If we can have an ‘absurdity of lawmakers’, I suppose we can have a ‘stupidity of doctors’. In the face of attempts to deregulate drinking in Britain, a nation which is unusually restrictive when it comes alcohol compared to most western nations, we have Prof Ian Gilmore, a spokesman for the Royal College of Physicians (an extreme statist professional organisation and political lobby) saying:
“We are facing an epidemic of alcohol-related harm in this country, and to extend the licensing hours flies in the face of common sense as well as the evidence we have got.”
Prof Gilmore said plans to stagger the times people left pubs were an attempt to manage drunkenness rather than prevent it.
He added that the key to tackling the problem was reducing the availability of alcohol and increasing the price.
“I think it is fanciful to think we can turn ourselves into a French-style wine-tippling culture merely by licensing regulations,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
However he does not explain why digging the same hole deeper will make things better, given that Britain is already far more regulated than France and also has more serious alcohol related problems. Like most regulatory authoritarians, Gilmore and the RCP simply do not have either the imagination to think that perhaps the over-regulation caused the problem, nor do they have the socialisation to have the notion occur to them that imposing their views on others is immoral.
If people get drunk and commit crimes, punish the criminals, not those who drink and do not commit crimes. And in any case, the true criminals are those who added times limits to drinking hours which more or less institutionalised binge drinking.
The political class at work
Pro Statist gets free uncontested propaganda slot on BBC.
This may be news to some…
If you were an anaesthatist who had to refuse to operate because the patient had too high a blood alcohol level because he was frightened of the legal consequences of using unsafe anastheasia – you might see ther are other perspectives.
Don’t operate on the drunk / drugged (god knows what with) person with a smashed face face the lieklihood of death of patient / litigation …or…. operate and face the consequences of the damaged eye socket damaging eye(s) and at best a lifetime squint at worst blindness and possible litigation.
…at 2.30 am on Sunday morning….
… and his drinken / drugged “pals” are causing havoc in A & E.
Irenius – if you are an anaesthesiologist, you should not be performing operations on any patients, drunk or sober. We have surgeons for that.
Perry – If people get drunk and commit crimes, punish the criminals, not those who drink and do not commit crimes. And in any case, the true criminals are those who added times limits to drinking hours which more or less institutionalised binge drinking.
That the first sentence is sensible should be obviously to anyone who is not a statist control freak.
I think – I’m not sure – that drinking hours were limited during the war so people in munitions factories would turn up to work sober. Carelessly, subsequent governments have failed to remember that the war ended generations ago, and the controls have mysteriously stayed in place.
However, none of this is the problem. The problem is the NHS. As long as the government is holding the purse strings on health care, they will have an excuse to regulate what people eat and drink, and even whether they exercise (that will be next) until the pips squeak, and there is nothing the citizens can do about it. The government can claim the high moral ground by being a prudent guardian of the taxpayers’ money. Get rid of the NHS and you will not have government-employed prats like this drooling out their endless warnings.
Verity, should you ever have a surgeon operate on you, it’s usually a good idea to have an anaesthatist around at the time…you could of course try acupuncture, hypnosis… prayer, whisky soaked rag clamped between the teeth.
Irenius – Let me make one thing perfectly clear: the only person operating on me will be a surgeon.
The fact remains that anaesthesiologists assist at operations by anaesthetising and monitoring the operee during the course of the operation. The operation is performed by one or more surgeons.
Your remarks about acupuncture, prayer and whisky soaked rags are fatuous.
Verity, what was your last op ? Humour by-pass?
“If people get drunk and commit crimes, punish the criminals, not those who drink and do not commit crimes.”
Thank you! Finally, some common sense in the alcohol debate.
Another point I think is worth debating is whether or not Alcohol really does cause violence. In my experience (and I do go out drinking quite a lot) the people who start drunken brawls are the sorts of people who are predisposed to violence anyway.
No matter how drunk I get I have never felt the need to start a fight or vandalise anything.
I vote for an arrogance of doctors.
Seconded!
