No it doesn't. Alcohol is a major part of civilization generally. If anything, this country has a puritanical dicks problem.
© DrownedinSound.com | From the Archive - Opening the Casket: MSTU explain second record
No it doesn't. Alcohol is a major part of civilization generally. If anything, this country has a puritanical dicks problem.
Puritanical Dick's?
I'm sure he had a surf shack. Who says the early-90's surfing fad died? CERTAINLY NOT ME.
GNARLY.
RADICAL DOOD
What I think what most of this whole
"oh lets restrict alcohol consumption" thing boils down to is- some people would rather curb having fun than admit to themselves that, no matter how healthy they, they are inevitability going to die.
It does
90% of people can't function in evening social activities without drinking.
Whats your point?
How many people can't do without their coffe in the morning?
Or a cheeky fag break?
Weak minded insecure fucks
What are you, John Calvin?
<3
You've just described a generalised homo sapian there.
We're brainy monkeys that like to get high.
You can't change humanity.
Well,you can,but I'm sure that you're against genetic tomfoolery aswell
I just think
if you 'need' something to get you through a day, you're doing something wrong.
Not really.
We all need seratonin to be happy.What releases it varies from person to person.
I think.
hmmm
thing is, you always need something. Like, I used to need ten benson, a 2 litre bottle of full fat coke and some cheapo wine.
Now I have a 'good' lifestyle, and go running every day, but the thing is now I need to run, and if I don't get that I become agitated...
arghhh!!
yeah, Satan Kdney Pie's a pretty good record.
Probably not quite that high,
but a significant majority of young people. And it does cause problems.
^
I find this amazing- but it isn't englands drinking problem, it's englands problem with all being a bit uptight. Which I think is to do with it being quite cold almost everywhere in england...hard to loosen up in any sense.
and it's not as if it's a specific english thing anyway
The way alcohol
is used in this country is very unusual.
You're not meant to have sex with it, Pigfoot_
Ever been to Ireland?
Or Scotland?
^ Not as bad
Scottish people
traditionally get drunk in solitude. And even in Ireland I've never come across the 'let's get as fucked as possible as quickly as possible every weekend' mentality that exists over here.
That mentality exist in the small towns,
cos there is NOTHING else to do.Weed is ridicously expensive.
In 'big cities',it's not as bad,like in Cork,Dublin,Galway,etc.
Anyway,I say Englanders just have the wrong mindset.They (the scummy chavs) see it as an excuse,you know,an escape,as opposed to a source of pleasure.
Which is frankly silly anyway.I mean,isn't alcohol a depressant?
I really think it's untrue
to say it's just "scummy chavs" etc. Young people of all backgrounds go out and get smashed beyond belief every weekend.
But kids from all the different backgrounds don't go out and cause trouble,
at least from my experiance
On Friday,
I saw some (I assume from their appearance) pretty well off 20-somethings pulling windscreen wipers of cars. Certainly seen plenty of antisocial behaviour by drunk middle class people.
Oh.
Right.
Well ok then
I use it as an excuse for a lot of things
does that make me a chav now?
Yep.
I meant an excuse for violence,or rape.You know,as in bastards getting off for crimes they commited because they say "Sorry,I was drunk,couldn't help it" and then getting a reduced sentence
ok
i don't do those things
Thing is
that's bollocks. There aren't many things that will get you a reduced sentence for any form of violence and alcohol is not one of them.
?
maybe it's just a sympathetic judge,but it's happened in ireland.
Hold on,i'll try and find the link
Really?
Sorry, I stand corrected. That's shocking.
what countries are you comparing it to then?
Any I can think of
The USA
Namibia
Spain
France
Laos
New Zealand
Greenland
San Marino
thats bollocks , ive
been to a lot of those countries and peopel still get fucked up at teh weekend
The stats say
nowhere near to the extent they do in this country.
ok
The US and the UK are bound to be extremely different when it comes to drinking though, because of the generally restrictive alcohol policies in the US. Then again maybe more restrictive policies would help the UK to lower the average alcohol consumption?
