Don’t worry — drink and be merry

The government acts as if booze is the root cause of all our social problems, says Leah McLaren, but it’s not. Drinking is an important part of British culture, the pub is the hub of the community, and health warnings can even be counterproductive

‘No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.’

— P.J. O’Rourke

Happy new year! But don’t pass the bubbly. Haven’t you heard? We are all in danger of losing our souls to the demon liquor. According to the government, alcohol expands your liver, distends your pancreas and turns your brainstem to jelly. It makes you gamble and stumble and sleep with women who aren’t your wife. It’s highly addictive, full of harmful nitrates and the latest craze among schoolchildren aged four to six. Rampant swilling explains why the NHS is overburdened, unemployment is high and Gordon Brown looks so exhausted. It makes poor people beat their babies to death and rich people put money in hedge funds.

And you wouldn’t want that, would you?

There is a hopeless war being waged in Britain today, one that costs hundreds of millions of pounds and endangers the social lives of countless innocent young men and women — and that is the war against alcohol.

Everywhere you looked this holiday season there were ominous signs that the booze-induced apocalypse was nigh. ‘Binge-drinking increases risk of dementia,’ the Guardian primly tut-tutted. ‘Ladette drinking violence soars by 300 per cent,’ shrieked the Mail. There were posters on the tube and in pub toilets featuring pretty youngsters out on the town, urging us to ‘know our limits’, the presumption being that we might end up having fun like the models in the photo.