The BBC reports that a bunch of neo-prohibitionists are complaining that a Welsh language festival is planning to start serving alcohol.

Selling alcohol (with food) seems a good idea at a mass festival, you’d have thought, but the Welsh council for alcohol and other drugs are, quite unsurprisingly, bitching at this reasonable move. They’ve started a petition to try and stop people from having a bit more fun whilst visiting the Urdd eisteddfod.

Chief executive of this fun-police organisation Wynford Ellis Owen tells us:

Evidence suggests that children and young people are more likely to become drinkers and heavy drinkers the more society normalises the use of alcohol - which is exactly what the Urdd is doing by introducing alcohol to the eisteddfod site.

We know this to be absolute bollocks (see here and here). We also know that children are drinking less than ever in the UK. This is just another example of some hideous neo-pro trying to interfere with people’s lives in a feeble attempt to justify their own whining, pointless existence.

The Welsh assembly’s view on this, “This is a matter for the Urdd.” Quite right! Not for anyone but them to be concerned with.

Edit: I’ve been pointed to an even more odious article about this on the BBC News website. Apparently, a loony Christian organisation have also complained about the possibility of over-18 year olds having a bit more fun. Their best argument is, "It's been shown that the availability of drink is a known factor in alcohol abuse. By making alcohol more available the Urdd is contributing towards the problem." Alas, their complaint could not be considered because they are not local to where the eisteddfod is happening. Good. This group has complained about the general availability of alcohol in the past; Shut up and piss off you bunch of interfering swine.

*Especially a festival in Wales, otherwise how could I stand them terrorising me with their close-harmony choral singing? These people look ready to terrorise me, alright:

At this years event they will feature some Mozart opera translated into Welsh and creative headgear competition for year six children. I need that drink now. I didn’t see Padlockigami in the program, alas:

The neo-prohibitionist’s favoured uncritical press-release reporter, the BBC News website, tells us we are drinking less. The amount of people buying alcohol from an off-license in the past year has dropped from 37% in 1998 to 27% in 2009 and we are drinking less in pubs and bars. If it were an enlightened reporter writing this story he/she would be bemoaning the state of our dwindling off-trade industry and decrying the sadly dying pub industry. However, instead we must worry about a less than 1% increase in the number of nebulously-defined alcohol ‘related’ deaths (it takes a few years for this number to track a decreasing alcohol consumption level) and be told, once again, that the government is planning a new anti-drink advert.

I was pleased that the story reported that the average consumption of alcohol by manual workers (10.6 units a week) was less than for professional workers (13.8 units a week). We are normally told, in quite patronising terms, that drinking is disproportionately a working class problem. This data would suggest that it is not so much a class problem, more a problem for a tiny sub-set of the whole population. It is these people who specifically need targeting rather than demonising all drinkers and attempting to de-normalise alcohol for the majority of healthy drinkers.

Whilst I would certainly agree that teenagers should not drink to excess, this piece of scare-mongering propaganda in the Telegraph can be neatly summed up by two quotes (one by an arch neo-prohibitionist) it contains:

We’ve seeing (sic) a slight decline in the number of children who drink – Don Shenker, total arse and Chief Executive of pseudo-charity Alcohol Concern

I am pleased that these statistics show a decline in the number of young people smoking, drinking alcohol and taking drugs - Children’s Minister ‘red’ Dawn Primarolo

Edit: The excellent post on Pete Brown’s blog rips the Telegraph’s alarmist article to shreds.

I mentioned the article on Velvet Glove, Iron Fist about the real history of binge-drinking in a tweet earlier. It is well worth reading, lots of interesting data there, and good criticism of the BBC News website’s latest bit of anti-drink propaganda. It makes the point very clearly that the moral panic over binge drinking is driven by pressure groups with the assistance of the press who are only too willing to uncritically report scare stories. There is some clear data in the article which shows the massive increase in the frequency of using the term ‘binge-drinking’ in the press has driven an increase in the use of the term by politicians. This has resulted in them being convinced we have a major binge-drinking problem and that ‘something must be done’.

There are three different terms being bandied about which refer to problem drinking, each with questionable definitions, and all using the same flawed interpretation of source data.

“More than 10 million ‘drinking at hazardous levels’” – Daily Telegraph

Apparently, a quarter of adults are hazardous drinkers. This alone makes it obvious that something is dodgy.