I don't know. It's a lot more restricted in (most of) Scandinavia but I don't really think there's that much of a difference in how much people drink/how they act when drunk.
I don't see that as a problem.
WAAAAYYYY!!! I'M DRUNK! WACKY!!!
DRUGS R WACKY
it has an alcohol problem
there's loads more alcolhol related problems in the UK than the rest of europe
that doesent make it "an alcohol problem"
alcohol is more avaliable on the continent but there are less problems, therefore it is a People Problem.
people drinking alcohol though
that's the problem. people in the uk can't seem to handle it
Yeah that ^
if you even think its a problem at all, which I don't really, I mean OK maybe crime caused by binge drinking but the whole health effects thing is just a bit lame, like I say above, we are all going to die anyway, we may as well be allowed to do broadly speaking what we want when alive.
Ahem,
The Czecks are WAY worse off
really?
britain is definately one of the worst for it. but those czechs are mental
Finnish as well
I TOTALY AGRE
It's not the alcohol that is the problem, it's the fact that the English yobs who cause the problems are hate-filled morons with cardboard brains, shitty jobs that destroy their souls, the complete inability to accept people different from themselves as human beings with feelings, retarded and fucked up superiority complexes involving world domination and are fat twats who wear gold jewellery and can't handle their drinks. A million dayglo shirted sweatboxes roll off into the sunset forever, swearing about garages and hitting women with kebab meat that ejects forth from their chins. I hate England. If Essex was in Scandinavia, the world would end. What.
Wow.
Which user are you?
I mean,what was your previous username?
Tell that the frontline doctors and nurses
who work in accident and emergency on Friday and Saturday nights in every town of the UK.
Hahaha
Its their job, dick-for-brains.
And it's made a lot harder
by people drinking irresponsibly (for want of a better phrase) and makes it more difficult to give assistance to people who haven't decided to make themselves unconscious in the name of fun.
it's a huge drain
on their resources too
as are fat people
and old people
and chronically ill people
Beats deciding to make yourself unconscious
in the name of boredom though.
Also: ITS THEIR JOB. You don't become an A&E doctor/nurse because you think its going to be cushy.
What's that got to do with anything?
If someone kept banging their head against a brick wall and knocking themselves unconscious and I worked in A&E and had to treat them every time they did it at the expense of helping someone who hadn't been banging their head against a brick wall, I'd probably be quite annoyed with that person. If half a hospital was full of them, you'd get quite annoyed with it very quickly. Nothing to do with being workshy, just wishing people had a tiny bit of social responsibility.
Banging your head against a brick wall
isn't the drug of choice for most of the western world though. People aren't trying to pass laws regulating how much you're allowed to bang your heads against brick walls. So its not the same. I'm of the opinion most people NEED some sort of drug in their life, because we do, you know, need to escape our proper senses every now and then, we need to relax. Its just part of living. So I mean, if someone DID get high on bashing their head against a brick wall, I wouldn't have a problem with it. And I would look on any health problems it causes as just an unwelcome side-effect of something that is perfectly acceptable and like THEIR choice to do and continue to do and such. and a little bit of overstretching of the health service would be a small price to pay imo.
talking to you is like
BANGING YOUR HEAD ON AGAINST A BRICK WALL
Because you're finding it hard
to convert me to puritanism? :D
You can escape your proper senses
and relax without drinking so much you pass out. Though I completely disagree we do need to lose our proper senses anyway. It's a pretty stupid thing to do, really.
Oh well yeah obvs
I do it often (the drinking enough to relax without passing out), but I don't really mind dealing with the consequences of people who do drink so much they pass out so long as I'm allowed to continue to consume whatever I want personally.
Not that I'm the one dealing with it personally of course
but you know, whatevs. Like I said, its their job.
