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Posts Tagged ‘drinking’

Middle-class drinkers should ignore advice on safe alcohol limits

Shocking to learn that the middle-classes take more drink and drugs than the poor. The Mail calls the report by the Social Metric Commission a “landmark” finding. Having discovered that people with more money and leisure time use more mind-altering substances than those with less money, we wonder what else the Mail has revealed?

In 2016, the Mail told readers: “Middle-class drinkers can get away with drinking MORE because their otherwise healthy lifestyles make up for it.” Adding: “Wealthier drinkers are less likely to smoke, be overweight and have a poor diet – traits more associated with the lower-income demographic.”  Today Ian Duncan Smith, the Tory MP, says: “Part of impoverished adults drinking less is that they do not have the cash to spend on it.” The other part being, presumably, that huge taxes on drink affect the poor more than the wealthy. He doesn’t mention that. He also doesn’t mention why politicians of all stripes want to clamp down on cheap booze with minimum pricing (see: sin tax for people seen as too poor, too thick and too dependent to know what’s best for ’em). But he does say: “This is not in the report but my own experience is that where people are drinking or taking drugs in poverty, it is at a very serious addictive levels. For the middle-classes, they are holding down a job and doing what’s expected of them.” Which is to say: paying more taxes.

But the overriding message is that drinking in excess of the Government’s stated limits does you no harm at all. Indeed, in 2007, an insider said that the recommended weekly limit of 21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women decreed by the Royal College of Physicians in 1987 was a guess. Former panel member Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, revealed to the Times: “So those limits were really plucked out of the air. They weren’t really based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee.”

 

daily mail drinking

 

The Mail‘s readerships is very much middle-class. But having told the middle-classes that drinking more makes no impact on their health, the Mail also says that it is a huge problem for the kind of so-and-sos who say ‘wine ‘o’clock’:

 

daily mail drinking

 

The talk is of “problem” drinking. The middle-class “culture of drinking at home is driving the problem”. And you can narrow it down still further to educated women:

 

daily mail drinking

 

daily mail drinking

 

daily mail drinking

 

It’s hard to work out what the point of all this bilge is. Perhaps it’s just a prelude to tax rises, moves to hike the price of booze for our own good – even if it it’s not doing the biggest payers any harm.

Posted: 17th, September 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Tabloids, The Consumer | Comment


Police helicopter tracks cyclists drinking wine in South Wales

If you wanted something to illustrate how pettty offences are now treated as full-blown crimes, we can point up to the police helicopter tracking a man suspected of riding a bicycle while drinking a bottle of wine in Llanelli, South Wales.

A Dyfed-Powys Police spokeswoman confirms the news:

“A PCSO was on patrol saw a male riding his bike in the centre, he was drinking from a bottle of wine. The PCSO asked him to leave the area and the male became aggressive. The male rode his bike to nearby car park where he threatened the officer and was then arrested. He is currently in custody. During the incident the police helicopter was in the area and monitored activity from the air.”

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Posted: 30th, March 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment


Drinkers Outlive Non-Drinkers, Says Study

BOTTOMS Up:

Of the 1,824 study participants, only 41 percent of the moderate drinkers died prematurely compared to a whopping 69 percent of the nondrinkers. Meanwhile, the heavy drinkers fared better than those who abstained, with a 60 percent mortality rate. Despite the increased risks for cirrhosis and several types of cancer, not to mention dependency, accidents, and poor judgment associated with heavy drinking, those who imbibe are less likely to die than people who stay dry.

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Posted: 18th, December 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment


Health puritans wants us to stop drinking ‘poison’

YOU boozing in January? Cancer Research UK (CRUK) doesn’t want you to. It’s Dryathlon invites non-drinking drinkers to donate al money they would have spent on booze to fund Cancer Research UK

How about Dry January, the Alcohol Concern:

Feel better. Save money. Make a difference. Your chance to ditch the hangover, reduce the waistline, and save the pennies. Your mission: to avoid that cheeky after work pint, that glass of wine on the sofa, or that big boozy night out, for the whole month. Make a real difference to the lives of those harmed through alcohol misuse by getting family and friends to sponsor you and raise money for Alcohol Concern.

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Posted: 2nd, January 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment (1)


Frankie and Benny’s get toddler blind drunk on whiskey

TREMENDOUS news parents! Eaterie chain, Frankie and Benny’s are getting your children drunk! We can all laugh as they slur their words, soil themselves, garble incoherent nonsense, waddle around flitting from gleeful to angry crying and… wait… that’s all children ever isn’t it?

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Posted: 11th, October 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)


Lindsay Lohan wants to sue those who say she’s any kind of fun

WE’VE long lamented the fact that Lindsay Lohan isn’t the bug-eyed  jewel stealing party girl she once was and now, anyone who says she is in print is going to get sued by the former child-actress.

Various outlets noted that LiLo (the worst celebrity nickname in history) was knocking back the booze at the SAG Awards after party this weekend. That, of course, is a completely reasonable thing to do. Go to party. Get fall-down drunk.

However, Lohan isn’t having any of it and now she wants to sue! Suing, it seems, is the fallen celebrity’s replacement for the illicit fun they once enjoyed. Shame that. Legal action is so very, very dull, despite what American cinema has told you.

And now, a source close to the actress tells the TMZ ambulance chasers that Lindsay is already exploring her legal options with her attorneys because she feels that these stories are sabotaging her effort to revive her career. Please note that her career was doing just fine when she was a ‘wild-child’.

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Posted: 2nd, February 2012 | In: Celebrities | Comment


So You Spilled Your Drink: A Gallery Of People Who Can’t Handle Their Booze

THE Christmas drinks do is coming. But can you handle your drink? We’ve compiled a gallery of people who can’t. Let the wet T-shirt, short, tie, trousers and hair contest begin. Oi! Did I spill my drink?

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Image 4 of 17

Posted: 6th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Photojournalism | Comments (3)


Sean Bean Gets Stabbed Outside Pub In Row Over His Bird, Which Is So Very Northern

LORD of the Rings star Sean Bean (pronounced Shaun Baun) has been stabbed. No really. He’s been stabbed with some glass by a man who intended to stab him with some glass. This isn’t one of those misleading stories where you’re vaguely told something and it transpires that you were being lead up the garden path.

Bean was involved in something of a scuffle outside a North London pub at the weekend. Sean was smoking a fag (not a euphemism) with his chum April Summers. She’s an ‘adult actress’ and many suspect that she’s the new beau of Bean after he got a divorce from his wife not too long ago.

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Posted: 15th, June 2011 | In: Celebrities | Comments (3)