Here in the peoples republic of Canada, the blood alchohol limit for drivers is zero. If a fully responsible and coherent adult has had so much as one glass of beer or wine they will get a hefty fine and their car towed. Furthermore, idiot police arrest and hassle people in the most moronic fashion. On one occasion during this last summer, I was on a crowded, peaceful beach at around sunset. This place, which has always been known as a bit of a haven for less then legal pot smoking and drinking, is isolated and none of the 200 or so people present were being violent or aggresive. Nonetheless a female officer and her trainee asistant proceeded to tell every person on the beach that they had to empty their alchohol because it was being consumed public ground. Such petty, tyrannical idiocy was almost unbearable to watch.
John K writes:
“I vote for an arrogance of doctors.”
And a completely justified vote it would be.
The medical profession, faced with the fact that it hasn’t benefited from a truly revolutionary breakthrough since the discovery of antibiotics, has increasingly turned from the scientific treatment of a patient’s illness, to preachy moralising in an attempt to shore-up its position as Western society’s shamanic priesthood.
The “epidemic” the Quack’s Union talks of is more a product of changes in what the white coated wonders choose to fill-in on a death certificate as the cause of death than anything else.
Similar pseudo-scientific cant can be heard daily in most GP’s surgeries on the subjects of salt intake, cholesterol and passive smoking. They don’t know but that doesn’t stop them pontificating.
You guys think you are tightly regulated in Britain? Just take a look round the various state and local Liquor laws in the US.
In many states there are no alcohol sales of any kind on sundays and holidays. Many states maintain a partial or even total manopoly on alcohol sales. Until the Olympics, Utah banned all alcohol outside of private clubs etc… etc…
You can drive at 16 here, join the military as early as 17, vote and smoke (for now) at 18, but you cant drink til you’re 21.
God I hate governments.
Irenius: Oddly enough, our anesthesia colleagues here in FL seem to be able to cope with this issue in emergency cases just fine.
Verity: Your insistence on holding people responsible for their behavior is spot on. Should you take holiday in Florida, remind me to buy you a drink… ahem. *twinkle*
GCooper: Have a drink yourself, and “take a chill”, lest I be forced to wave my wand of feathers at you from my hut. If you think there’s been no breakthroughs since antibiotics, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening in cancer… or laparoscopic surgical technique… or medical diagnostic imaging… none of which require corn meal, rattles, or third-party entrails.
And please. There are arrogant doctors, just as there are arrogant pundits. But the truly abhorrent thing about Professor Gilmore is not that he’s a physician full of himself; it’s his neo-puritan desire to use the powers of The State to control others.
It’s not his arrogance you should be kvetching about; it’s his totalitarianism. He’s not stuck up, he’s dangerous.
Flippin’ neo-caesaropapist he is… deifying the power of The State, even as he lusts after it for his own goals.
What really bugs me about bodies like the Royal Colleges (Physicians, Midwives etc) is that their names suggest the are something that they are not. I wonder what proportion of the population actually realises that these are primarily trades unions, whose purpose is to advance the interests of their members? I would hazard the number at less than 25%.
“You can drive at 16 here, join the military as early as 17, vote and smoke (for now) at 18, but you cant drink til you’re 21.”
This was the argument used by liberals in New Zealand to lower the drinking age. The result, correctly predicted by conservatives, was that illegal drinking moved from 16 to 19 year olds to 10 to 15 year olds.
When prostitution was decriminalised again the result, correctly predicted by conservatives, was that ever younger girls started selling themselves on the streets.
In both cases, what were minor social problems became major ones after libertarian style liberalisation of the laws.
Children and young people follow the examples and morals of society at large.
De Doc – I didn’t see GCooper saying there had been no medical breakthroughs since the creation of antibiotics. He stated that it was the last revolutionary breakthrough. I can’t see how that’s an incorrect statement; nor a hysterical one.