Fair enough,
but I think it's fair enough to mind dealing with that.
*also
^^^
more than!
it's not the alcohol
it's the jobless, asbo, smackhead, scumbag losers that drink the alcohol that make the problems.
So it's only poor people who act like cunts
when they've had ten pints? Not in my experience.
hello lord farquad poshington
^this
Exactly
.
Fuck That Shit!
eurgh
don't be a snob. i'm sure half of the people in A+E on a friday night are twatty students with traffic cones stuck on their heads.
: D
that would be awesome
just walking into a room half full of students with traffic cones on their heads.
Just walk into an SU bar
that was half
tongue in cheek by the way...
.
I think the problem really is our attitudes towards alcohol - what we 'use it' for.
The continent has a much healthier attitude towards alcohol, because it's not a fast-track to getting blitzed out of your mind like it is in the UK. I think that is the problem.
Mind you I speak through a near-permanent haze of alcohol, so what do I know?
Everything
This country does have a drinking problem
and has for a long time. It's irrelevant to say Ireland or Scotland are worse. Whether they are or not, people in England and the whole of the UK drink too much and use it as an excuse to act like dicks. The "it's just the chavs that cause trouble" attitude is holier-than-thou bullshit. Who here (and most other places) can honestly say they've never done anything stupid or shameful whilst shitfaced? Not me.
I agreed we have a puritanical dicks problem, but to deny our alcohol dependence is misguided. The alcohol problem this country has is it's inability to drink sensibly.
i think
some of it has to do with society. Its like certain men cant express their feelings becuase of the way society represents british heterosexual men and they feel they have to reinforce these representations, so they drink then it comes out the wrong way ie violence...i know this is a huge generalisation but maybe it has something to do with it...
oh and probably education, and also how easy it is to obtain alcohol and all these drinks offers etc!
Your examples are pretty dodgy
but it probably has a lot to do with the painful uptightness and stressfulness of our society.
thats kinda what i meant
but in a very roundabout way...
im shit at being concise
Nah
It's true. This entire country has a social life based on getting fucked up on a nasty chemical.
If you step back from it and look at it with a bit of perspective, it's just crazy.
I have a heightened awareness of this having not drank a drop for a couple of months.
Meh
when you think about anything, its just crazy. When you think about time, none of it makes sense. Probably best not to think generally.
true.
people in germany drink as much, if not more during the day.
SEE?
it just isn't in the media as much.
i mean c'mon, they have oktoberfest here! people drink 20 pints in A DAY.
of course it does
There are some people in this tread that sound like Terry...
"Hello, Hello
My name's Terry and I'm a law-abider
There's nothing I like more than getting fired up on beer
And when the weekend's here
I exercise my right to get paralytic and fight
Good bloke fairly
But I get well leery when geezers look at me funny
Bounce 'em round like bunnies
I'm likely to cause mischief
Good clean grief you must believe
And I ain't no thief, law-abiding and all, all legal
And who cares about my liver when it feels good?
What you need is some real manhood
Rasher, Rasher, burning cash up
Putting people's backs up
Public disorder, I'll give you public disorder
I down eight pints and run all over the place
Spit in the face of an officer
See if that bothers ya
'Cause I never broke a law in my life
Some day I'm gonna settle down with a wife
Come on lads let's have another fight"
- The Street - The Irony of it All (2002)
I wanna DRINK,DRINK,SMOKE,FIGHT!
I wanna shout,drink,scream,I wanna die.
I wanna be arrested,I wanna be molested,
Oh fuck I've damaged my brain,next-weekend-lets-do-it-agian!
Its to do with the
rapid sale economy of alcopops among other things. read the chapter on bars in Paul Kingsnorth's 'Real England' for a decentish interpretation of how this works.
society's a fragile thing
once people start picking one bit of it apart, they tend to start picking on everything. smoking, alcohol, censorship, general descent into a nanny state. we don't really have a whole lot of purpose as a civilisation at the present, so it's nitpicking season all round. it's a hump, it'll pass. our grandkids will look back and laugh.
