Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Binge-Drinking is as British as Rain

Telegraph UK





Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), made headlines with his remarks to John Humphrys this week about the difficulties police face against "binge-drinking culture". Humphrys was looking for answers, but the ACPO chief provided none, only more questions: "Why is it we've got ourselves into the position where lager is sold cheaper than water? Why is it we've got huge entertainments and drinks companies marketing alcohol to children? Why is it we continue to see products developed that are solely targeted at young people?"

Why indeed? Or, on the other hand, why not? It's a free country (or free-ish), even for marketeers, lager manufacturers and off-licensees. If you make it, people will drink it, whether or not you double the price or legislate the purveyors within an inch of prohibition. This is a drinking nation. It's a national "culture", binge-drinking. Not the kind of culture that Andy Burnham wants taught five hours a week in the nation's state schools, ho ho, but a culture of sorts.

No rite of passage can be marked in these islands without bottles. Who can forget Alastair Campbell telling Tony Blair not to fret about Euan being found drunk? (Leicester Square, 2001, after his GCSEs.) "Every parent in the land will sympathise," said Alastair. He was right: Richard Littlejohn's smirking piece was headlined, "We've all been there, son", in the Sun.

Britain copes manfully with the clouds of gloom and dismay about violent drunkenness in the same way it copes with other miserable facts of nature, such as rain, HIPs, bad public transport, an NHS without doctors at night or 16-year-olds leaving school illiterate.

The slot about teenage binge-drinkers was not one of Humphrys's vintage Today inquisitions. He couldn't run an inquisition, mostly because not one spokesman from any of the various government departments with a brief on binge-drinking would come on the programme to be quizzed. Not Health, not Children 'n' Schools, not Home Office, not even young Andy from Culture, Media and Sport.

So all Humphrys could do was more or less bristle with why-oh-whys and something-must-be-dones. Under-age drunkenness is part of the national conversation. We have one every day, even down here in Bucolicshire. I'm forever giving the national response to my interlocutors' shocked remarks about yet another blameless father of four being kicked to death by drunken yobs: Oh, I know, tragic, awful - but what's to be done?

The answers come: "I blame the parents; I blame the Government's 24-hour drinking laws; I blame the telly ads that make drinking seem cool; I blame the publicans; I blame the supermarkets for selling lager cheaper than water (cheaper than milk, too, by the way); I blame the off-licences; I blame the iconification of George Best, Gazza." But what's to be done? Actually, I don't blame the publicans, but various ministers who have found themselves skewered on Humphrys's Fork at 8.10am have done.

Drunks in the street were always men; now women have equal opportunities, thanks to me and my sisters-in-arms on the feminist barricades. Drunks in the street used to be people who could pass for 18, or 16 at a pinch; now they're rolling out of primary schools. And drunks were always rude, rough people - what my mother called "dragged up in Rowmarsh Road", though I can't remember now where Rowmarsh Road was - but now they're nicely bred girls stumbling out of nicely appointed wine bars on hen nights.

As we were stringing up Christmas cards around the fireplace, I noticed an unfamiliar signatory who wrote her seasonal message thus: "Hope you have a really great Christmas and a fantastic TOTALLY BLADDERED New Year!!!!" Who on Earth? Oh, it's my friend, said the daughter, sniggering. Really? From school? The one with the MSc in rocket science? "Marine hydrography, and no it's not her. She doesn't drink a lot, actually."

It used not to be acceptable for young women to be seen sprawled and stumbling through the streets, held up by a yelling coven in disarray, busy filming everything on their mobiles. Now it's the genial duty of your daughter and mine at a hen night (I say "night"; it's more often a week) to encourage the bride-to-be into a state of falling-down inebriety.

"Everybody binges at hen nights. Except the ones who are pregnant. Pregnant girls don't drink. Not. At. All. But they sneak off to the bar to get their own drinks, like ­apple juice with a lot of water in it, so it looks like white wine - because people moan when you say you're not drinking, oh, this isn't going to be any fun, blah, blah."

There is, I reckon, nothing simple or Draconian to be done that can be imposed from above or enforced by government, judiciary and police to stop people drinking of their own accord. Maybe it's a millennial bug; maybe it's because there's a war on; maybe it's because drinking cheers people up. It's not just us, Rennes council has closed bars in the city to stop students binge-drinking. (How, pray? They'll go somewhere else.)

In the meantime, we'll continue to have national conversations about mayhem in the streets, while ministers and good, well-meaning people (not necessarily the same) try to think of things that will alter the national predilection for binge-drinking for ever.

Here's one. After much lobbying from (among others) the National Union of Teachers, the names of alcohol companies are now banned from children's replica football shirts.

So Everton can't sell shirts saying Chang Beer, Liverpool can't sell shirts saying Carlsberg and Hibernian can't sell shirts saying Whyte & Mackay. (Or perhaps they still can? Who knows? No one in England knows anything about what goes on in Scotland any more, what with them being a Nation Once Again and all.)

Brilliant, eh? That'll help a lot. In England, anyway. That's a start.

Hang on, though; the legislation that came into force on New Year's day only bans new sponsorship deals made after January 1, 2008. Not current ones. And Budweiser can still sponsor the Premier League and Carling the FA Cup. And for that matter Blackburn Rovers can merrily go on selling shirts saying Bet24 because that's not alcohol-related, but tut, tut, it's an online gambling site, isn't it? Don't they know it's addictive? Won't someone think of the children?

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