I'm happy
to report that, despite my best efforts, I've survived another St
Patrick's Day. I have some Irish mixed into my DNA so I felt somewhat
justified in engaging in this particular declaration of war on my
internal organs. If you are wondering it's 25% Irish, 25% English,
50% Unknown, so if you wish to refute my claims to being the last son
of Krypton you'll need to do some serious research. So I have some
vague right to celebrate international drinking day. I cannot say the
same of many others I met on my drunken, Romford based stumblings.
Now I'm not about to jump on the 'how dare you misappropriate a
national holiday' band-wagon. St Patrick's Day is a fine and dandy
excuse for you to go and pickle your insides. In fact if you ask
people worldwide what the little cluster of islands off of the
northern coast of Europe is famous for they'll probably list three
things, an insatiable appetite for world domination, being nifty in a
fight and drinking. Although now I come to think about it the last
one probably explains the first two.
 |
| "You fucking want some, you slag!" |
We've
been at the forefront of getting utterly wasted since you could buy a
pint of gin on the streets of London for a penny a pint, and it was
cleaner than the water. I think it says a huge amount us as a people
that most of us read that sentence and were wishing that we could
still by gin for that price. The greatest war-time leader we ever had
was Winston Churchill, an he beat Hitler whilst pissed. So unless
your hurting from the lack of a Global Germanic Empire we can all
agree that booze has got a huge tick in the plus column.
Unfortunately over the last twenty years successive governments have
lacked both the balls and the brains to realise that different
cultures have different norms and instead of judging the populace by
their own boozy standards have been trying to force us to live up to
the completely unrealistic standards of the European Union.
 |
| Some countries don't view this picture as a challenge. |
The E.U
defines a drinking binge as four pints. For anyone outside the UK and
Ireland, everyone reading that here just went 'pfft'. Four pints
wouldn't get me even remotely pissed. I've managed to do that amount
in an hour before. I'd say that four pints represents, to most Brits,
about half a session. We're a society of people who can use the
phrase 'I don't want to get drunk tonight' whilst walking into a pub.
I'll have three because they're there. The point I'm trying to make
here is that as a society we drink more than in other countries. Is
it healthy, of course not, is it wrong, of course it isn't. However
you can't got a week in this country without reading another tabloid
rag railing against the dangers of 'Booze Britain'. Which invariably
leads to some government toss-piece... sorry mouth-piece, coming out
with a new ridiculous and unworkable idea to reduce the countries
alcohol dependence. Let's pretend for one minute that I agree that
there is a problem, then that problem is simple
Britain is
an alcoholic.
If we
accept this as true then it seems fairly obvious that we need to
treat Britain in the same way that we would treat any other
alcoholic. I'm going to be completely up front here I don't know any
alcoholics, well I don't know any recovering alcoholics... they don't
tend to hang out in the same bars as I do. So I don't know the exact
ins-and-outs of how one treats the condition, but I do know one
thing, you don't do it by just hiding the booze. You have to identify
the underlying reasons behind why that person/nation drinks. So the
various ideas to limit the ability of Brits to access our favourite
anaesthetic are all doomed to fail. Instead you need work out why it
is that we drink.
 |
| "There isn't a box for 'to suppress the urge to kill'" |
Why on
earth do we drink more than our European 'have more public holidays,
work shorter weeks and shorter days' cousins... Fuck me that's a
difficult one to answer isn't it. It's almost as if we feel an
overwhelming urge to squeeze in a whole load of living into our spare
time because we have the least in Europe. Unfortunately fixing those
inequalities would only improve the quality of life of everyone in
the country wouldn't make anyone a single penny, in fact it may well
result in some people losing a little bit of money so there's no way
we're going to address that issue.
 |
| I'd really like to know how many of these I'm worth. |
I've no
problem with the government not giving to shits about the general
public, but I'd rather they not pretend that do. If they want me to
stop drinking then that's fine I'll play along and we'll make this
country a better place. If on the other hand they want me to work my
arse off then they better not take away my fucking boozamahol.
eddie
<still not too drunk to write>
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