First, let’s see where the data comes from? It turns out that all data derives from the Office of National Statistics General Health Survey. This asks people how much they drank on the day in the last week they drank the most. This piece of information is then turned into weekly alcohol consumption, by multiplying the number of units by seven. This is a staggeringly duplicitous use of statistics.

If this laughably derived number is more than guideline maximum number of units a person should drink in a week (which we know are meaningless numbers just plucked from the air) then they are a hazardous drinker. Since the partner and I shared a bottle of light red wine today, we fall into this category.

Then there is ‘harmful drinking’. This is defined in the HSC report and by the BMA as “A pattern of drinking alcohol that causes harm to a person’s health or wellbeing. The harm may be physical, psychological or social.” They then go on to ignore the actual incidence of harm as being too difficult to know, and instead use the ONS GHS numbers as a proxy. They decide that anyone who consumes over 50 units a week regularly (35 for women) is a harmful drinker.

Given the absurd way the totals are calculated, this means that if my partner and I had decided to share a bottle of 8% German Riesling, in addition to the 12% red wine we had, we’d suddenly have turned into harmful drinkers, even if we had not had anything else to drink all week.

Finally, there’s binge drinking. That is defined in the UK as having more than 8 units a day (6 for women) on at least one occasion in the last week. That’s a bottle of weak wine, or three pints of Stella. That meaning is quite different to what was considered binge-drinking 10-15 years ago.

Whenever reports appear in the media on how we are drinking ourselves to death, it is important for as many people as possible to challenge the dodgy figures being used by anti-drink campaigners in a blatant attempt to de-normalise alcohol. It is also an insult to anyone who has ever lived with someone with serious alcohol problems, or themselves drunk enough to give them health or social problems.

So, next time you read something alarmist, claiming that a quarter or third of people are misusing alcohol, don’t be shy to point out what the figures add up to in the context of real alcoholic drinks, not difficult-to-visualise units. Who knows, that may persuade at least some journalists to use their own judgment rather than recycling hysterical nonsense press releases.

There is another story on the BBC News website trying to scare Scottish people into drinking less alcohol and accept pointless restrictions on their liberty when it comes to alcohol pricing and availability.

One of the things that vexed me about the article was that it says the average Scots drinker over the age of 18 drinks 26.5 units a week, more than the recommended 21 units. Since this story is an uncritical regurgitation of a press release from an organisation with an axe to grind about drinking, the BBC fails to mention that the recommended drinking limits have no meaning. They were just made up, set a a totally arbitrary level to try and encourage people to drink less. Being a few drinks over a totally meaningless limit does not mean that you are drinking to harmful excess, you are just drinking more than some smug, self-righteous, moral crusader would like you to drink.

Moreover, it is really irksome that the data is presented in terms of averages for the whole drinking population. An average means that some people are drinking more and some less than this, but by just attaching one number to everyone this becomes a blatant attempt to demonise, or at least to scare, every drinker in Scotland. Most people will be perfectly safe drinkers, it is only a few who drink to damaging excess. This group who see life through the bottom of a bottle could well do with some help with their habit, but if they don’t want that help then it shouldn’t be forced on them with ham-fisted legislation. The majority of safe drinkers should certainly not have their liberty to enjoy a few drinks compromised; it is a myth that reducing overall consumption of alcohol reduces the number of problem drinkers.

There are other problems with that article. For example, it quotes the Scottish health secretary repeating the same old lie that alcohol is getting cheaper. We also have to stomach the hackneyed, clichéd and trite statement that it is possible to buy an alcoholic drink for less than the price of some bottled waters; do they expect us to believe that people will be so scandalised by the price of fancy bottled water that they’ll buy cheap booze instead and become alcoholics? What a pile of drivel.

It is a shame that press-releases like this from neo-prohibitionist organisations are so uncritically regurgitated by the mass media. No attempt is ever made to check them for mistakes or unreasonable assertions. By letting these people publish their propaganda with no balancing views or data given we’ll all end up suffering when the control-freaks limit our freedom.

Edit: Pete Brown, beer writer of the year 2009, has also picked up on this disingenuous article and raises more good points as to why we should not be bothered with anything it says. Here is his blog post.