I find it interesting
that as our society gets more socially tolerant and liberally-minded (gender and racial equality, I'd say less censorship) we are arguably getting more pious about health behaviour and people's choices in that regard.
i take your point about censorship
but i think there's something in the air on that one. i've noticed a huge increase recently in people writing generally outraged letters about video games and films to newspapers, and a load more articles about that, stricter controls and so forth, especially and specifically about the internet. i hope it won't, and don't honestly believe it ever could happen, but there'll probably be a big attempt to regulate and clean up the internet at some point in the next decade.
i think maybe being more liberally minded about gender and race takes away any more pressing cause they might have to fight for, so it's left for the little things to be cleaned up. there's the whole middle east thing...maybe the idea is to have everyone channel their energies into improving health so they can ignore the larger and more insurmountable of the world's problems. i don't know, i'm short on time, this is clearly a badly thought out post...maybe there's an idea in there somwhere though.
tell that to the man
trying to smash your face in because you wouldn't let him push into the takeaway queue before you in any town centre on friday/saturday night.
tis true
I like seeing people have fun; but on a saturday night moving through camden town, tottenham court road; you see the worst type of DICK ambling about, bumping into people and spouting aimless shite. I think the consumption of alcohol also encourages mindless pub talk; people get tipsy start complementing each other over and over
Sometimes this is funny and it just adds to the texture of the night; but like last saturday it was profoundly annoying.
You'll get situations where nothing around you is making any sense. Consistently experiencing this can give you a real ugly sense of anomie. At a friends house party; most people drank lightly, but this one dude got hammered for no reason; and he just became an eyesore and eventually passed out.
Now outside of London, in certain English towns you get really crazy behaviour.
Walk around Warrington when everyones drunk on a friday; everything is ready for a fight. I remember this man and woman fighting for a cab; the woman ended it by headbutting the dude and spitting on him.
Funny but depressing and unnecessary
I'm in no way saying "ban alcohol", just that were using alcohol as a remedy for something it aint fixing
"everything is ready for a fight"
I would love to fight a street lamp,and/or a post box
@Dood
I've been beaten up by lamposts a few times
They bastards always strike when you're notlooking
I know,
especially if you've been drinking!
;)
i think it's more of an attitude problem than anything.
.
All this europe has a healthier attitude stuff is bollocks. The whole of Northern Europe has a culture stretching back about 1000 years at least of getting as fucked as possible. Monks make buckfast, pretty much all the Victorians drank shit loads, most major works of art were done under the influence of alcohol because nobody could drink water until the late Victorian period.
And if you think French people don't get fucked off their faces and do bad stuff, you've never been to a hosueparty with underage french school kids.
<3
Spectacularly missing the point.
Bravo.
no i'm not
everyone is here saying that this country has some sort of terrible alcohol problem, especially in comparison to European countries and that, by implication, that we ought to do something about it.
I'm pointing out that the British 'problem' is no worse than anywhere else in Europe and has been an integral, fascinating and perfectly acceptable part of European culture as a whole for a very long time without anyone doing anything about it. Nothing's got worse recently, things were always fine, why do anything about it?
in mnay european countries you get alcohol venin machines on the streets
can you imagine the choas that would ensue if that were to happen here. Of course this country is worse than many other european ones.
