Sanctimonious Cockwaffler

I read this comment on another Blog tonight. Obviously a Righteous clone of the first order. Even when other posters had stated that the tax at the moment, was more than enough to cover the consequences of the binge drinking, he still didn't understand.

Why can't he understand that it is the attitude to drinking that needs to change, and that price won't effect the average binge drinker? They'll just give up something else like food. I should know, because that's how my twin brother died. Read below.

I have been an advocate of a minimum price for things for a while now.

Well, not a minimum price as such, but an obscene level of tax on things like Alcohol, Cigarettes etc… to the point where a pint is £10 and a pack of fags £15 say.

The way I see it, as it stands, people will go out with £50 or often more, and with that money they can buy so much alcohol they could kill themselves if they wanted to, several times over. Education isn’t working, police presence isn’t working, so what will? Well, they are going to take out their £50 or more regardless, so limit the amount they can buy with their money. If their money only buys them a few drinks rather than a fair few pints plus a fair few shots, that can only be a good thing.

In addition, if this is coupled with tax breaks on non alcoholic beverages in clubs, and fining clubs that have blind drunk people coming out of their exists at the end of the night (easy to spot), it will be in the clubs best interests to throw out people “well on their way”.

Add it all up and it starts to become very difficult to get totally smashed on a night out, which means less NHS pressure due to dealing with drunk people, and less alcohol fuelled violence at the end of the night.

Put it this way, i’m 25, and as you can imagine, no stranger to city centre pubs and night clubs, and during my first and second year student days in particular I drunk to excess like everyone else (although I was never violent), and there were times when I was glad to have some friends around me or I would have simply passed out in the street or been arrested most likely. How pathetically stupid was I? Seriously embarrassing to remember how much I was drinking just a few years ago. Thankfully i’ve grown up since then. These days I don’t drink at all. I like to go out, but I equally like waking up early the following morning and not being hungover, and not having to worry whether i’m still over the limit to drive from the night before.

I’m not trying to be holier than thou though, and say that no-one should drink, just that drinking should be in moderation, and the best way to ensure that is to make it financially difficult, coupled with other measures, for people to get into such a state on a night out. After all, rules and regulations don’t work. Banning things doesn’t work. Hitting people in the pocket works every time.

Not holier than thou? Yes you are, you pig ignorant gobshite.

And he continues later on with this

I really don’t see a problem with this for one simple reason. Public attitudes. Just take cigs. Who would dare criticise the increase in duty on them year on year? No-one, because it’s now socially unacceptable. Alcohol is getting to be the same. Criticising any clamp down is a loser, and will only get more so as time goes on.

Oh, and his name is John, if you happen to meet him in a dark alleyway whilst trollied.