Sorry about the double post here, I should have rolled it into one…
Bishop Hill – I absolutely agree. Where I come from, the medical profession’s industry body, the Australian Medical Association, has won an enormous amount of priveleges for doctors that no other profession enjoys. Not only that, the AMA is treated by the media as an impartial, “voice-of-reason” commentator on all topics it cares to vent its spleen about, even in cases where it has a clear interest ie. doctors’ wages and benefits. Funnily enough, the general public laps this up. It’s a crazy situation, but as most OAPs know, “If the doctor said it, it must be right!”
I grew up in Italy, and there was no problem for “illegal drinking” because it was not illegal. I was drinking a some wine by the time I was 12 years old and saw not much of weird anglo-saxon behaviour around drinks that I have seen in the UK (Scotland is like a madhouse!) and US, probably because we did no have conservatives like Shawn telling us it was ‘bad’ and treating people like not children but stupid children.
“probably because we did no have conservatives like Shawn telling us it was ‘bad’ and treating people like not children but stupid children.”
Yes of course, the real reason that young people indulge in dangerous binge drinking is because “conservatives” have been telling them its bad.
Now back to reality.
My point was that lowering the drinking age in a society subjected to decades of liberal social engineering was stupid because we no longer live in a society in which responsible moral behaviour is supported and encouraged, and therefore a law change would lead to major social problems. Which it did. New Zealand youth have certainly NOT been subjected to decades of conservative ideas, so Enzo’s point is facile.
A society with limited government and no welfare state cannot be constructed without also changing the culture that liberalism has created.
For all her faults Ayn Rand understood this and rightly criticized libertarians for failing to. Liberalism and libertarian government are mutually exclusive.
The restrictions on licensing hours are responsible for the “drink as much as possible before the pub closes” culture though. Whether those restrictions are “conservative” or not is a red herring.
I’d imagine that, should licensing hours be extended, binge drinking would get worse for a while, before falling back to below current levels. Without the 11pm cut-off, people would have much less incentive to start drinking before getting to the pub, or to drink as quickly as possible once there.
So your solution is to conserve laws which continue to encourage binge drinking and do nothing to restrain public drunkenness? You want a “society in which responsible moral behaviour is supported and encouraged” and yet rather than trying to build an environment in which moral behaviour can occur, you would rather resort to morality-supplanting laws of the state. Typical conservative logic.
Australia used to be the ‘binge drinking’ Mecca, with bars open for just an hour a day. Now it’s the UK, even though pubs, and bars are open for most of the day.
With many pubs being in residential neighbourhoods, the 11pm closing time probably had more to do with reducing noise, at a time which most people consider to ‘be late’, – consideration for others, enforced by law, – if you like.
Most of the licencing laws were formulated around Victorian times, when drunkeness was also a big problem. They seemed to work in reducing the nuisance then, why do they not work now?
A couple of reaons, – 11pm is not now consdered to be late by those who do not have to get up at 6am to be at work by 7 or 8, the unemployed can lay there till midday, and most ‘pants-polishers’, don’t start before 9.
Even if you are in a job requiring an early start, such as in construction or manufacturing, the incentive to be ‘on-time’, has gone, along with the employers ability to right to ‘fire’ you for having the temerity to either be late, or not to turn up at all. So a late night on the booze is usually accompanied by a ‘sickie’ the following day. ‘Ain’t life grand?’
I could never understand the fascination with spending so much, to achieve so little, with the pounding, nauseous, headache of a hangover seen as something to be avoided at all costs. Just what is the point? The phrase ‘drinking himself stupid’, seems apt, apart from the fact that the drunk had to be stupid to start with!
Just as in Victorian times, drunkeness would seem to be in direct proportion to the percentage of the population engaged in meaningful employment, and working in a government office is NOT considered to be meaningful employment. There are actually very few ‘office’ jobs that could be labelled as meaningful in this context, or to even provide that elusive ‘job satisfaction’.
Strangely, crime seems to be linked to this same factor.
I’m with Perry on this one – Gilmore was on the radio yesterday with his “data” – an example of what happened in Perth Australia – marvellous extrapolation there…
There are some concerns and there is a bit of a double standard here on Samizdata about society going to hell in a handcart due to anti-social behaviour and the fact that a lot of town centres do become no go zones, however, more regulation is NOT the way to solve it. Like prohibition on drugs it doesn’t work.
