This is more nanny state crap from the government.

The next thing will be rules to curb the amount you eat to avoid you exceeding the maximum allowed turd size in any one "sitting", so that they can save water by narrowing sewer pipes.

Pingers? Goonbags? Either I'm more out of touch with yoof cultcha than I realised, or they have some mighty strange sounding drugs in the land of Oz.

I have to concur that the "limits" were entirely fictional - I seem to recall reading in a depressive paper that they were plucked out of thin air, and then halved. because they seemed so generous as to encourage drinking.As Barbara Castle was just introducing the breathalyser at the time, they halved it again to tie in with the anticipated limits to make more sense.......siiigh. Before the health nazis have a pop, I.ve almost stopped visiting the pub because i can't smoke anymore with my pint! So I'm much healthier now - AND BLOODY MISERABLE! 

Drinkers live longer on average with less cronic health problems.

The sweet spot seems to be 2 glasses of red wine every day for men, and 1 for women.

Don't drink and drive though, that's a serious death/murder wish.

Why would anyone want to consume large amounts of alcohol is beyond me.

Of all the drugs a person can buy alcohol is one of the most destructive. It's far worse than most, the only real drugs that can kill you quiker are much more expensive. Heroin, Crack, Opium those are more destructive.

Now, if you consider that in most cases alcohol has the worst side effects of all light drugs, such as weed, E, shrooms & speed. Why would you want to drink it?

Ever met a bunch of stoners that became excessively violent on weed or E??

This has all been researched many years ago. Wake up and smell the coffee after the hangover. Alcohol SUCKS.

It smells bad, it tastes bad, it kills your brain cells, you liver, lowers your zinc count (that things that makes general Willy stand at attention so well), It ruins your stomach lining to promote ulcers, it kills most vitamins & protein in your blood. By "killing" I mean the absorbtion is reduces by as much as 80% You know vitamins and proteins? those things that help your boody function, regualte blood sugar levels, remove fatty deposits from your veins, help you retain muscle fibre, help you focus...you know, keeps you healthy.

The list goes on and on...& all that for what? so you can get blurry vision? slurred speech? vomit? disregard wrong or right? loss of motoric skills??

Where is the great appeal of consuming vast amounts of alcohol??

Smelling bad?

If you consume say, HALF a pint IN A WEEK. The alcohol might actually serve a good purpose by cleaning out your kidneys. Better try half a glass of red wine. At least thats semi-healthy.

So in short, once your find out that you cannot have your fun without drinking enough to make you light headed, YOU'RE A LOOSER.

Let me repeat & read carefully now, if you cannot enjoy a night out without getting a bit drunk you're; a pathetic, lost, stupid, sorry excuse for a person & should seek professional help.

Teens always get this image of the big night out. You know, you go out, go to some club, drink alot cause you don't have to do stuff when your parents are not there. You get drunk & try to hook up with other drunk girls so maybe you can get into their pants.
But more often than not, the big night out turns into the roving puking night on the streets with no sex.

Just another statistic that makes briton the drunkest nation period.

Joke about it, ignore it & explain it all you want. But the fact is, alcohol consumption, alcoholism & closet alcoholism are serious problems in the UK.

How many times can you recycle that last paragraph and get paid for it?

Can't believe that the Inq authors are still drinking mere/average G&Ts. Move up at least, to GVTs. A GVT is a Gin-Vodka-Tonic-ice composite in a 1234 ratio. 1 unit of gin, 2 units of vodka, 3 units of tonic, 4 units of crushed ice. Usually served in a pint glass. If consumed rapidly, before the ice melts much, one can imbibe nearly a 50/50 mixture of tonic water and hooch. I personally prefer a mix of Bombay Sapphire and whatever rot-gut vodka might be had. 

Ah, well. If the Inq's best drink lightly, then there's all the more for me. 

- The Garret


You anglosaxons dudes are alcoholics and alcohol is a hard drug, indeed. You should consider switching to weed guys.. At least the government wont get taxes from your nasty habits.

I'm also an Aussie, and as you would expect of an Inq reader I do indeed drink! (gotta decipher the articles somehow :P )

Kevin Rudd's tax increase as noted above by Lachlan will not solve a bloody thing and only serves as collective punishment for all the other pre-mix drinkers out there who now get slugged extra for the social problems of a minority of young kids.

