Smokophobia becomes drinkophobia becomes...

 

In Aberdeen there has long been a byelaw forbidding public boozing. Naturally, the Red Stripe chavs take no notice but anyone else gets fined. That's been in place since long before the smoking ban and the combination very quickly finished a lot of town pubs when the smoking ban came in.
It was like a smoky-drinker's definition of Hell. The pubs can open all day but you can't smoke in any of them and you can't take your drink outside. The only pubs that could get around this were those that had outside seating areas on land they owned. Only those pubs could allow drinks out in their smoking area (only defined as such when it's rotten weather, otherwise it's the smokophobes' outside whining area). Even so, three bad winters and three crap summers, plus pompous whiners on rare fine days, have not made those outside areas worth visiting. Pubs are not permitted to put up shelters worthy of the name because all MPs of any parliament are spiteful gits. No other reason makes sense, no other reason has even been suggested. It's just spite.
In Wigan, apparently, they have also decided to further kill their pubs by banning drinking outside (tipped by Mad Morgan in comments to the previous post). Because in Wigan, everyone is going to die of booze. I've been to Wigan. If I was stuck there, under that maniac council, I'd drink myself to death too.
The articles are not my focus this evening. They are the antismoking template all over again and entirely predictable It's the comments. Like this one:
if it wasn't for the tax paid on all this alcohol all you abstainers would be moaning about the extra tax you would have to pay !! what do these doctors want !! you live to about 75 and die quietly so you do not draw too much pension or use the NHS ? there seams to be to many so called professionals telling the majority how to live their lives !! sod them its my life and i'll do what i want in moderation. old age and poverty is not a good combination for a working class lad and private pensions a waste of time.
We smokers tried that approach. It didn't work for us and it won't work for drinkers. Sure, the duty more than covers the stated costs, as with smoking, but don't imagine you are up against anyone who is remotely interested in truth. You are up against neo-Nazis who hate you for no reason other than they've been told it's okay to hate you. By the government.
Even if you just like wine with dinner and have never been out raging and drooling after a night drinking beer mixed with something luminous, you're still a problem. Here's what just one of those commenters said:
Known this for a while now. Telling habitual drinkers it's not good for them, is a risky business as their immediate response is to defend, deflect & deny. Being teetotal ( spelt properly ) a little of what you do not fancy isn't going to do me any good. I dislike alcohol and the horrors that goes with it. It damages mental health ( why drinkers spring to its defence ) causes accidents & harms third parties.
This one has it all. The addict who cannot reason, second hand drinking, the 'horrors' of this evil substance, the old 'I don't like it so nobody can have it' childish bleat, it's all there. The antismoker template in a nutshell and there's not even a whiff from a cannabis-based catalytic converter to be sniffed.
Oh, you didn't know what was in those catalytic converters? Well what did you think it was? Sucker.
I had an Email earlier from my regular South African correspondent which, coincidentally, referenced a witchcraft (the new word for science) study that shows all smokers to be mad junkies (thanks, Chris). This started with the 'smokers cannot make decisions on smoking because they are addicted' in the comments left by the deranged. Now that same approach has begun with booze. You will note that the booze article in the Mail is not about spewing thugs fighting in the streets. It is about you having a bottle of wine with a meal in the evening, and not even a bottle each. That is what the comment refers to.
There is no safe level of (insert personal prejudice).
Next might be 'junk' food or salt. It'll be the same template again. 'Junk food addicts' has already appeared in comments so maybe that one's first. 'Salt addicts' can't be far away now.
I hope there's an asteroid landing soon. A cull of the useless is long overdue.

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