Police chief calls for £7 pint… to stop binge drinking and the knock-on public disorder. “Binge drinking is already a bigger challenge to police than terrorism.” he added, barmily.
There would, quite literally, be rioting in the streets if this actually happened.
That said, I am all for moderation, mainly. I’m not a binger, oh no. At least I didn’t think so until I read this:
What is ‘binge drinking’?
There has been lots of media interest in Britain’s ‘binge drinking culture’ and even the government is worried, but what exactly is a binge?
Binge drinking is drinking that gets you drunk. It really is that simple.
For academics to do research they need a definition of bingeing that is easier to measure. Often a binge is defined as drinking double the Department of Health recommendations or more in one session, so eight units for a man or six for a woman would be a binge.
However, some people who drink regularly would not be drunk at these levels, others would be very drunk indeed. For most of us, it is easier to think of binge drinking as drinking to get drunk.
Binge drinking matters because getting drunk is risky and can be dangerous.
So on the one hand, 4 pints is a binge, which doesn’t sound like very much to me. At all.
And on the other hand it’s “drinking to get drunk” which is fairly nebulous. I guess this is opposed to “drinking to take your mind off work” or “drinking to work up the courage to talk to that girl over there” or more probably “having a glass of wine with your meal, but no more than that”.
It’s not entirely wrong to say that drinking has played a fundamental role in entire history of the workers’ movement in the UK. Wasn’t the 5 day week, and indeed the measurement of time, a product of bosses being pissed off with their workforce getting lagered up and arriving late?
Our rulers’ moralism has been the flipside to this all along as well:
“Councillor Didlum said that it was very evident that Dr. Weakling had obtained his seat on that Council by false pretences. If he had told the ratepayers that he was a Socialist, they would never have elected him. Practically every Christian minister in the country would agree with him when he said that the poverty of the working classes was caused not by the ‘wretched remuneration they receive as wages’, but by Drink.”
– Robert Tressell The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Mind you, some people (not me, obviously) can overdo it. 😉
By setting up an encampment, where we all had to live together for a week, we were constantly faced with the real life, practical implications of our politics.
Does anarchism simply mean that no one can ever tell me what to do, whatever state of consciousness I’m in or however I’m affecting the good of the whole? How do we respect the individual freedom of those who are in no state to make rational decisions or listen to the needs of others, and who gets to decide?
And at what point does the good of the whole override the absolute freedom of the individual? It’s one thing to consider these issues in the abstract, another to spend half an hour at 2:30 AM trying to get a drunk to move back from the police lines.
Alistair, quoting Starhawk on anarcho-pissheads at the G8 summit.
Which is as good a summation as any of my problems with “lifestylist”/individualist aspects of 21st century UK anarchism. (And I do mean aspects, because I’ve talked it over with a load of sensible anarchists and it does their heads in as well).
Coming back from the Conflict gig at the Venue in New Cross circa 1994 (?) I was struck by the contradictions of anarchopunk – social responsibility mashed up with destroying the passerby.
At the gig I’d watched a load of spikey tops chuck half-full plastic beer glasses over the balcony onto the people below. On the bus on the way home, there was some pissed crusty chuntering on about anarchy and peace and “a world where nobody will tell me what to do…” which instantly made me think of several things I wanted to tell him to do right there and then…
Of course, anarchism’s best contribution to politics is its criticism of hierarchies and authority. But when this criticism becomes an individualist cause in itself, (as opposed to a collective way of relating to each other socially, coupled with a class analysis) it becomes a cloak for the worst of selfishness and “I’m all right jack” indulgence.
But yeah, but no, but… The danger with this sort of thinking is that I’ll end up incredibly po-faced and puritan, whereas what attracted me to anarchism and similar politics originally was its playfulness, creativity and, if I’m honest, the fact that the anarcho punks where I grew up put on the best gigs – but that didn’t stop me offering to help sweep up afterwards.
Some of the discussions around the Criminal Justice Act and raving played with the idea that hedonism is political, and can be liberating in and of itself. I have some sympathy with that (as opposed to the idea that people just get shit-faced at the weekend so they can bear the braindeath of the working week). Plots can be hatched in the pub after work that get remembered and taken back into the workplace… but not if you can’t stand up.
My concern here is that “counter-cultural” activity ends up as 99% hedonism, with the remaining 1% being an intellectual justification for it being somehow “revolutionary”. I.e. in the same way that parts of the rave scene went up their own 3rd eyes by drawing parallels between shamanism and getting completely off your tits on druuuuuuuuuugs.
But also that puritanism is counter-productive. And if that sounds confused, it’s because I have a hangover, OK?
