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Tuesday 2 December 2008

Teach children to drink!

I usually think Melissa Kite is rather good, but with this post she's either being disingenuous or plain stupid:

David Cameron has some good ideas from time to time but he also comes up with some right old clangers. Like his assertion today, made during his televised public holiday that children should be taught to drink alcohol safely.

Speaking to a group of young people (always a dangerous set-up) he said: "Some of the friends I had, the ones who had the biggest problems, were the ones who actually were never allowed to drink anything at home - whereas the ones who drink responsibly were the ones who were given a glass of wine or a small glass of beer or a shandy or something. That's the right way to do it in the home."

If the answer to alcoholism really is to teach children how to drink, then why don't the Tories propose giving away free Dubonnet and soda in schools during break time, or perhaps little bottles of vodka and red bull at lunch.

Cameron is bang on with this, and Melissa Kite about as wrong as one can be. It's not a clanger. It's absolutely right.

For anyone under the age of about thirty, the definition of a good night out is a night with the sole purpose of getting drunk. And what used to be a primarily male obsession – going down the boozer and getting hammered – is now an equal opportunities activity.

As a nation, we go out specifically to get drunk. That’s what it is today to be British. For the sheer foulness of the atmosphere, you’d have to go some to beat London’s West End after about 11pm. The streets smell of piss. Boozed up twenty-somethings roam the area, some throwing up, others looking as if they can barely stand. And all in the pervasive ambience of impending violence (it’s no wonder that the British Crime Survey shows that only 16 per cent of violent acts by strangers are prompted by drugs, as opposed to 53 per cent by alcohol). The same picture holds true in other city centres and, increasingly, in rural villages. Unless you’re drunk, Britain is a pretty disgusting place after the pubs shut.

Wander at night, however, in one of Europe’s most beautiful squares, tsuch as he Grand Place in Brussels, and you’ll see a very different sight. In the summer, no matter how late it is, there will be tables outside and groups of friends sitting, talking and enjoying themselves over bottles of wine or Belgian beer. The rest of the year the same thing happens, just indoors. And not a hint of violence.

The explanation lies in the difference between a café culture and a pub culture and the way children drink. On the continent, alcohol is an aid to the success of an evening. The amount drunk is not the measure of the success of an evening. We, however, drink to get drunk and arrange affairs to do that as efficiently as possible. And children are taught from an early age to drink in their respective cultural tradition. As the chef, Raymond Blanc put it: “In all Latin countries, we drink with food; we hardly ever drink without food. That is an English invention”.

Here, children sneak off to the pub and down as much as they can get away with. On the continent, they are served a small amount of wine with the family meal at home, and are socialised both to eat and drink properly.

(I've much more on this in my new book, but you'll have to wait to 2009 to read it)

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