Are You Drinking Responsibly?

Alongside obesity, responsible drinking has fast become one of the major public health issues of this decade. The prime minister, Gordon Brown, wants alcohol advertisers to promote responsible drinking. But exactly what is responsible drinking?

A current UK television campaign called ‘The Choice is Yours’ features people, clearly the worse for drink, fighting, vomiting, showing their knickers and generally being typically pissed! This is supposed to highlight ‘irresponsible’ drinking and make youngsters (it is aimed at people in the 18 to 25 age group) consider drinking more responsibly, in order to avoid looking like a twat. The truth is that for many young people, drinking to the point where they can no longer stand up straight, find their way home or hold their dinner down is looked upon as a badge of honour. Rather like the famous Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch (in which a bunch of old guys madly exaggerate how poor they were) young people will often try to out-do one another with stories of how pissed they’ve managed to get and the scrapes they’ve gotten into when bladdered.

For the responsible drinking campaign to work, those in our society who look upon routinely getting blind drunk as some sort of ‘right of passage’ or ‘badge of honour’ need to have their views changed. Big Jim, who downed 12 pints of heavy and 4 bottles of WKD, got into a fight and then climbed on top of a bus shelter to fall asleep, is not a ‘great bloke’. He is a piss-head f*ckwit who needs to be told that he is a piss-head f*ckwit! He shouldn’t get a pat on the back and should not be considered a ‘great guy’. He is an irresponsible arse-wipe who is wasting good oxygen! And Susan, who routinely goes out with her girlfriends, drinks too many alcopops and ends up going home with some bloke whose name she can’t remember in the morning, isn’t a ladette who should be admired. She is a piss-head, slapper, tart who sounds like she really needs some therapy. The culture in which extreme drunkenness is legitimised is what needs to change.

Responsible drinking is all about respect. Respect for yourself, respect for those around you and respect for alcohol. Responsible drinking means enjoying a glass of wine, but not drinking the whole bottle. It means having a pint or two of beer, but not doing it too often. Responsible drinking means enjoying a drink, but not drinking to get pissed! Something many young Britons will have a hard time grasping!

• Tell the world about MrCrip
  
  • Subscribe
  • Bloglines
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Written by Dr_Bob on March 19th, 2008 with 4 comments.
Do you agree with Dr_Bob? Do you hate the diatribe on MrCrip? Who cares? Read more Save the UK.

Related Save the UK rants on MrCrip

• Government grants for FREE solar panels (June 25th, 2008)
• Cherie Blair - Why I detest this woman (June 14th, 2008)
• Indian Call Centres - Boycott the Businesses using them (June 7th, 2008)
• 10 Reasons to bring back the death penalty in Britain (May 26th, 2008)
• Britains’ buggered (May 18th, 2008)