Don't take away our booze-fueled violence...

I've blogged before about the worrying mutterings concerning alcohol from the pissed-up politicians that purport to govern us, who appear keen to continue the march towards the day when there will be no legal intoxicants in our lives. Yet more whitterings about the price of alcohol, with happy hours and supermarket prices being criticised by all and sundry because they know what's best for everyone and want to "halt a torrent of booze-fueled violence". Booze is, apparently, 69 per cent more affordable now than it was in 1980. Which is surely a good thing, isn't it (although I question the truth of this percentage of cheapness because it seems a damn sight more expensive to me now than when I were a lad keen on drinking as much as was required to pass out)? We should all be able to afford the occasional bout of obliteration, whatever our financial circumstances. Besides, I've never been caught up in a torrent of booze-fueled violence. I imagine they've talked of little else in public houses up and down the country since this made the news yesterday. Or they would have done if the art of conversation hadn't been killed by jukeboxes in the 1950s. And pubs weren't closing at the rate of five a day due to the recession (cheap booze not helping there, then). It's enough to drive a man to drink I tells ya!

Make mine a large one...

Found myself behind this transport of delight this afternoon as I struggled to get across town. Some kind of matress transporter, it appeared to be, something the city of Hull can never have enough of, especially if they are all to be as fine as this vehicle.

More talk about booze and binge drinking and underage havoc wreakers in the meedja today in light of comments made in advance of tomorrow's publication of the findings of an eight month review of alcohol licensing laws and Gordon Brown muttering about tightening up on the penalties for those selling booze to under 18s. When I were a lad I used to live in an off-license, my mother being the licensee, and there were certainly strict penalties then that were adhered to. My old ma would never sell alcohol to anyone underage and was a stickler for copping sight of a birth certificate, very often demanding that 30-somethings prove their age just in case. The same laws, unless I'm completely and utterly pissed three decades of binge drinking later, that existed then are still in place. Two strikes and you're out? Again, it won't be policed, will it? It's just fucking rhetoric. Local councils are also chuntering about 24-hour licensing being a failure. As if the culture of drinking that has developed here over decades can be changed in just three years. Young people, them spotty gits that are getting the bad rap, have always experimented with drink. And long may that continue to be the case. It seems to me that British culture and society being what they are, we won't be allowed any legal intoxicants soon, because even us adults can't be trusted to do whatever we fancy when we choose after getting through week-after-week of stressful, badly paid shite to service our debts, or if we're Amy Whinehouse. And for those on low incomes (that'll be you, you "sub-prime borrowers". You'll note that you're blamed for just about everything right now, you scum bags, and rightly so, you've dragged the economy down to its knees) well, forget it, your affordable option is about to disappear as your penchant for the cheap stuff is wrecking your Jeremy Kyle-infested lives. You know this because the government tells you it is the case. What a bloody nanny state this is. Has anyone actually given a thought to this...the reason our use of intoxicants in the west - booze, fags, the odd fix of caffeine and that nice selection of illegal substances - is nothing more than a selfish act aimed at personal annihilation and obliteration is because life for us selfish, money-obsessed, material wealth munching westerners is absolutely and utterly devoid of any spiritual meaning. But, y'know, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. I blame myself. How about you?