Booze stats confirm boring Britain is drying

Re: drunk posting again

Demographic change? More Muslims = more non-drinkers. Muslim population is more youthful than the rest.

Re: drunk posting again

Lot more to this:

Having been involved in youth work, its a complete attitude shift in social life.

You'll find less go to pubs and nightclubs (you'll find a corresponding drop in these) as they are more likely to go round in each others house and maybe a have a couple of drinks (if any) rather than go down the rather than go out on a bender.

You'll also find drops for teenage pregnancy as well (coincidence?) and smoking.

Re: drunk posting again

The Mail's coverage of this story includes the headlines:

"Young adults less likely to drink, official figures show"

"Boozy over-65s drink more than the Facebook generation: Older people are only age group to increase consumption ... "

The Mail gets a lot of stick, but personally I've found its reporting to be mostly accurate. Pro tip: you need to separate "reporting" from "comment", because the papers - all of them - will no longer do that for you.

Re: Government scientists

Government scientists ....

Sadly I don't think this is anything to do with puritanism (although that does run, undiluted, through the veins of 95% of every politician and senior civil servant).

I suspect it is the thin end of the wedge to rationing healthcare. The STPs aren't working, and probably won't. Politicians and civil servants don't know how to address the real problem, or won't address it if they do (only two answers: higher taxes and/or partial payments at point of use). So in future, anybody turning up at the docs who admits to drinking more than a single lager shandy a week can be told, "we can't treat you, we have to prioritise other people, whose needs aren't their own fault".

I doubt they'll be saying that to people with sporting injuries which are equally the fault of the victim (IMHO), but having said that the cause of our current problem is old buzzards living longer and longer, making more and more use of health and benefits systems that they paid into under assumptions of 72 year life expectancies. There's an answer to that: free fags and beer for the over 50s. Bring it on!

Re: 1960s health advice?

Some people seem to get all angry about the nanny-state based on government advice. As if it's the law telling them what they're allowed to do.

And yet if the government did nothing and offered no advice, people would be complaining about them ignoring national health problems, binge drinking culture, wasted police and NHS resources etc.

People are free to ignore the guidelines. They are even free to drink themselves into a stupor every day if they like. Complaining about guidelines doesn't make anyone a fun party guy who likes a drink. It makes them a boring moan.

Re: 1960s health advice?

I don't know if it's so much science being better or worse in the 1960's than today, so much as it is different degrees of harm being tolerated. In the 1960's if you said that a bottle of wine doubled the risk of health problems from 0.1% to 0.2%, they'd probably shrug and say people make their choices, it's pretty much a tiny change to someone's personal risk. Today they'll look at what the 0.1% does to society as a whole and cry armageddon, running headlines about millions of £'s lost each year due to drinking and "thousands at risk of liver damage". There's just no acceptance of any risk at all these days. In the Sixties, people considered risk a normal part of life.

"Because no good story ever started with "I went down to Costa and ordered a latte"."

Sure it can. Just add, "Nothing special. Just a latte, thank you." then see where you end up.

"Because no good story ever started with "I went down to Costa and ordered a latte".

Ya know something? I don't even know what a "latte" is. Is it something special? Or is "latte" Italian for a while coffee to make it sound more exotic and poncy?

Now git off ma lawn!

Re: Possible reasons

Fewer.

Re: Possible reasons

Student drinkers?

At current cost of education and drinks, I'd bet few students can afford an alcoholic haze.

Re: Possible reasons

You seem to have missed out the most obvious reason, Occam's razor and all that.

Young people don't drink as much because they chose not to.

"wine has become more alcoholic"

Some wine, and by up to 20%, not 4x.

Re: This isn't because wine has suddenly become more potent

Whether you blame global warming or the change to earlier ripening clones of the major grape varieties is up to you (probably both), but wine has become more alcoholic.

...and ironically strong cannabis hasn't got much more than the 20-25% THC levels reached in the mid 90s.

Re: This isn't because wine has suddenly become more potent

French red wine to be 11.5% alcohol. Now, normal would be 13.5%

Lightweight horsepiss for spoilsports.

Malvasia, Mavrud, whatever was the name of that Greek Island Rocket Fuel, Tempranillo, Negramol have all gone from 16-18 down to... Guess where... Thirteen point F**** Five. It is the australization of the wine making. It is industrialized and outside France traditional wine making regions winemakers have either adopted Aussie tech or are outright owned by Aussies (Eastern Europe).

You need to get some stuff directly from the growers ( I bring ~ 50l in the truck each summer) to get proper quality rocket fuel nowdays. Even that is 15. Classic relic wines which used to hit more like Mavrud are not available any more.

So whatever you get your choice will be 13.5 or 13.5.

Re: This isn't because wine has suddenly become more potent

but wine has become more alcoholic.

I picked up a bottle of a Provençal Rosé the other day, 14%!! That stuff used to be so light you could drink it like lemonade on a hot day.

