08-18-2008, 05:40 PM
While doing my laundry today I came across this magazine titled; The Week. It was from November of '07, but I found this article....interesting. It isn't really long, so instead of going through some fucked up tedious search on the web for the original article, I'm just going to type it out.
It was in the Best columns: Europe section of this magazine.
A Nation of drunkards in training
by Alice Thomson
The Times
We all know that Brits drink too much, said Alice Thomson in the London Times. What we're only just realizing, though, is that we start out boozing at an astonishingly early age. More than one-third of 14-year-olds say they have been drunk at least once in the past few weeks - girls as well as boys, rich kids as well as poor ones. We have made it far too easy for them to get alcohol. It is cheap - anyone can buy "a six-pack for the price of a Starbucks hot chocolate."
And thanks to the "reforms" of the past decade it is available around the clock. In the past two years alone, thousands of liquor licenses have been awarded to "24-hour shops, supermarkets, hotels, pubs and clubs."
The government told us that by abolishing the 11 p.m. "last call" would give us a "continental cafe culture." Alas, 24-hour drinking "has not turned us into sophisticated French imbibers." It has left us with pools of vomit in the streets and a sharp rise in cirrhosis of the liver. Cutting back the hours pubs may operate wouldn't immediately curb under-age drinking - after all, most young kids are not even up that late. But it would at least "signal to children that adults are worried about the drinking culture."
It was in the Best columns: Europe section of this magazine.
A Nation of drunkards in training
by Alice Thomson
The Times
We all know that Brits drink too much, said Alice Thomson in the London Times. What we're only just realizing, though, is that we start out boozing at an astonishingly early age. More than one-third of 14-year-olds say they have been drunk at least once in the past few weeks - girls as well as boys, rich kids as well as poor ones. We have made it far too easy for them to get alcohol. It is cheap - anyone can buy "a six-pack for the price of a Starbucks hot chocolate."
And thanks to the "reforms" of the past decade it is available around the clock. In the past two years alone, thousands of liquor licenses have been awarded to "24-hour shops, supermarkets, hotels, pubs and clubs."
The government told us that by abolishing the 11 p.m. "last call" would give us a "continental cafe culture." Alas, 24-hour drinking "has not turned us into sophisticated French imbibers." It has left us with pools of vomit in the streets and a sharp rise in cirrhosis of the liver. Cutting back the hours pubs may operate wouldn't immediately curb under-age drinking - after all, most young kids are not even up that late. But it would at least "signal to children that adults are worried about the drinking culture."