Will this government's binge-whinging never cease? Now they're complaining about people quietly drinking at home.
Yesterday, the Home Office and the Department of Health published a report on the next phase of the National Alcohol Strategy, Safe. Sensible. Social. The report includes a binge of ‘triple measures’ against what the authorities see as a rogue’s gallery of pissheads and winos. As part of its ‘three-pronged strategy’, the government aims to breathalyse the usual suspects, including the working masses and teenagers - but now it also has stern words for middle-class stay-at-home vinophiles, whose boozing is apparently problematic too. With the middle classes now under regulative scrutiny, the question must be asked: is nobody safe from intrusive meddling?
The new strategy document proposes, in many ways, more of the same: more education campaigns, more advice, more treatment facilities, and more of a crackdown on drunken behaviour. The targets include underage drinkers and 18- to 24-year-olds; the report also suggests targeting ‘harmful drinkers, many of whom don’t realise that their drinking patterns damage their physical and mental health and may be causing substantial harm to others.’ That includes you people who neck a couple of bottles of wine at home as well as those who get drunk and disorderly in public.
Yesterday, the Home Office and the Department of Health published a report on the next phase of the National Alcohol Strategy, Safe. Sensible. Social. The report includes a binge of ‘triple measures’ against what the authorities see as a rogue’s gallery of pissheads and winos. As part of its ‘three-pronged strategy’, the government aims to breathalyse the usual suspects, including the working masses and teenagers - but now it also has stern words for middle-class stay-at-home vinophiles, whose boozing is apparently problematic too. With the middle classes now under regulative scrutiny, the question must be asked: is nobody safe from intrusive meddling?
The new strategy document proposes, in many ways, more of the same: more education campaigns, more advice, more treatment facilities, and more of a crackdown on drunken behaviour. The targets include underage drinkers and 18- to 24-year-olds; the report also suggests targeting ‘harmful drinkers, many of whom don’t realise that their drinking patterns damage their physical and mental health and may be causing substantial harm to others.’ That includes you people who neck a couple of bottles of wine at home as well as those who get drunk and disorderly in public.
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