*many
*vending
like i said
it's an attitude problem.
and you can't in munich.
yeah I think it is an attitude
I think british culture is one of restrictions on people to make them behave, people will push restrictions and unless they are enforced not follow rules, it is why we go completely crazy abroad
or we go completely crazy abroad
because there isn't ridiculous alcohol duties and so we get excited at the novelty of cheap beer?
chaos?
because people wouldn't have to walk into a pub or shop to buy it?
because you would get children drinking themselves into oblivion
They'd soon learn better
kids get sick really easily.
oh come off it, you sound like you're out of the daily mail
this country is no worse than loads of other european countries for heavy drinking. stop being so naive and idealistic of European culture.
do you honestly believe that?
even if you take your (wildly innaccurate claim) that things haven't gotten any worse recently, does that mean that nothing should be done to improve on the past?
i think it's a too deeply engrained part of our civilisation and psyche to just sweep away
why do you just presume that stopping people drinking will be an improvement? that's Clockwork Orange stuff, people ought to be given the choice. besides, what about all the bad things that will happen if alcohol is restricted?
and what is your evidence for things getting worse? have you ever read Shakespeare or a Victorian novel? people are pissing in the streets, fighting and drinking themselves into a stupor there yano?
wicked
people were probably doing a fuckload of terrible stuff back then and getting away with it. The whole "they did it in the past and so should we" argument doesn't fly with me at all. And i would imagine that things are a lot worse now than at any point in the distant-ish past because of the availability and cheapness of alcohol, and the general mindset which runs through a vast majority of people in this country with regards to its place in society, as well as this sort of existential angst which fills up the souls of dead-end workers up and down the country. Is it a new thing? Maybe not. Is it bad? Absolutely
I'm not at all arguing for restrictions, but to say that "nothing needs to be done" about it is naive in the extreme. A mass reinvention of the role of alcohol in society and the way it is consumed is necessary. Impossible, maybe. But the problem remains
Ohhh everythings a problem isn't it?
Death, for example. People are dying all the time. If these trends continue we will eventually ALL DIE. SHIT! As it is, time's hand will inevitably wither and take us, crush our dreams and cause everyone we love to drift away on a barge of our own tears.
I'm not at all arguing we restrict time, but a major reinvention of how we exist within its continuum obviously needs to occur. Impossible, maybe. but the problem remains
yeah, good one - way to miss the point
fine if you bohemian students want to get battered on art-juice, but don't piss in my pocket and tell me it's raining
That actually suits me fine you know
Why don't ye put the daily mail down and do something constructive too?
the mindset is the key i think.
instead of "let's get drunk and happy and enjoy life" we have "let's get drunk, fuck someone we don't know and start a fight with that tosser who looks a bit different/looked at me funny"
*from what i've noticed
anyway.
um, alcohol is way less cheap and available than in the past
people used to drink it instead of water for fucks sake. even in the 60s and 70s, manual workers would down 10 pints after a shift just to rehydrate. also, alcohol is far more expensive here than anywhere else, and yet according to you, its cheapness is the cause of 'problems' associated with it. How does this work?
what exactly is the negative mindset that you speak of? this nation's, and europe's, obession with alcohol is the source of so much of its culture and any 'problems' are outweighed by alcohol's social and cultural benefits. Anyway, these so-called problems are often the source of alcohol's unique cultural appeal. We like reading or hearing about the fucked up, the extreme, the out of mind and uncomfortable, and i wouldn't have it any other way.
just because problems are outweighed
doesn't mean they aren't there. And amongst a large portion of our population the attitude towards alcohol is sinister, depressing and generally quite unhealthy. And you know, fine if you can deal with yourself, fine if you enjoy it. But to just say "yeah, let it keep on rolling" is irresponsible bollocks
i'm holier-than-nobody when it comes to alcohol. In fact, i'm a full-blown alcoholic (not that i blame any external forces or even care too much about it, but i'm certainly not on a high horse here) and i enjoy drinking heartily. I just can't ignore some of the effects of alcohol, newfound or otherwise, on our society in general though. It's an empty, empty pursuit, and one which is the crutch and crippler of so much of British society
and hey, i can't adequately comment on every other country because i've spent my entire life in England. But i know what i've seen and it certainly isn't something which should be passed off with blanket judgements like the ones you're putting forwards
p.s. i hope you don't really mean "We like reading or hearing about the fucked up, the extreme, the out of mind and uncomfortable, and i wouldn't have it any other way." Pretty fucked up, like
.
