As the Alcohol Reform Bill wends its way through parliament, Theodore Dalrymple’s observations are appropriate:
Britain is the only country known to me in which drunkenness is an ideology: that is to say in which people believe in an abstract way that, in getting drunk, they are doing good to themselves and performing an almost philanthropic service. The mass public drunkenness that appals foreigners when they come to our shores is actually thought by young drunks to be a form individual therapy and social prophylaxis rolled into one. . .
Britain isn’t alone in this immature attitude to alcohol consumption.
Drunkenness might not be an ideology but there are too many people who regard it as a requirement for enjoying a social occasion and a measure of enjoyment.
Alcohol, or at least it’s consumption in larger amounts is in my view a form of escapism, albeit temporary. It is a pain killer. Take Russia and its love affair with vodka. (It is very drinkable, and really quite nice, I’ll admit). My opinion is based upon “Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman. He gives examples of countries where human economic self expression is suffocated by statism, socialism or whatever else blights life, and how optimism replaces negativism, and attitudes change when oppression is removed. Depression is supplanted by the work ethic. People making real progress getting ahead. Sadly, New Zealand is going the wrong way, being run as it is by control freaks, socialists, tax collectors and complete idiots.
Hand wringing by calvinistcs who are now secular and godless will achieve zero.
A dreary bunch of repulsive wowsers who want to interfere with everybody’s lives.
People get drunk – get over it, there are worse things in the world
Before the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread,
The night we went to Birmingham, by way of Beachy Head.
from “The Rolling English Road,” by Chesterton.
Dalrymple is not English and doesn’t really ‘get’ the culture. One wonders why he lives there.
Dalrymple is not English and doesn’t really ‘get’ the culture. One wonders why he lives there.
Goodness gracious me. Anthony Daniels (Dalrymple is his pen name) was born in London, which makes him English. He lives in both England and France.
I’ve met the guy. In real life he is like his columns! Always pessimistic, but erudite. I disagree with his pessimism but I love his writing.
Ok, but with a Russian father and a Jewish/German mother, it’s no surprise he comes across as profoundly alienated.