These kids just get wasted on goonbags anyway (saw a few of them on the train from Melbourne the other day, quite tanked but a rather happy bunch) so it'll never work.

As always, they're trying to combat symptoms of a larger problem which they're too scared to properly address, which is WHY are the kids binge drinking, not WHAT are they drinking.

Government idiocy and ignorance seem to know no bounds these days.

*cracks open a can*

While waiting for RAID tombstone to SSD up, put down extra Gallon of AgriProduct. Just 'oL 170 proof+ethylene. Keep Gal Tucked under Ones right Arm, turn nozzle when Tank Low.

People actually make Money by Driving in cost Credits. Auto uses about 10 cents mile for Fuel & gets buck or more tax credit for vechile. so you can afford to actually Drive completely Blacked Out.
drashek

Good article, we're suffering the effects of a so called crack down on binge drinking here in Aus as well. I say 'so called' as our government seems to have no idea what to do and as an attempted quick fix, and also in an attempt to seem they do know what they're doing, have decided that a tax increase on alchopops is the answer, that is, any premixed drinks with spirits, not including beer and wine.

fyi a carton (24pk) of rum&cola pre-mix cans wen't up from ~$50 to ~$80.

And of course, this has solved nothing. I went to my rum and cola drinking mates place for drinks on friday night the week after the new tax was in. And guess what. They just bought a 40 once bottle of rum on which that tax doesn't apply with some bottles of cola and got even more trashed. Myself, I just switched to beer. Reports are coming in now that teen drinkers are all doing the same. It seems that Ruddy's (our PM) new tax is just getting kids even more sloshed as they DON'T know how many units they're having as the studies have shown. They mix 1/2 and 1/2 vodka and lemonade which has way more units than your standard alcopop. Then guess what happens at 3am when they've run out of lemonade and the shops are all closed. If you guessed these 16 y/o's start swigging straight vodka to an extent that would make Boris Yeltsin look likes he's straight edge, then you are the winrar. Of course, elicit drugs are resonably easy to get your hands on and it's much cheaper to buy 1 or 2 pingers to last you the whole night than it is to spend a night in the clubs drinking. And of course, if you cbf mixing your drinks and your intente on binge drinking you can just buy a 4l bag of wine and chug away with only $10 out of pocket.

Clearly binge drinking is a part of Aussy and Blighty culture, so if governments want to make a change they need to change the culture. IMO UK government is doing better than Aus as they are actually using all these posters and stuff for education, which is much better than a stupid tax increase.

What happened to battling for working families Rud? Inflation is off the chain, food and petrol are through the roof and yet the best you can come up with is another tax increase?

Don't blame me, I voted Liberal.


Right, Jumbo GT ice 'n a slice twice its then.....

A stained bank, indeed. An imbibing society has so much more to offer than dry rug. "Energizing" alcopops are for oxy morons. There is no substitute for experience and aging. Prattling do-gooders can not be trusted to any good outcome. Don't get me started! Pull the other one! Charge more for less, and then the toffs labour me to add it all up? an bless my bejesus! I'm not even allowed to carry a one! (new maths my arse!) Cork yer own unit, guv! It's just your jive talkin'! 
Over in Llangunllo, they have a pub in the bus-stop, and there's a church in Pennal, near Machynlleth, close to the Powys-Gwynedd border that will serve lager, wine and spirits! I don't know what sinister forces in Blighty are prohibiting beverage rate birth rights. And where did the notion of not talking in church come from? Great Kirk Culdee and Vicar Jim Beam!

good point. it seems as if alchohol is a booming economy's choice of drug since it drives people to work harder towards the weekend and then spend all their money. Seems Evil huh? alcohol ruins lives and the government don't give a sh*t, as long is 'GREAT' Britain is in the lead.

Drinking is like overclocking. It's approached in little increments.
Get drunk, and remember how much you drank (not so easy). Back off a bit next time, and keep backing off each time until you can get drunk and happy without the vomiting bit.
There - that's your limit. Enjoy!

Andrew:

This all sounds like denial to me. There must be more to human life than unloading your gullet into the big white telephone. Perhaps a 12 step program could help.

On the subject of finding Inq reporters attractive: next time you are loaded please post a picture of Sylvie so we can further analyze this issue.

Coffee time...