Ah, but this is a corker …you are an anaesthesiologist, you should not be performing operations on any patients, drunk or sober. We have surgeons for that.
And surgeons won’t perform operations without an anaesthesist to put the person under and keep them alive. You are aware of what happens to you under a General Anaesthetic? But, of course, why let the facts get in the way of a good rant eh?
There is no morality in following the law. Morality exists in doing that which is right, without coercion.
The best statement I have read on the matter. Full stop.
That’s an unfair statement. Pubs, clubs and other licensed premises are open for long hours – it’s just they are made to shut at a certain time. Which is sensible. I never binge drink (what is that these days anyway? According to the physicians, if you smell a pint twice you’re a binge drinker…) because the pub is closing soon – I’m usually pissed by that time anyway. I just think that “binge drinking” is a name given to the simple fact that people can’t understand that drinking isn’t something that must be done in as large quantities as possible – it’s nothing to do with pubs having opening hours.
Anyway, would you want to be working in a pub at 5am?
Daveon, who apparently didn’t understand the first time round: And surgeons won’t perform operations without an anaesthesist to put the person under and keep them alive.
That is exactly correct.
It is the surgeon(s) who perform the operation. The surgeon is the one wielding the scalpel. The anaesthesiologist is the one who keeps the patient safely unconscious and painfree during the operation and who brings him/her round when it is over.
These are two separate professions. I hope we have got this all cleared up now.
No, Verity, we haven’t. The operation is known as surgery or surgical procedure. and the anaesthetist is just as much a key part of it as the knife man. You are displaying not only extreme and pointless pedantry, but are wrong into the bargain. I make my living as a subeditor, and this kind of thing is the curse of our profession.
Enzo is right about drink and repression. Doctors and others who treat alcoholism use the French or Italian example to show that youngsters who begin drinking socially in the home learn to treat it as a social and culinary lubricant and that the purpose is not just to get drunk.
I started drinking illegally in pubs at 16 as a thrillingly illicit activity, banned at home (raided dad’s booze stash at about the same time) and was a drunk by the age of 25. I don’t indulge now, but I believe this lure of the forbidden became the leitmotiv of my drinking behaviour.
Here in SA but more especially in Britain, young males (and females often) drink to get drunk and for the same reason, I believe. Prohibition.
Britain already has pretty tight regulations on drinking and yet we also have some pretty nasty problems in our towns and city centres on a Friday and Saturday night, as any police duty officer and emergency doctor will tell you. If one goes to parts of Continental Europe, where drinking laws are in some ways looser, drunken yobbish behaviour is not as bad as in Britain. It is the culture. To change that will take many things, but nannyism is not one of them.
Taking an axe to the Welfare State is, I am afraid, the key to change. For that reason I am not optimistic in the short term.
I don’t want to get involved in the fatuous argument about surgeries, cutters and gas-passers.
Following Shawn’s example, I’m just curious as to whether the reverse happened when the U.S. drinking age was raised from 18 to 21: did the 10-15 drinking problem decrease?
“So your solution is to conserve laws which continue to encourage binge drinking and do nothing to restrain public drunkenness?”
The laws in Britain are only partially responsible. It is also true that Britain has a yob culture and class that sees binge drinking as fun. Changing the laws will not change this attitude.
“You want a “society in which responsible moral behaviour is supported and encouraged” and yet rather than trying to build an environment in which moral behaviour can occur, you would rather resort to morality-supplanting laws of the state.”
No I wouldnt, except temporarily until other things have been dealt with first.
You cannot build an environment in which morally responsible behaviour can occur by simply changing the laws alone. This argument, which I see often here, is based on a falsehood, which is that the laws are the problem, or the source of the problem, and that therefore if we simply change the laws, in time the behaviour will change. This is the same argument used by Marxists (not surprising given that Marxism, is just a variant of liberalism). For the Marxist the problem is the economy. Change the economic model from capitalism to socialism, and hey presto, the New Man will arise. Change the laws from nanny state authoritarianism to libertarianism, and hey presto, the New Man will arise. But humans are by nature crooked timber, imperfect, and capable of both incredible good and terrible evil. Societies laws must reflect this fact. But while I do believe that a free society is possible, it cannot be based on naive ideas about human nature, and most importantly, it cannot be built without also changing the moral and spiritual foundations of our culture and society.
