2010 with a blast (from the past, of course)

Disney - Illuminations - Reflectons (3) (explored) by Express Monorail on Flickr.

It's a brand new year, rife with possibility. What to do? Where to start?

• How about last year? Minimum drink pricing is back on the agenda, with its predictable supporters and detractors. Some might see minimum pricing as a stealth tax against the poorest sections of society; others look at the estimated £900 that alcohol abuse costs every person in Scotland.
• How about further back? Like 200,000 years ago? Apparently the caveman lifestyle is all the rage - in NYC.
• The Bronx Beer Caves.
• The Washington Post on the indescribable taste - and expense - of cognac.
• Oh Gosh! on Mozart Dry - unsweetened chocolate spirit.

Drink responsibly, kids

Via Comically Vintage / Retrospace / Are2 / Liquid Fire.

Newsdesk: maximising the minimums

(Graphic from BBC News.) This week's news is minimum drink pricing, because you can't keep a controversial public health policy down.

• While Holyrood has forced the Scottish Government to delay the introduction of minimum pricing north of the border, the UK's Chief Medical Officer has suggested that Westminster implement a similar scheme to combat problem drinkers (PDF link). Sir Liam Donaldson's recommendation - charging at least 50p per unit of alcohol - has met with resistance from the Prime Minister, but he's determined to fight on. Unsurprisingly, the drinks industry believes self-regulation to be the solution, but there are those beginning to wonder if something drastic should be done. Then again, there are those beginning to wonder if a new age of puritanism will actually help, and there are those who can always see the upside.

(Happy St Patrick's Day!... by shannonpatrick17, licensed under Creative Commons.)

• Of course, all of this breaks in the 24 hours ahead of St. Patrick's Day (a.k.a Amateur Night) which is as good a time as any to celebrate 250 years of Guinness.
• Over in Indonesia, it's not how much they're charging for booze: it's where they're serving it as the Buddha Bar in Jakarta faces allegations of religious insensitivity and corruption.

Excess

Britain is known for many things - our royal family, our long and storied history of making war with the nearest major landmass and, more recently, binge-drinking. This latest scourge of our civilisation has now spread to the middle class, according to new statistics from the, uh, Office for National Statistics (PDF link). Cue up the highlights reel:

• 37% of adults exceed the Government's recommended guidelines for alcohol intake.
• 43% of adults in professional and managerial households overindulge, which colours professional managers screwed.
• 22% of adults in professional and managerial households drink on at least five days in the week.
• When surveyed, 16,000 adults felt that public health advertising had succeeded in raising awareness of the dangers of excessive drinking.

All of which makes for pretty grim reading, really. But it's unlikely that entire swathes of British society are not going to disappear into a booze-fueled haze. Amid the headline statistics, the ONS also notes that alcohol consumption has not significantly changed over the past decade, excepting 2006 when a new method of calculating the unit strength of alcohol lead to a "statistical glitch".

However, while Britain's adults are not necessarily drinking more, they are often exceeding the Government's recommended limits for alcohol consumption. These stand at 3-4 units a day for men and 2-3 units a day for women. 1 unit is calculated as 10ml of alcohol, so a 25ml measure of spirits at 40% ABV equals one unit, as does half (UK) pint of beer or lager at 3.5% ABV and a 125ml measure of wine at 9% ABV, which can prove troublesome when the majority of draught lagers sold in the UK clock in north of 4% ABV, and many licensed premises serve wines nearer 12-13% ABV in 175ml or 250ml measures. There is also a small problem that the guidelines are based on a 20-year old best-guess solution.

The disclosure that the 1987 recommendation was prompted by “a feeling that you had to say something” came from Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced it.

He told The Times that the committee’s epidemiologist had confessed that “it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t” because “we don’t really have any data whatsoever”.

But simply exceding the guidelines doesn't constitute binge drinking. That tends to be defined as consuming twice the guideline limits - 6-8 units for men, 4-6 for women. Put it another way: for a woman, two small (175ml) glasses of wine at 13% ABV is a binge. For a man, three pints (UK, 568ml) at 5% is a binge.

It is possible that the definition of binge drinking has been widened so far as to be meaningless. John Aitch, a recovering alcoholic, suggests that the guidelines themselves are essentially useless.

Why do they waste their time and ours on this nonsense? Statistics, advice, guidance, warnings, threats and general interference don't do much more than irritate everyone, since those who choose what they drink don't need to hear it and those who are in denial about booze can't or won't hear a word said against it.