I really mean it. That's what art is about, pushing the limits of human experience, and that includes what we imbibe and the effects that it has on us. Of course it's fucked up, but pretty much every major painting, novel or piece of music is about something getting fucked up somewhere along the way, and if it isn't, it is at least about the extremes of human experience.
I just don't see how saying that this nation's attitude to alcohol is "sinister" is any more a blanket judgement than what I've been saying.
I'm not trying to deny that alcohol causes a lot of pain to some people. Just that it's such an important part of our cultural life, and has been for so long, that I don't see why we should be taking away peoples' choice to drink it in the manner they so desire. Especially when there seems to be no real evidence that social problems with alcohol are any worse than they've ever been, other than tabloid scaremongering.
i've never said anything about "taking away people's choice"
i'm talking about changing the attitudes of people to alcohol. People's decisions to drink in the manner they do is so informed by the group mentality and the visible norm that to say it's to do with the individual's choice is ludicrous. Even so, to say it's "no worse" - who gives a fuck? Just because something is "no worse" doesn't mean it wasn't bad to begin with
And really, don't try to give me the romantic/artistic or historical line - for every 1 poet who creates his best work when drunk there are 1000 non-poets who rot their life away. And the poet may well have rotted away the lives of those who loved him - to look on it with a grim fascination is antihuman in the extreme, and to take an "art is art" stance is pretty distasteful as well
i'm quite bored of this now. Let's agree to disagree
There are 10 countries
worldwide that drink more alcohol than we do. Go us.
Nothing's got worse? Nothing apart from the number of deaths due to alcohol tripling over the last 20 years.
Still, better than the gin epidemic 150 years ago. We should be proud.
or more diseases are diagnosed as alcohol related
or more detailed records are kept?
so what if there are 10 countries that drink more alcohol than us? it is very much a part of our national culture. to make a very crude point, how is this any different than telling indigenous people in the Amazon that they shouldn't be using mind-altering drugs which are integral to their way of life?
Doesn't really matter to them though,
does it?
I mean,they're fucked either way.Oh wait...so are we
you seem to be just playing devils advocate
and romanticising alcohol
i'm not romanticising it; i just think it's A Good Thing
my cousin's an alcoholic, my grandmother was an alcoholic. i can just recognise that it has a very important part in our national identity and part of that is linked to the problems it causes as well as its mind altering effects.
i mean despite the fact that i can destroy lives
it is responsible for so much creativity and i think pretty much holds the fabric of our society together yano?
You brought up the comparison to other countries.
Alcohol, specifically beer, is part of our national culture. Alcoholism is not.
This country has kept detailed records on numbers of deaths due to alcohol since the inception of the NHS. It's all rather moot though, as the last 15 years have all seen increases in the number of deaths - no sudden upturn after some clever scientist discovers alcohol is implicated in prostate cancer, or any other statistical anomalies. Significantly deaths due solely to alcohol consumption are also up.
isn't it?
plenty of our national heroes and Great Britons, fictional or real life were alcoholics:
Winston Churchill
Falstaff
about a million and one Dickens characters
the Romantic poets
some scientist or other
.
pretty much every artist ever
the Rolling Stones
etc etc
That's great
There have been famous Bristish alcoholics, so alcoholism is part of our national identity. Maybe smack addiction is part of our identity as well.
Yep.
And they banned it then.It went underground.Then they legalised it,and taxed it.
That's what we should do with weed,amIright?
I beg to differ
Where I hail from, it's full of drunken scallies spreading themselves across the pavement in inebriated hazy-hugging.
The boys and girls tart it up, smash it down and cover it in bile and sick. This is all down to too many cheap 'naughty pops''.
When I lived in Headingley,
I hated how I'd have to skit past discarded kebab boxes and pools of sick.