fun in good company. Often it has developed into elaborate rituals: just ask our Balkan friends here about the way they consume good alcohol along with a good salad and a good appetizer, while chatting with good people about good things! Meanwhile, we northerners have come up with some pretty nasty inventions like drinking beer through a straw in order to get drunk faster (seen this in Poland), or mixing beer with vodka (Finland), etc etc etc. And these cultural differences have something to do with the amounts of alcohol too, because the countries in the latter group actually register a much higher alcohol consumption (per capita) than the former. And still this social problem is not so acute there. So it's pretty much a cultural thing.
So, the plan is to make binge drinking in UK a very expensive luxury, beyond the reach of the unwashed masses. Actually this will happen first in Scotland, probably the champion nation in this infamous competition. And then it'll spread to the rest of the "foggy Albion". Cameron's cabinet is planning to impose a minimum price on alcohol in attempt to curb its epidemic (ab)use. The proposition is to go to Parliament very soon, and if accepted, the bill will become effective in 2014. It's been promoted as the greatest legislative initiative since the smoking ban in public places.
In the same article, the minister of the interior Theresa May says, "What we need to do is to set a price that is actually going to ensure that we don't damage responsible drinkers. People who like a drink or two, who like going down their local pub, have nothing to fear from this policy". Obviously the British government is aiming at cheap alcohol. Promo deals offering a real flood of alcohol abound so much that there's an epidemic of alcohol storing in people's homes, and they believe that if the cheapest alcohol like vodka, beer and cider are affected by this strategy while the expensive alcohol remains untouched, this will have an effect on alcohol consumption in the country.
The official data indicates that irresponsible drinking is costing the British economy about J21 billion every year. True, UK is a bit more sober now than it used to be some years ago. The alcohol consumption has been steadily dropping since 2004, thus interrupting a 50 year long tendency of ceaseless rise. Meanwhile the share of alcoholics in adolescence and from the 16-25 y.o. group has decreased. But on the other hand, that of the heavy drinkers (who consume twice and more above the recommendable daily dose) has risen.
Meanwhile, according to British Crime Survey, alcohol was a factor in half of all acts of violence between 2009-2010. It's the reason for over 1 million hospitalizations. Chronic liver diseases are dropping in France, Italy and Spain, while in Britain they're rising. The medics predict that for the next 20 years alcohol could be the cause of 210 thousand deaths (70 thousand from liver diseases and another 140 thousand from alcohol-related diseases like heart attacks, cancer, etc), including those resulting from alcohol-induced violence and other incidents.
The reason for all this is that the British drink every day, and a lot. They drink almost as frequently as their Mediterranean counterparts, but meanwhile the daily amount is similar to that of the Scandinavians. Besides, the Institute of Alcohol Studies reports that binge drinking today is 44% more affordable than it used to be in the 80s, making this vice far more accessible than ever in history.
So the authorities have decided to take drastic measures. In March the Scottish government approved the minimum price per unit alcohol (as per the formula, a bottle of spirit alcohol contains 30 units, and additionally 1 unit = half a pint of beer or cider, or a glass of red wine, or a small glass of sherry, etc). The exact price is to be specified later this month and could become effective next year. A few days after the bill was passed, David Cameron proposed that England and Wales should follow suit.
No other country in the world has a fixed minimum price for alcohol by the way. A University of Florida research including over 30 countries shows that a 10% increase of alcohol prices leads to a 4.6% decrease in drinking. And this respectively reflects on the crime levels, especially violent crime. And on the alcohol-related diseases.
Cameron and his team are proposing a minimum price of 40p per unit alcohol, or roughly a small glass of red wine. They believe this will cut crime by 50 thousand cases per year, and alcohol-related deaths by 9 thousand for the next decade. The experts predict that the new measure would affect almost half of all types of alcohol that are being sold in UK, beer being the hardest hit.
But all of this raises some questions and suspicions. Would these measures really bring the desired effect? Observations indicate that people with the lowest income who are the most sensitive to price fluctuations, are abstainers for the most part anyway. It may sound surprising, but wine consumption among the Britons has almost doubled for the last two decades, while beer is steadily losing positions. And wine (which is relatively expensive) will be the least affected by the planned measures, compared to other beverages. For the same reason the alcohol prices around the pubs and night clubs won't rise substantially. The biggest effect will be felt by the independent consumers, i.e. those who buy cheap alcohol from the local shop, who most often drink at home with family and friends, and who are threatened with an untimely death because of their habit.
The alcohol industry (and the pub owners) have already criticized the government for its plans, arguing that the minimum price will not be effective, it's unfair and it'll punish the poorest. They say that the facts are suggesting that the problematic consumers will be least affected by the price hike.