The Nespresso coffee machine the partner gave me a couple of years ago has been quite the success story. From when I first got it the quality of coffee it pumps out was revelatory, particularly as you went up the strength levels they just got better and better. The Ristretto pod was the best espresso I had ever had. Then we got some Pure Origin Indriya and that was the best espresso I’d ever had. Then the Singatoba Special Club 2009 came out and I don’t need to tell you where that ranked. When I go through a range of coffees in a day, much like a tasting at Dujac, you just run out of superlatives as you go up the scale. These are amazing bevvies and the delivery system is just so easy. I can heartily recommend the Nespresso system to any lover of coffees who also appreciates convenience.

Today’s vastly annoying news story is that the British Medical Association are saying all advertising for alcoholic drinks should be banned, including all sport and music sponsorship. They also say there should be a reduction in the number of hours licensed premises can stay open and rules on minimum prices. What a load of meddling bastards.

These ‘alcohol is evil’ scare stories are just that: scare stories. The vast majority of people who drink have no problems with it and it forms a part of a healthy lifestyle. As we are well aware, moderate consumption of alcoholic drinks is good for you. However, these self-serving, interfering swine expect the vast majority of sensible drinkers to be ostracised and have to pay more for a recreational pastime which does them no harm at all.

What really worries me is that these stories are given uncritical coverage, because it is easy journalism, shall we say churnalism,  to recycle a press release from some officious gits especially if it is a story about how we are all under threat from some bogus health scare. These people should be taken to task if they claim something is bad for us; they should have to prove it.

I am also concerned that these scare tactics will lodge themselves in the minds of the hard of thinking and, much like large numbers of people in the US, the view will come to fruitition that alcohol is something mystically bad and dangerous and anyone who has a half-pint at lunch time will be viewed as some crazed psychotic in need of an intervention, or some such bullshit. The British Meddling Association can shut the bollocks up until they can think of something actually useful to say rather than merely interfering unnecessarily in people’s lives.

Whisky has never really done it for me. Many years ago I spent much money trying the best single malts I could find and, whilst I appreciated their complexity and characterful nature, I just didn’t like them very much.

Enter Dan and Non-Stinky Jeff. Already Dan and NSJ have converted me to liking iced tea, the bad fellows, and what was about to happen has been even more of a revelatory event.

Toward the end of one of our customarily light evenings NSJ and Dan say they’d like a whisky, and an old blended whisky at that. I immediately leap on this and suggest blended whiskies are boring and don’t have the true character of a single malt. “Perhaps,” they reply, “But try this.”

I hold a small whisky tasting glass with the enthusiasm of a piece of road-kill, then I smell it, and smell it again. I’m aghast! It is smooth and refined with complex, heady aromas which just want to charm you. A blended whisky smelling nice, bugger me backwards with a barge pole. Then I have a tiny sip and let the flavours explode on the tip of my palate. Smoky, peaty but subtly smoky and smoothly peaty. It tastes highly polished and refined. Damned good, for a spirit. Am I starting to like whisky?

Dan and NSJ go to the whisky cupboard and get a few more bottles out, serving precious drops of their quality nectar and we try more blends and some quite serious cask-strength single malts. The blends, including a quite revelatory snort of Johnnie Walker Blue, are all smooth, refined, serious drinks which are not short of class and, dare I say it, enjoyment value. I’m scandalised.

The single malts from a variety of locations had some of the smoothness of the blends, but were largely about rugged individuality. That is how I like my tasting notes so I found myself thinking these single malts really spoke to me as a fellow characterful entity.

So the upshot is I have found that I bloody like whisky! After all these years of sneering and not enjoying the stuff, suddenly it speaks to me and so I look forward to when I next sit down for with a glass for further enlightenment.

This presents me with a bit of a dilemma. In two months I have been converted to liking things that once I would never have let past my lips. I’m worried, what has happened to me? This calls for another fantastic Elitist Review poll!

Free Web Poll

Readers of my RSS feed will have to come to the site itself to vote.

I went out into Town today to meet the partner for lunch. Damned-good lunch it was too. Before meeting up I went to a Nero Express coffee bar and ordered a double espresso. It was one of the most piss-awful coffees I’ve had in my entire life. Thin, bitter and lacking in complexity. Vile. After I’d choked back the crap I also felt it was lacking in caffeine value. Poor show, Nero Express.

When I got home I still felt the niggling urge to have a caffeine boost so I looked in the Sophie Lowe bowl of coffee pods and, lucky fellow I am, there was one Indriya pod left. This is one of the the ‘pure origin’ Nespresso pods I’ve ranted about before. Once again it was a brilliant cup of espresso. Brilliant, I tell you. We must order more of these.

