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Beware Labour’s dangerous message on cheap alcohol
James Purnell is betraying the public good by attacking the Chief Medical Officer’s proposals for curbing alcohol abuse
I can never see the smug, lipless face and carefully cultivated blond tresses of Work and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell - let alone read his name in print - without wanting to bodily remove him from the greasy pole he's so intent on shinning up. There seems little the man will say that isn't for the express reason of furthering his career.
Take alcohol, for example. It's not that Purnell displays any more liking for intoxication - legal or otherwise - than the rest of his Westminster colleagues, it's simply that Purnell and booze go hand-in-hand, cavorting across the grey fields of contemporary public health policy.
It was Purnell who introduced 24-hour drinking to our sozzled land, and by golly, he's not about to let go of the idea that it's a - 'hic' - good thing. This alone explains why he has been first among the equally tipsy Labour ministers who've lurched to criticise Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, for daring to suggest that there should be minimum unit pricing for alcohol in Britain.
To address Britain’s booze problem we need to have a cultural changeAccording to Purnell, the troublesome doctor has exceeded his remit, by trespassing on economic policy, while Government control of commodity pricing may be, in a free market, of doubtful legality. Wow! I knew those New Labourites were unreconstructed free-marketeers, who all sat on the invisible right hand of the Great Golden Calf of Capitalism, but this is ridiculous slavishness.
After all, there are plenty of commodity markets that the Government sees fit to fix - illegal drugs springs readily to mind, although the net effect of their interdiction is only to have made the prices of cocaine and heroin fall, in real terms, for year upon year.
But Purnell has heavyweight support on his side, for up comes saturnine Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, to wheedle that now is not the time to burden impoverished Britons with extra booze expenditure - with £40k per household currently down the drain, we all need a little lubrication.
Humph! This looks like a re-tread of all the 'poor proles' rhetoric that floated in the breeze when the smoking ban was tabled. 'It's their only pleasure,' such seigniors contended, 'who are we to take it away from them?'
But hang on a minute, Donaldson is entirely clear-sighted about minimum unit pricing; he knows it isn't a 'magic bullet' for Britain's booze problem (a doubling in consumption since the 1960s, an exponential increase in liver disease - particularly among the young).
For that, he says, we need a cultural change. However, in the absence of a collective willingness to address the problem, minimum unit pricing is the next best thing.
This country has always had a very schizoid attitude towards alcohol
He's right, there is an undeniable correlation between alcohol price and alcohol consumption, and the net effect of minimum pricing would be to increase the price - and so restrict the availability - of precisely the budget liquors (the alcopops, the extra-strength lagers, the turpentine vodkas) favoured by - 'hic' - alcoholics and the kind of yoof who rampage up and down the pedestrian precincts of our miserable clone towns, like Calibans enraged by their reflections in the plate glass of bankrupt chain retailers.
Such a scheme has worked perfectly well in Canada - and that alone is probably why so many middle-class pundits, who'd rather be struck by lightning than be seen with a can of White Lightning in their hand - are quick to condemn it.
There's a kind of schizoid attitude to drinking in this country. On the one hand we bemoan our drunk and disorderly nation, but on the other hand we cling resolutely to the idea that - like the shameless people we so manifestly are - we know how to paaarty!
The one thing we dread above all is being boring - like, presumably, Canada - and so we cling to the notion, which is usually abandoned upon maturity by all but the most gauche of teenagers, that without a drink we're in danger of being a bore.
Sadly, in my experience, it's the drunks who are really tedious, while it's only others similarly affected who find them remotely amusing. Perhaps I need a stiff one - then I might begin to find James Purnell a dreadfully amusing and insightful chap. ·
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As a survivor of a twelve years violent marriage, at the receiving end of his drunken fists, I speak with some knowledge of the danger to the brain, of alcohol abuse.
It wasn't known back then, in the sixties and seventies, that drink damaged and killed off brain cells, and there was no AA for families, no refuges to hide in with the kids, in case he started on them next.
It took all those years for me to escape with my children, which in the end, was courtesy only of a small legacy, left me by an aunt, I think she knew!
He died because of alcohol, no other reason, just seven years after I had fled, and at the young age of forty-one. But not, before he had developed a form of epilipsy, brought on by the drink and suffered many seizers. His final fit, also brought on a heart attack, and he choked on his own vomit, and died all alone, on his father's cold kitchen floor.
This, is the reality of alcohol abuse!
The next reality, is in the damage to the children, that passes down the line, the serious emotional stuff that never goes away and carries to their adult life. that they take out on the remaining parent, because their pain is so great, it's safe to load it there, because, you cannot, and they well know, never will, stop loving them. Because they know, unlike those who scorn you, that you only ever tolerated it and stayed, to keep them safe, when you had nowhere else to go, and no dosh to do it with!
Watching our eldest, a son try to jump into his open grave after the coffin was lowered in, at the age of eighteen, because he couldn't handle it, then go on to wreck his own life in drink and drugs, because he grieved so much, was one of life's worst moments.
Watching our next one down try to join him, inside alcohol and almost die herself, also took its toll. Thankfully, the rest (three of them) were young enough to forget him, when I moved on, so, they have much better, nicer, middle class, lives.
Every time you drink and get drunk, and behave badly, it not only changes you, your mood, your attitude, and the way that you behave, it leaves its mark imprinted in their genes, their hearts, their minds and souls, and a serious legacy of unresolved pain.
As their mum, it broke my heart, over and over and over, and I felt sad as well, for him, at his own stupidity, because he never saw them grow.
Without drink, as an soldier and ex soldier, he was a super dad, a good husband, but, civvy street betrayed him, as with many more, he didn't fit in, and he had no place to go and use his background, so, he drank to escape, and he escaped real life and his family, and eventually, his whole existence!
I like an occasional glass of wine, but always stop at one, and have no problem with anyone doing anything in moderation, but moderation has escaped our culture. I will never drive after even half a glass, because this too is needing our attention, since no one should ever drink at all, if they are driving.
Just a small reality check, from an 'expert' who was there!
I've heard endless discussions, by 'experts', of this topic in the last few days. What has not once been mentioned is that while post offices are closing, school playing fields are being sold off - things which are of benefit mainly to non law-breakers, we will be opening a massive stadium for the purveyors of smuggled liquor, even perhaps bootleg liquor. Just as we now have a thriving cross-border tobacco smuggling industry. The upside of course is a job creation scheme in HM customs, funded, without any doubt whatsoever, by the suggested price increases.
The reaction of the Labour party was entirely predictable. The proposal was recently floated by the Scottish National Party and, of course, Labour automatically opposes it.
Do they see votes in this - another spurious ground upon which to try to dish the SNP?
There may be a few votes in it for them if the SNP manage to overcome the legal problems of legalising the plan, but if the argument is properly put there may not be as many as they think. They may even lose votes overall. The fact is that this proposal will hardly affect the vast majority, if at all and, while not a magic bullet, may help to shift our sorry so called "cultural heritage."
Why not go even further and bring in an alcohol breath test for
rowdies with penalties that really hurt and give some extra fire power to prosecutions?