Others are arguing the opposite: the minimum price is the "fairest way" of tackling the drinking problem of the nation. Supermarkets are selling alcohol for coins, and the advocates for this measure are saying this could be stopped by putting a minimum price on cheap alcohol, which wouldn't affect the beer prices at the pub. But it'll surely affect cheap cider for example. It'll put a blow on those cheap offers that are flooding the supermarkets. For instance Tesco and Sainsbury's have the "two for 20 pounds" offer - 2 packs of 20 cider bottles each, equaling 93 alcohol units, at the price of just 21p per unit!
But there'll also be a side effect from the more expensive alcohol in UK. While a host of countries are pumping up the prices through taxation, in some opinions Cameron's proposition could bring J850 billion per year for the small businesses and the alcohol industry, while the state treasure would get zilch. Which, IMO, is yet another reason for all of usbooze Freedom(?) maniacs to yell: CHEERS!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17482035 <-- Minimum alcohol price planned for England and Wales
A usual scene: it's shortly after midnight on Friday, and Cornmarket Str in central Oxford is teaming with youngsters in high mood. The bar-tender in one of the most popular local pubs has just rung the bell and the waiters are running around the tables, informing the customers they're about to close the pub soon and everyone should be having their last drink. The pub is really nice - old style, almost ancient moth-eaten wooden bar, and simple interior that probably hasn't been touched for centuries. You know, the typical English pub that stinks of old tablecloth and sour ale. It's one of the very few pubs in Oxford that have a permit to sell alcohol at this "late" hour (because 1 a.m. is considered late in UK, you know). Why? Because the licenses for selling alcohol past midnight are insanely expensive, and few pubs could afford it. The customers, mostly students, are gulping down their last pints, pouring the last shots of vodka into their throats, and jumping out of this murky hole. Stuff begins to stink, but the fun is just beginning. Classic scene. Curtains.
But the true Friday night idyll is actually played out in front of the pub. There's already a huge horde there. Dizzy youngsters are leaning against the brick walls of the houses. Barefoot lasses holding their shoes in hand are wobbling on the pavement in their torn pantyhoses. A little further, a lad is sitting on a bench, puking quietly. A wee bit downstreet, a large gang of masked students (Batman, King Kong, Fred Flintstone, Thor) are about to continue their theme party (it's not Halloween mind you, but who cares; the booze tends to sink in more smoothly when you're having fun).
That's a common sight for the youthful Oxford, where one in five residents is a student. Just 100 km north-west of London, neat yuppies in their loosened ties and pretty suits are carrying their laptop bags with the digital notebooks in one hand, and holding a pint of cider in the other. And they're getting back home on all-fours. And if the sight of serious guys in suits behaving like a mob of football hools still doesn't raise your brows sufficiently, what about the sight of young chicks in their night dresses and heavy makeup, wallowing in their own filth at the gates of the nightclubs? Cheers to all!
The so called binge drinking, i.e. drowning in alcohol within minutes in order to intoxicate yourself quickly, is a serious problem in UK. It's drinking for the sake of getting drunk, and super-fast, until you can't take any more.
In the above BBC article, Kate Fox argues that if you pick up any newspaper and skim through the headlines, you'd probably soon find out that Britain is a nation of primitive drunkards who consume too much alcohol, too fast, and while too young. And this makes them aggressive, prone to promiscuity, sociopathic... and overall, quite repugnant. She explains that there are big cultural differences in the way people approach drinking in the various societies.
In some societies like UK, USA, Australia and parts of Scandinavia, drinking is associated with the above described condition, where all social limits fall down. But there are other cultures like Latin America and the Mediterranean, where alcohol isn't associated with this undesirable behavior pattern, but is rather a more neutral and normal part of everyday life, much like tea and coffee. A way of socializing, a mere background for having fun in good company. Often it has developed into elaborate rituals: just ask our Balkan friends here about the way they consume good alcohol along with a good salad and a good appetizer, while chatting with good people about good things! Meanwhile, we northerners have come up with some pretty nasty inventions like drinking beer through a straw in order to get drunk faster (seen this in Poland), or mixing beer with vodka (Finland), etc etc etc. And these cultural differences have something to do with the amounts of alcohol too, because the countries in the latter group actually register a much higher alcohol consumption (per capita) than the former. And still this social problem is not so acute there. So it's pretty much a cultural thing.
So, the plan is to make binge drinking in UK a very expensive luxury, beyond the reach of the unwashed masses. Actually this will happen first in Scotland, probably the champion nation in this infamous competition. And then it'll spread to the rest of the "foggy Albion". Cameron's cabinet is planning to impose a minimum price on alcohol in attempt to curb its epidemic (ab)use. The proposition is to go to Parliament very soon, and if accepted, the bill will become effective in 2014. It's been promoted as the greatest legislative initiative since the smoking ban in public places.
In the same article, the minister of the interior Theresa May says, "What we need to do is to set a price that is actually going to ensure that we don't damage responsible drinkers. People who like a drink or two, who like going down their local pub, have nothing to fear from this policy". Obviously the British government is aiming at cheap alcohol. Promo deals offering a real flood of alcohol abound so much that there's an epidemic of alcohol storing in people's homes, and they believe that if the cheapest alcohol like vodka, beer and cider are affected by this strategy while the expensive alcohol remains untouched, this will have an effect on alcohol consumption in the country.
The official data indicates that irresponsible drinking is costing the British economy about J21 billion every year. True, UK is a bit more sober now than it used to be some years ago. The alcohol consumption has been steadily dropping since 2004, thus interrupting a 50 year long tendency of ceaseless rise. Meanwhile the share of alcoholics in adolescence and from the 16-25 y.o. group has decreased. But on the other hand, that of the heavy drinkers (who consume twice and more above the recommendable daily dose) has risen.
Meanwhile, according to British Crime Survey, alcohol was a factor in half of all acts of violence between 2009-2010. It's the reason for over 1 million hospitalizations. Chronic liver diseases are dropping in France, Italy and Spain, while in Britain they're rising. The medics predict that for the next 20 years alcohol could be the cause of 210 thousand deaths (70 thousand from liver diseases and another 140 thousand from alcohol-related diseases like heart attacks, cancer, etc), including those resulting from alcohol-induced violence and other incidents.
The reason for all this is that the British drink every day, and a lot. They drink almost as frequently as their Mediterranean counterparts, but meanwhile the daily amount is similar to that of the Scandinavians. Besides, the Institute of Alcohol Studies reports that binge drinking today is 44% more affordable than it used to be in the 80s, making this vice far more accessible than ever in history.
So the authorities have decided to take drastic measures. In March the Scottish government approved the minimum price per unit alcohol (as per the formula, a bottle of spirit alcohol contains 30 units, and additionally 1 unit = half a pint of beer or cider, or a glass of red wine, or a small glass of sherry, etc). The exact price is to be specified later this month and could become effective next year. A few days after the bill was passed, David Cameron proposed that England and Wales should follow suit.
No other country in the world has a fixed minimum price for alcohol by the way. A University of Florida research including over 30 countries shows that a 10% increase of alcohol prices leads to a 4.6% decrease in drinking. And this respectively reflects on the crime levels, especially violent crime. And on the alcohol-related diseases.
Cameron and his team are proposing a minimum price of 40p per unit alcohol, or roughly a small glass of red wine. They believe this will cut crime by 50 thousand cases per year, and alcohol-related deaths by 9 thousand for the next decade. The experts predict that the new measure would affect almost half of all types of alcohol that are being sold in UK, beer being the hardest hit.
But all of this raises some questions and suspicions. Would these measures really bring the desired effect? Observations indicate that people with the lowest income who are the most sensitive to price fluctuations, are abstainers for the most part anyway. It may sound surprising, but wine consumption among the Britons has almost doubled for the last two decades, while beer is steadily losing positions. And wine (which is relatively expensive) will be the least affected by the planned measures, compared to other beverages. For the same reason the alcohol prices around the pubs and night clubs won't rise substantially. The biggest effect will be felt by the independent consumers, i.e. those who buy cheap alcohol from the local shop, who most often drink at home with family and friends, and who are threatened with an untimely death because of their habit.
The alcohol industry (and the pub owners) have already criticized the government for its plans, arguing that the minimum price will not be effective, it's unfair and it'll punish the poorest. They say that the facts are suggesting that the problematic consumers will be least affected by the price hike.
Others are arguing the opposite: the minimum price is the "fairest way" of tackling the drinking problem of the nation. Supermarkets are selling alcohol for coins, and the advocates for this measure are saying this could be stopped by putting a minimum price on cheap alcohol, which wouldn't affect the beer prices at the pub. But it'll surely affect cheap cider for example. It'll put a blow on those cheap offers that are flooding the supermarkets. For instance Tesco and Sainsbury's have the "two for 20 pounds" offer - 2 packs of 20 cider bottles each, equaling 93 alcohol units, at the price of just 21p per unit!
