Here’s to a boozy New Year

JR

Fraser - I read the article today. It struck me as a Brass Eye sketch! Getting hammered is fine for the likes of me but what about "other people less stable, less educated, less middle-class than me?".

Howver "middle class" boozing has caused a lot of misery in my life and for many people I've met (mainly the daughters of high achieving middle class drinkers) have been damaged by it. So I wouldn't advise coffee house readers to do anything apart from make sure they have some self-awareness!

Now I'm off to drink some red wine.

Snowman

Whoever it was who said ‘There are better things in life than alcohol, but alcohol makes up for not having them’ must have had in mind losers like me. Oh well, we cannot have it all, can we.

Happy New Year Fraser, and the same to you all.

Wilhelm

Yeah, there's nothing better than being accosted by a drunk in the street where he throws up all over you, nice.

You just cant beat it, can you ?

Tiberius

A Happy New Year to one and all.

And I say this to Gordon Brown: you'll have to try harder to break this nation's back, mate!

Happy Hogmanay to the expiring Scottish Raj.

Mark Reckons

That's all well and good Fraser but exactly the same arguments made here about prohibitgion of alcohol can be applied to many currently illegal drugs. Is the Spectator in favour of liberalisation of our drug laws?

bernerlap

Excellent Fraser.I'll be having an extra glass Ardbeg for that.
How can a country that produces things and people as life affirming as single malt, Adam Smith, Walter Scott, and David Hume also produce a crabbed miserable git like Gordon Brown.
It is truly one of the world's great mysteries.

London Calling

Winston Churchill was happily drunk. His secretary accused him of being so, for which Winston replied “And you my dear are ugly, but in the morning I shall be sober.”

Whatever floats your boat…Have a fabulous New Year…

Fergus Pickering

Wilhelm, don't go out without being well and truly hammered. The drunk will avoid you and God will watch over you. The poet to read is Burns who celebrates drinking and fornication and dying at 37.

Martyn Rowe

Working is the scourge of the drinking classes, hic.....

No babysitter tonight. Back on it tomorrow! In a very understated Welsh way.

Have a fab 2010 everyone.

Nicholas

The little "Drink Responsibly" tag line that appears on every TV advert for drink infuriates me. To a responsible person it is a superflous, patronising and irritating nonsense (nannysense?). To the irresponsible it won't make a bit of difference. So what is it for?

It is there to "send a message". A typical, priggish, patronising, puitan, "that's all right then", "something must be done", infantilising, essentially Leftist wimmen message of the sort we are so inundated and vexed by. The frowning, concerned, oh-so-earnest disapproval of arch-Nannies Yvette Cooper and Dawn Primarollo summed up in two verbs.

Whenever I see those two prim little verbs I think "Bollocks".

First cigarettes, now alcohol. The habitual banners, nose-pokers and do-good, bleeding-heart bleeders won't leave us alone. What's next - meat?

Hugo Lindsay

Bernerlap: most of the things which are wrong with Scotland can be blamed on the Kirk, and Gordon Brown and the nation's unsatisfactory attitude to drinking are two of them.

Yow Min Lye

Thanks to this article, I can now look at the cider-addled chavs wreaking havoc on by estate in a completely new light: geniuses one and all obviously.

daniel maris

May I add to the canon - Charles Dickens: half a pint of sherry for breakfast. Never missed a deadline. Died in his late fifties, but not bad for someone who burned so brightly.

I think we need to look alcohol in the eye. Sometimes it brings evil into our lives. But surges through the veins of our culture - in the arts (and more of the science than you might suppose) and in our everyday social interaction.

We must oppose the alliance of Shariah and health fascists.

Austin Barry

There should be a series of stamps celebrating our gifted heavy drinkers: Oliver Reed, Tony Hancock, Dylan Thomas, Richard Burton etc. etc.

Wilhelm

Fergus me old son

You contradict yourself first you say '' God will watch over you'' and then '' Robert Burns died at 37.'' What a ringing endorsement on the booze industry and binge drinking.

I find all that fake, phoney bonhomie nauseating. Its just another day.

Amadeus Plonquer

A Very New Year to one and all.

This article is spot on. As a nation we celebrate the beginning and end of every year by getting plastered. It's only the bit in between that's the problem. Every single form of British celebration resolves around getting drunk at some stage.

