Holla, ye pampered jades...
Lisa Hilton 12:17pm
At risk of sounding like Glenda Slagg, don’tcha just hate those mealy mouthed drink aware advertisements which are crawling all over the Tube? You know: “Party this weekend – it was a party, right?”. Because we all need to feel just that little bit worse right now.
What people seem to forget is that bingeing Britain is not a modern phenomenon. But until the temperance movement came along and encouraged everyone to die of cholera, no-one used to worry about it. Dr Johnson recalled that in his youth all the respectable people of Lichfield got drunk every night and no-one thought the worse of them for it. And at least when they went in for warnings, the eighteenth century did it in style, whatever Kingsley Amis said about gin being for pussies.
Admittedly, drink does promote all sorts of social evils, not least the chance of ending up looking like a guest on the Jeremy Kyle show. Yet it has also served a democratic purpose.
The taverns of eighteenth century London were considered dangerously promiscuous places. Not in the traditional sense, but because they offered anyone, of any class, the chance to read a newspaper and express an opinion. Cesar de Saussure was astonished to see a street porter call for his drink and his paper “as easily as a lord”.
Satire and sedition flourished through human communication, and one wonders whether there is a sinister subtext to a campaign which encourages us to stay at home with a cup of tea. If drinking is to be stigmatized in the same manner as smoking, how long before we come to resemble the characters in Forster’s dystopian The Machine Stops - alone in our cells, passively clicking and consuming, believing that our interactions are meaningful but unaware that power has been devolved elsewhere? If the Tories do work up a bit of sedition of their own in a few minutes, why not make a meaningful political gesture and pop out for a drink?
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Canon Alberic
December 3rd, 2008 12:29pm Report this commentOh God shes got a contract.
GS London
December 3rd, 2008 1:42pm Report this commentNo, again this makes a good point. The targeted, guild laden advertising of the Drink Aware campaign is totally off-side: antisocial drinking is not the preserve of the dinner-table classes, as is implied. Not even the universities go so far - the problem lies with a lack of education on the subject, and a taboo that is easily broken.
William Norton
December 3rd, 2008 1:58pm Report this commentHuzzah for Lisa! Something cheerful for a change.
Talia
December 3rd, 2008 2:28pm Report this commentdidn't Drinkaware advertise on this site?
seb
December 3rd, 2008 3:22pm Report this comment'They clep us drunkards' - Hamlet.
Of course, this is about the English rather than the Danes at fictional Uncle Claudius's table.
Hogarthian etchings and Shakespearian asides make the valid point, do they not, that swinish over-indulgence in drink needs stigmatising. Stigmatising, though, is routinely carried by New Labour in regard to other perceived ills, such as politically incorrect sex and tobacco while the government encourages swinish over-indulgence in drinking in the belief that the swines' contributions in alcohol duty more than compensate for the national disgrace, ruined lives and dead pedestrians.
CG
December 3rd, 2008 4:30pm Report this commentThese anti-drink adverts actually ahve the effect of glamourising binge drinking to many young people. theya re about as efective as 'Just say no' was for drugs.
RJ
December 3rd, 2008 4:57pm Report this commentThank you so much for the social history lesson, Lisa. I’m sure all that stuff about coffee houses, the history of binge drinking in Britain etc. is an absolute revelation to all of us here.
Golly. Can’t wait to see what you’ll be enlightening us about next.
Bangkok Hilton
December 3rd, 2008 6:19pm Report this commentYes, but did you write Belle De Jour?
Unsteady Eddie
December 3rd, 2008 9:00pm Report this commentOnce again, a very welcome respite from the Westminster dullness - even when anti-terrorist police are snorting around therein.
Further, this is a topic which could do with a little light. Hardly a week passes without some think-tank or research johnnies, spouting about the billions per year in lost earnings or the rise in cirrhosis cases and cost to the International Health Service. A gradual softening-up looks to be taking place.
Well sod 'em. The beer I drink is 96% water and so I will continue to top up my fluid levels every dinner time ('lunch' ?) to the amazement, nay horror of my twenty-something, GCSE afflicted work colleagues.
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