Of course for a real buzz there's always the Canadian "Bombay Sapphire". I wonder how many recalled bottles will end up as collectors items in 10 years time.

Re: This isn't because wine has suddenly become more potent

Do you have the equivalent of "bum wines" over in Europe? You know, cheap fortified wines that taste terrible but don't matter because their chief purpose was to simply get drunk (and maybe screw afterwards)? If you do, then stronger wines probably don't fit into the picture because people who just want to get drunk would just stick to the "bum wines".

Re: I Remember

Hopefully the young will stop applauding and celebrating people who drink themselves into a stupor.

To me that' is the act of a moron not a hero.

Re: I Remember

8 pints of >= 5% really is excessive. Back in the day most good bitters were less than 4%, and this makes a difference over an evening: 1% less ABV is 20% relatively or one pint for every five. The fashion for slickly marketed and strong but shit lagers in the 1980s with nice fat profit margins ruined that.

Yeah, back in the day, you'd have three pints waiting for all your mates to gather before going on a binge.

where the hell are they getting the LSD? I've been trying since 1994!

And who can blame them.

Oh, that's right...

this would be my observation too

Alcohol and fags have become too expensive

Too many trendy bars opening, wanting near £5 for a pint is pushing people away, and I'm not even close to London.

Even with the legal highs banned I'm seeing more and more people trying drugs, finding out they're 'safer' (factoring in staying in and thus out of trouble) and more reliable and sticking to them. I think it's going to be an interesting decade or two because it seems the majority of under 25s I've talked to disagree with current drug legislation entirely after trying things themselves due to this.

Re: Stay in balance

Moderate drinking might indeed reduce the risk of heart disease, but that ignores all the other effects alcohol could have. Unfortunately, there is a good correlation between the amount you drink and the likelihood of upper-digestive-tract cancer, so instead of dying of a heart-attack, you die of cancer instead*; and the likelihood of dying of cancer outweighs the reduced likelihood of dying of heart disease.

This is why you need to look at all-cause mortality.

And when you do, you get a J-shaped curve which suggests that moderate drinkers have a lower likelihood of dying than equivalent teetotallers or heavy drinkers. Yippee!

But, recent work that divides the non-drinkers into those that have never drunk, and those that gave up drinking (possibly for health reasons) indicates that the J-curve effect vanishes, so that the more you drink, the more likely you are to die compared to someone like you who drinks less.

It is a contentious area, but it is clear that heavy drinking is bad for you. Whether it is better to drink nothing, or the equivalent of one or two units per week is open to question.

I enjoy my drink, so its not as if I'm an eager killjoy, cackling whilst typing this in. Alcohol actually being bad for you is an inconvenient truth, which I am loath to accept, but there you are.

*This is a simplified presentation of a complicated set of interactions. Or, as pTerry would say "lies to children". I'm no expert, just probably exiting kindergarten and thinking I'm a big boy now.

Re: Non-drug distractions

And a lot of video games don't pair well with booze. I've learned the hard way not to play Elite: Dangerous after a few beers, because I'm far more likely to crash my spaceship. Don't drink and fly!

Re: Non-drug distractions

Allegedly Facebook works as a contraceptive too.

I can't verify this, due to not being a fertile female or a Facebook user.

Re: Non-drug distractions

and add to this when I was a kid, the default way to socialise and meet people meant going to the pub, and we rented our space in the pub, by buying booze.

Now folks can 'meet' on the Internet. They can arrange their nights out by SMS, Facebook, etc, whereas my generation just turned up at the regular pub and waited to see who else turned up, and when we got a critical mass we went to some dive nightclub.

I also think modern youth are a bit more discerning than my generation, I never went out for meals with my friends back then, that's something I do now I'm older, but I see plenty of younger groups in restaurants.

There are simply more things to do now, so it seems obvious that drinking has been diluted.

Re: J-curve probably not real

"Which the drinker in me thinks is a shame. Sigh."

I'd curse you for shattering my delusions, but I don't drink enough to get the 'benefit' anyway. What I liked about the article I linked was that it clearly stated that there are better ways to improve your heart health than drinking. Many of the 'Stuffing Bingon Berries ip your nose reduces cancer' stories fail to mention that doing so may cause other problem such as upper respiritory tract inflammation etc.

Re: Historical trends

"Part of it was deliberate government policy. They somehow felt that one boozer per eighty inhabitants (in some of the market towns) was a few too many."

Although I'm sure you are already aware, back in 1860, especially in towns, water wasn't always that safe to drink and beer was the best option. Of course, the 1800's was also the time when there were lots of public works to provide clean drinking water.

Re: Super-conentrated wine

"At the beginning of the First World War the daily allowance of wine per man was a quarter of a litre a day, by 1915 it was half a litre and by 1916, almost three quarters of a litre with the opportunity to buy more."

Re: Less alcohol consumption or more fibbing

Everybody lies to a man with a clipboard conducting a survey.

Re: If alcohol is so bad for you

"Do as I say, not as I do", the sign of a true puritan!