As human beings we have an in-built natural defence to alcohol consumption. Alcohol may have the effect of making us behave like complete prats. However, the human physiology is designed in such an intricate way that we can't remember much about it in the morning.

This is proof if we ever needed it that booze is God's gift to man.

steve

Does anyone have a list of great British artists, poets and alike who don't use alcohol - I bet it is as at least as long as that of those who do.

Fergus Pickering

Not at all, Wilhelm. God did watch over Robert Burns. He had a happy life and wrote fine poetry. Never mind the width, feel the quality. As the King of P:russia said to his Switzers, 'Do you want to live for ever, swinee?' And bonhomie is worth having, false or not. A Good New Year to one and all and a Tory victory in the spring. I am drinking a marvellous malt called Old Pulteney from the town of Wick bought me by my daughters who know what an old man needs.

Vulture

This country has always oscillated between Puritanism and Prudery; Roundheads and Cavaliers.

You see it in politics: the jovial hard-drinking Churchill types v. the tight-arsed teetotallers like Stafford Cripps. Churchill knew his enemy and called him 'Stifford Crapps'.

Many of the nannyish Crapps types; eg. Beatrice Webb, Polly Toynbee, Harriet Harpie and Tessa Vowell are themselves upper classers and highly hypocritical: they really want to order the lower classes around and tell them what's good for them.

Two pedantic historical notes: Churchill's 'ugly..sober' comment was not addressed to his secretary but to a distressingly hideous Liebour MP named Bessie Braddock.

And Fraser, the puritanical Home Secretary was called Joynson-Hicks (not 'Hick' or 'Hic!')..hence his nickname 'Jix'.

Cheers - and happy Hogmanany.

David Ossitt

I do not know why; but I find that the BBC using the words twenty ten somewhat disturbing, I would far prefer, the use of, two thousand and ten.

Looking back to the previous century; it would appear that the BBC is correct and it is me that is in the wrong.

It was nineteen ten, nineteen twenty, nineteen thirty et cetera.

Do any of you think as I do?

In any event; a very Happy New Year.

dearieme

Of course it's "Twenty ten": have you no ears to hear with?

Minnie Ovens

Vulture,

Possibly made as well to Bessie but the first exchange was between Nancy Astor and Churchil at Blenheim in 1912

TGF UKIP

Congratulations, Fraser, your post of the year - we're on the same wavelength at last!

Every best wish for a Happy and Successful 2010 to you and all at The Speccie and don't forget who your Tory candidate is at Richmond and then you'll have no qualms in voting UKIP.

David Ossitt

dearieme.

“Of course it's "Twenty ten": have you no ears to hear with?”

Silly question; yes, of course I have, and unlike you, it would appear, I have a mind to think and to ponder with.

bernerlap

Minnie
I'm afraid you're wrong about the ugly/sober comment being made to Nancy Astor - who was known as a society beauty.
There was another famous put down though
NA "Winston, if you were my husband I'd poison you"
WC "Nancy, if you were my wife I'd take it"

Vulture

Minnie O: Not sure that is correct. Didn't his exchange with Nancy A. go..
NA: 'If you were my husband, I would put poison in your drink'
WC: 'And if you were my wife I would drink it'.

I still favour the BB story : she really WAS very ugly - looked like Ena Sharples' granny - whereas Nancy Astor was just plain plain. But perhaps Nance liked to keep coming back for Churchillian put-downs.

Verity

I thought Kate Moss was more of a druggie than an alkie.

The Desert Fox

Freedom and Whisky gang thegither... Burns.

A guid New Year tae ye All.

Marcher Baron

Labour has an unhealthy relationship with pleasure - other people's at least. They think we shouldn't be allowed to enjoy it.

JohnBUK

Marcher Baron - They also have an unhealthy interest in other people's money. Most of the do-gooding crap they come out with involves other people paying so the do-gooders feel good about themselves.

Fergus Pickering

Well Steve, I can't think of a poet of any sort at all who didn't or doesn't 'use' alcohol. Even William Blake, the battiest lefty poet born, took his pint of porter. What do you mean 'use'? As for artists, read David Hockney on the artist's need for drinks and smokes.

Cuffleyburgers

@ Yow min lye - if the damn' chavs are wreaking havoc on your estate I should set the game keeper on 'em

Happy New Year, and cheers.