Since I’m feeling charged up an anecdote springs to mind. After one trip to the loony bin I was prescribed mood stabilisers. I hated them. As far as my enjoyment of life went everything felt just barely tolerable with no variation. It would have been really depressing if I would have been capable of being really depressed. People said I was less fun then. It was great to come off them and feel the wild swings of excessive brilliance once again. I admit it was less enjoyable for the utter misery end of the swings, but at least life has some colour. Florid, I’d say.

It is half-past midnight and I am having a beer. Wehay! I admit this is not an uncommon occurrence, but I am drinking this rather tasty Sierra Nevada Pale Ale because I have no cocktail ingredients in the flat. Why do I need cocktail ingredients? I was hoping to raise an appreciative toast to the fellows at Embury Cocktails. Not only did they have this to say about me and the site, but also they link to me with the frighteningly accurate text “Bonkers Englishman, gonzo drinking”. Hooray! Life is great and it is fantastic that there are other people out there who know that. So, the beer:

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, 5.6%
A hoppy, aromatic nose with good freshness. The bitterness on the palate is really refreshing and makes you want to drink more. I think the flavour is really carried well by the high-ish alcohol. There is a depth of character here which makes this a very satisfying drink. A properly good Pale Ale, bottle-conditioning so often seems the way forward.

When we were away for larks in Burgundy and Alsace my chum Non-Stinky Jeff ordered a bottle of iced tea at a drinking establishment. Cue sneers and disapproving looks. I suppose I must have been a teenager when I last tried iced tea and that was enough to make me know I’d hate it forever.

So NSJ says I’d be surprised by how nice it was and talks me into trying the filth. Arse bastard buggering balls I find I don’t hate it. Indeed, in a booze-lacking style it is quite nice. Pissflaps. How can I like iced tea? I must be getting too old and rancid.

It gets worse, I’m afraid. Dan says based on this he will try iced green tea. Green tea, that says it all, doesn’t it? Shit tea, more like. No caffeine, you see? He goes off to buy some and those of us at the coffee table sneer at the awful filth he’ll be throwing his money away on and how much we’ll all hate it.

So I try the vile brew and to my absolute horror it is actually quite nice. Green tea? That leftist shit crap being quite nice? Clearly I have lost my reason and I need my mind to be slightly re-programmed with the aid of a cricket bat.

Westons Perry. It is terribly good, really fruity, with good body and a fine fizz. The thing you’ve got to love most about it, though, is that lovely, lovely fruit. It is bursting with pear-y (perry, pear-y, get it?)vivacity. Does that make it a bit girly? I don’t care if it does, I am confident in my status as a big man. OK, this is girly in the sense that a large pair of knockers is girly: they may have some relation to girls, but their fleshy fun value can be enjoyed by anyone of either sex (with permission, of course).

Specifically, I am thinking about the availability of quality booze from supermarkets.

When I was a fresh young thing, many, many years ago, the drinks you could buy in supermarkets were total crap. If you wanted cider it was either horrible, horrible Strongbow/Dry Blackthorn (no freaking difference between these two piss-awful brands) or a White Diamond equivalent (which are vom-tastic). Perry was practically impossible to get unless you could face drinking super vile Babycham. Oh I feel unwell even thinking about Babycham.

These days things are so much better. My internet supermarket, Ocado, sells things like Weston’s organic vintage cider and the totally delicious Weston’s Perry. As far as beer goes I’d never have dreamed of being able to buy things as good as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale so easily and my local large branch of Sainburys has the incredibly good Meantime Brewery India Pale Ale. Of course, the wine selection in supermarkets has improved too, but I generally seek finer stuff.

Of course, this is all due to the general trends of people having more disposable income and generally seeking better quality goods. The Nespresso pods I’ve been raving about recently are another example of this. People demand good coffee and are capable of paying a bit more for it to be convenient to make. Oh that Indriya is so good.

So, in summary, if we measure quality of life by the ease of getting top booze modern life is clearly totally brilliant. I’ve just had a glass of Perry and I feel wonderful; maybe you should all try it and see how jolly you feel.

I neck about a litre of Diet Coke a day; the anti-psychotics I take sedate me and I rely on caffeine to lash my mind into a less moronic, rancid state. I also have about four espressos a day (the super-brilliant Indriya from the Nespresso ‘Pure origin’ range).