This is a cart before the horse issue. Both of us agree that a more or less “libertarian” system would be a good thing. But in order to get from A to Z you have to change BC and D first.
It is typical liberal logic to believe that you can get to Z just by changing a few laws.
Oh, and for nosiness, little beats doctors.
U.S. pediatricians (okay, paediatricians — this is a UK blog) have been encouraged to ask children whether Daddy has any guns in the house — and if yes, that fact is noted in the child’s folder.
And yes, I know — a kid is more likely to be injured in a gun-related accident in that house than in a gun-free house; just as a child is more likely to be injured in a car accident if the parents drive, as opposed to taking the bus.
Of course, the question is idiotic, considering that all accidents arriving at the doctor’s office are by definition post facto.
So I suppose my answer: “That’s none of your fucking business” to the last noseyparker doctor may have been somewhat over the top…
I believe that pub opening hours were restricted by the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, so as to prevent drunkenness amongst munitions workers.
Do you remember when the pubs had to close in the afternoons? Thatcher changed that, and the world did not end, it just meant you could get a drink in the afternoon.
I very much doubt that many pubs will stay open much longer than they do now. Some city centre pubs might, which pisses off the nightclub sector, because at present if you want a late drink you have to pay a fiver to get into your local cheesy disco.
i honestly doubt this law change will have a great deal of impact. I’m pretty sure my local will not be open 24 hours a day.
AJP Taylor once wrote that before 1914 the average British citizen could go through life, and the only manifestation of the state he would meet would be the Post Office. World War One changed everything, leading to the end of gold currency, conscription, gun control, drug prohibition, a vast expansion of state bureaucracy and intrusion, and pub opening hours. Apart from conscription we still have all the rest. It would be nice if we could move on from 1914 before we get to 2014!
Dave F writes:
” I make my living as a subeditor, and this kind of thing is the curse of our profession.”
Would that be anything like a sub-editor?
Nonsens! France has a ban on alcohol advertising, a tougher drink driving law than UK and an extra tax on alcopops. UK is lagging behind as the only country in Europe that suddenly chooses to liberalise drinking hours in the beliefe that this will introduce a cafe culture and thus solve the drinking problem. The police is against it, NGOs are against it, professionals and scientist are against it. The top expert in UK (Dr Marmott) resigned from the advisory committee when the groups advice was flatly removed from the report by the government. The report as it stands today is a pure alcohol industry document.
Every serious scientist in the area of alcohol research will support mister Gilmore, only the alcohol industry claims that it is the restricions that are the cause of the problem. Who would you normally trust? All the evidence shows that Gilmore is right and that alcohol is a disaster for UK.
The thing that ‘imposing rules on others is immoral’ is teenage liberalism that is tantamount to cynicism. Grow up! The biggest cost from alcohol problems are suffered by third parties, kids, spouses, workplace, hospital budgets (adding to the tax burden), passengers, pedestrians etc. As far as I am concerned, it is the drinker that impose his or her misery on others and that is not particularly moral is it? Instead of protecting the drinkers I think protecting the victims is just as ‘liberal’, they are “individuals” too, aren’t they? Those of us who drink moderately – or claim to do so – should accept the few restrictions without complaining about nanny-state intrusion. This kind of ‘I do what I want-liberalism’ has nothing to do with either the Samizdat tradition or Popper. We’re miles apart. First they appreciated science and a rational approach, second they had humanity in mind not their own precious thirst.
Anders writes:
“The police is against it, NGOs are against it, professionals and scientist are against it.”
Given the track record of all three groups, I think you have just scored a spectacular own-goal.
Ontario’s Chief Coroner
by Malcolm W. Everett
Dr. McLellan? graduated from the University of Toronto –
Get the FACTS: