Glob-a-log

Conventional wisdom has it that about 99% of the British population are alcoholics who, when not actually in the pub getting drunk as fast as possible, are out in the street, vomiting, fighting and/or fucking. This while their government is wringing its collective hands, whining and watching impotently – but ever desperate to show how much it ‘cares’ and coming up with ever more white paper schemes whose only proper function is to show the government’s deeply embarrassing incompetence.

The following story won’t help to disabuse the average England watcher of such notions:

More than 800,000 people are admitted to hospital each year with alcohol-related illnesses and injuries — four times the official figure — ministers will admit today. Figures will show that six per cent of all NHS admissions are in some way caused by drink and the rate of visits to hospital over alcohol-related problems is rising by 10 per cent every year. Alcohol is thought to cause about 17,000 cases of cancer a year and £2billion of NHS money is spent every year treating patients with alcohol-related diseases. Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, believes “lifestyle” illnesses will put an increasing strain on the NHS unless people behave more responsibly.

£2billion a year is the kind of number you can only contemplate after a stiff drink or two, as is a rise of 10% of drunk hospital visits each year. Those are serious figures – and there is probably not a lot anyone can do about it. The Health Secretary may waffle about people ‘behaving more responsibly’ but behaving responsibly is not what people do, or ever have done.

The human animal doesn’t do responsible. Our Darwinesque and oft grotesque evolution came about by a selection of the kind of genes that go, ‘I wonder what would happen if I did this…?’ Despite the dearly held misconception, it’s not necessity that is the mother of invention but reckless curiosity. So, we are very good at ‘reckless’, meaning that ‘responsible’ doesn’t get to see much of the game.

Anyway, how did the gormless Johnson and his departmental dopes manage to mishandle or massage the real numbers so clumsily? I know this government is good at losing laptops and discs, but mislaying about 600,000 drunken hospital visitors must be a new New Labour incompetence record.

Back to the rising numbers of idiot drunks, though.

I do wonder when the government will seriously start to think about Prohibition. Smoking is all but totally outlawed and most of the rest of our lives is now cosseted and strapped inside health & Safety straightjackets, so I’m sure some clowns will already be whispering the dreaded P-word in those famed Corridors of Powerless postering. Me, I give it less than a few months till the first official rumours about a new Prohibition will make it to the frontpages of the tabloids.

I started with that old fable beast ‘Conventional Wisdom’ and I’ll end with it. So, C.W. has it that Prohibition won’t work because it didn’t when the Americans tried it.

I’m not so sure of that.

In those days, people were not the pathetic little wimps that they are now. Then, people were happy to completely ignore the government’s stupid meddling when they thought it had no right to do so. Do you really think that people at the start of the 20th century would have bought into the whole passive smoking hysteria and would have stood for a ban on smoking in public? I don’t think so.

Nowadays, people grumble and whine a bit about the Nanny State and then they do whatever Nanny tells them to do. Spineless wimps, is what we’ve become in the West. We actually let ourselves be bullied by every fucking idiot with a new and shiny Health & Safety or Political Correctness scheme.

So, I don’t see why Prohibition would not work, this time round. Sure, it will cause some muttering, some whining – some bleating, if you will; but sheeps make lousy revolutionaries, so, if the government wants, I’m pretty sure they could make Prohibition stick.

After all, we’ve gone further than Jesus ever asked us to go. We don’t just turn the other cheek: we spread them whenever someone in ‘power’ tells us to do s.o

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 22:18 and is filed under Columns, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.