We are told in this news story that excessive consumption of cola can dangerously deplete potassium levels. Unsurprisingly for a health-scare story they list a few people who have had really nasty effects when they’ve been downing vast quantities of the stuff. So perhaps I should switch my caffeine intake to being more espressos per day.

Should I bollocks. I am not the slightest bit worried by this news story. This is another freaking health-scare story from some jumped-up fart who thinks he has the right to tell us all how to behave and ruin our fun. This kind of crap pisses me off. Sure, I can believe drinking 4 litres of cola a day is not the wisest of moves, but I’d find drinking 4 litres of water a day to be unpleasant. I am not worried by this.

My last post on the vat of cider the neighbours and us necked last night may not have been entirely transparent.

Like wine, cider is a partially spoiled product, this allows it to keep without getting anymore off and stops any nasty bugs from living in it. However, people I shall loosely refer to as ‘real cider twats’ take this idea a bit too seriously. If you go to a real ale festival where they have cider on offer it will invariably be more than a bit partially spoiled, it’ll be completely bitter, rancid and horrible. And the real cider twats just love this. They are wrong, in my utterly opinionated opinion. It is nice to have a bit of freshness, fruit and even some bubbles can be pleasing. Now this may mark me out as a beginner lover of cider in the eyes of the real cider twats, but I couldn’t care less. As I often say, nice things are nicer than nasty things, and I’d rather have some good, delicious cider than something that tastes of spoiled, rotten vinegar.

I'm in the mood for coffee. Luckily I have a brilliant espresso machine that uses Nespresso pods. Now you may be thinking Nescafe coffee is shit, and so did I, but these pods in my machine make the best titting coffee this side of the Alps.

When we got it we decided to taste through the range of strengths and buy the ones we liked most. We decided we liked the strongest three.

I just had a Ristretto (strength 10) with plenty of sugar and it was bloody marvelous. I then had an Arpeggio (strength 9) which was probably even better. Then a Roma (strength 8), it was weak and lacking focus.

Tonight I will be trying their new blend from India, also strength 10.

OK, this story comes from the Daily Mail, so cannot be relied upon, but if it is true then I am totally appalled.

We are told that supermarkets will have separate check-outs for people purchasing alcohol. This, apparently, will shame people into buying less alcohol and so counter Britain's 'binge-drinking culture'. What a pile of drivelly toss. It is another example of the scumbag Labour government trying to interfere with people's lives when there is no reason to do so.

I am too colourfully incensed with fury to rant about this coherently, so I suggest you read the excellent diatribe on the Devil's Kitchen.

The National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML) is proposing to introduce a two-thirds of a pint measure which would "increase the flexibility of the pub and brewing industries to innovate in the presentation of beer to consumers".

The Consultation on Specified Food Quantities also wonders if "specified quantities for unwrapped bread should be deregulated to allow unwrapped bread to be sold in any size".

As I am sure you can understand, these must be seriously pressing issues for the government. At this time of financial uncertainly I often find myself wondering if I should be drinking slightly less beer and buying unwrapped bread in many different sizes.

Dukes hotel bar used to be one of my favourite places. It was certainly the site of one of my favourite things to say, namely: "Two Tanqueray martinis, please". It was a cosy, homely environment in which to consume vast quantities of alcohol and still feel at ease with yourself. It used to feel like a gentlemans' club, or drinking in someone's rather baroque front room; a great experience which I used to revel in. The number of random people I've started talking to in Dukes is testament to its powers of conviviality.

However, the filthy bastards have re-modeled the bar. It is now a vile shade of light blue, the inner sanctum has had a window knocked through into the lesser drinking area and all of this makes it different enough to be distracting. Even the chairs have been changed, they are smaller and less comfortable. I admit, the martinis are still just as heroic, even though they now add more vermouth from a mister rather than a token few drops from a dropper bottle. The drinking experience is not the same, though. The whole place is lighter, more sanitised and not as conducive to heavy drinking and socialising as the old bar. It feels a lot more anonymous and has lost the charm it used to have.

I have to add, I am also disappointed that the anti-smoking laws have come into power in the UK, so I cannot get incredibly newscasted and order a big Cuban to suck on.

I often used to feel like dropping by Dukes to have my mind altered by a big glass of gin, but since the re-decoration I just don't feel the same about it anymore. I am sure I will return, but it will not be as often or for as long.