But there'll also be a side effect from the more expensive alcohol in UK. While a host of countries are pumping up the prices through taxation, in some opinions Cameron's proposition could bring J850 billion per year for the small businesses and the alcohol industry, while the state treasure would get zilch. Which, IMO, is yet another reason for all of us
(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 16:26 (UTC)And cider? The legend I heard about cider while I was in UK goes like this: The people in a village sometime in the Dark Ages had run out of barley and vines, so they figured they could make their alcohol out of old rotten apples. So they piled all the apples on a huge heap in the middle of the village, and then put an old corpse of a dead ferret, to help the whole thing to ferment. And so The Old Ferret brand was born. So, YUCK!
It really stinks of dead ferret. Or my old socks.
See, I work for the real-estates branch of the largest alcohol producing corporation on the Balkans. If there's one thing that I've learned around these guys is this: What do people buy the most at a time of crisis? BOOZE & CIGARATTES! So let's dominate the alcohol and tobacco market of the country (through any means possible), and we'll get faaabulously rich! And so they did.
As someone from within the kitchen of things, I'm telling you. Putting arbitrary minimum prices on booze and tobacco won't put a dent on people's desire to get MOAR of the stuff. Even if it's not 2x20 of cider for pennies from the supermarket, I assure you they'll find another way to get wasted.
(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 16:33 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 16:36 (UTC)Efforts to stop drunkenness date back to the old ages, mind you. Khan Krum in the late 8th century ordered to uproot all vineyards throughout the country because of the rampant drunkenness of the people. It had become so serious that it was considered an issue of national security and the survival of the state. But then things settled down and the vineyards were back.
"You cannot uproot that which cannot be uprooted!", is a proverb that probably dates back from those times.
(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:12 (UTC)http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/04/teens-getting-drunk-on-hand-sanitizer/
(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 16:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 16:56 (UTC)I think, while Scandinavia still has a rep on unruly youth drinking culture, it got a lot better with longer opening hours and cracking down on under age drinking. Having been plenty
in the UK in the beginning of the 2000's I do think the drinking is a little different there from plenty of other countries I've seen. Raising prices is probably not a good idea, people will
just find other ways to over consume. Low prices, long opening hours and cracking down a bit on public drunkenness and under age drinking would be the way to go, IMO.
(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:11 (UTC)Exactly. They cause the problem on one side and then cause more when they try to "fix" it in yet another way.
(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:15 (UTC)Opening up needs to be combined with stricter laws in other areas however.
(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:19 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:09 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:09 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:28 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 17:39 (UTC)The only really effective way to stop this would be to improve the economy. People binge drink when they're so stressed they just want a release, and perhaps the major source of stress today is money, lack of jobs, and the extra hours and responsibilities heaped on the ones that do exist.
(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 18:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 19:25 (UTC)Until recently, the licensing laws, which had been in place since WWI (to stop the workers doing what they traditionally did, which was to get too pissed to work in munitions factories and the like, to aid the war effort - good ol' Lloyd George) meant that pubs all shut at 11pm weekdays and Saturdays, and 10.30pm on Sundays. And we didn't have this problem then.
These self same licensing laws were relaxed in the '90's.
Ergo, your argument does not necessarily follow. However, we now live in a very different age. One where there is little social cohesion, little respect for self or others, and greater license for abandon. And given that folk in Britain will devolve to Hogarthian "Gin Lane" levels of drunkenness at the drop of a hat the scenes you report are all too frequent.
Whether extra tariff on booze will ameliorate the problem is arguable, true. But a night in the cells and no alka-seltzer the morning after may prove a salutary, though temporary lesson.
No fixing it, I reckon. Let 'em, from all walks of life, drink themselves into liver failure like the British have done traditionally since they were first introduced to alcohol. But surcharging them all with a tax for the drain they impose on the health service seems perfectly acceptable.
Solution:
Date: 10/5/12 20:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/5/12 20:48 (UTC)Small Pubs are going out of business cheek by jowl at present: consolidation and larger drinking venues are a small sop to what was once a thriving business.
http://www.directlineforbusiness.co.uk/news/2011/march/report-reveals-uk-pub-closures.htm (http://www.directlineforbusiness.co.uk/news/2011/march/report-reveals-uk-pub-closures.htm)
Despite the binge drinking epidemic there is more rotten in the UK's drinking world.
Cheap booze from supermarkets is destroying a part of the UK's culture. Taxing supermarket alcohol may just help to stop the rot.
(no subject)
Date: 11/5/12 09:46 (UTC)One thing that still puzzles me, though.
Why isn't breathalizer technology widely available on a voluntary basis or as a condition of entering an establishment that serves alcohol? Making something like that could result in a reduction of some of these problems and could reduce traffic fatalities.