"Tam lo'ed him like a very brither,
they had been fou for weeks thegither"
If the Scottish SNP Govt. have their way a young man or woman can go to cast their vote at election time but wont be able to buy a can of beer, they can also drive a car, get married, raise children, own a home and they can kill and be killed as a member of the armed forces but can't buy that can of beer.
This a stupid knee jerk scatter gun approach to the problem of alcohol abuse.
Young people who voted SNP must be feeling betrayed, they are all being tarred with the same brush and the fact of the matter is it will not work, young people will find a way to get drink, the easiest way would be to get a big brother or sister to get it, that's how stupid the Govt. proposal is. There is also no shortage of people old enough to avoid the ban who will get them the stuff for a small fee.
A 21 yr. old can buy from an off licence and binge drink to his/her content so the problem will go on, the biggest problem with alcohol is not among teenagers it's among mature adults and that's not even mentioned.
This is rather like the misapprehension that ASBO's are mainly slapped on youngsters when the large majority are for mature adults who are invariably problem drinkers.
I have been in about 8 different European Countries and I have never witnessed youths binge drinking so, maybe we should take a leaf out of their book and educate youngsters to behave responsibly with alcohol.
That of course would be difficult and it would take a long time to succeed but it has a far better chance than this half baked populist measure, which is designed more to grab headlines for the SNP than it is to solve the problem.
Alex (the spiv) - "lets demonise the feckless young that's always worth a few votes"
When he makes another deceitful speech about those brave youngsters who wear the proud Scottish uniform in foreign fields, I hope they remember that this man thinks so much of them that he doesn't trust them to buy a beer from a supermarket.
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10 comments:
It's a ridiculous idea and I'll certainly be making my feelings known to my MSPs.
Whilst the vast majority of young people are able to drink without causing a problem. The anti-social element will not be deterred at all. They'll simply go to cheaper pubs and social clubs (of which there are many in the outlying schemes of Glasgow and elsewhere). And of course they can make use of the time honoured tradition of hanging about outside the offy harassing older folk to get their booze for them. This will achieve nothing.
Still it's cheaper than better policing.
thats funny.
the Labour Party (Scotch branch) 'Broadly welcome and support' the proposals.
Has the Labour party left you Terry or have you left the Labour party (Scotch branch of course)
I don't think anyone is denying there is an issue with our attitudes to alcohol, and I am glad the government is looking at ways to change the way we see and use it however this smacks of doing something for the sake of doing something.
It appears that any law passed to set a minimum price will be incompetent. Additionally it will not stop alcoholics or children from buying alcohol.
For the most part children get an adult to get their carry out and in future years they will still get an adult to get their carry out.
Further, if ou have higher prices, what wil happen is that a higher percentage of a family budget will be spent feeding the habit of the parent while leaving even less for the children.
There are also many issues such as being old enough to allowed to create a child but not old enough to celebrate its birth. Being old enough to fight in a foreign country but not old enough to walk into your local bar.
I dont honestly know what is the best way forward here but this initiative is worthless and will be ineffective.
At the end of the day, alcohol is seen as a 'grown up's' drink, and it's a simple fact of life that we, as humans, like to try to get what we aren't allowed; it gets the adrenaline rushing.
If the drinking age is raised, more and more underage drinkers will emerge.
I fully agree that education would be more successful in tackling underage drinking, rather than raising the drinking age.
Come on Terry, this is hardly an exclusively SNP initiative and they are only following the home secretary's lead on this.
See Hansard for the Home Secretary's plan for "Alcohol Disorder Zones"
In an interview in the Daily Mirror Ms Smith went on to say:
"Boozing kids will face a massive clampdown after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith revealed that the majority of 13-year-olds had tried alcohol.
Ms Smith said she could not believe some parents GAVE drink to their children.
"We have reached a worrying tipping point - where more 13-year-olds have drunk alcohol than have not." That could amount to at least 350,000 13-year-olds."
How are parents expected to educate their children and take away some of the mystery of alcohol if they don't give it to them? I suspect that that number of 13 year olds is much higher on the continent.
We allow our children to have a half glass of weak shandy or watered down wine whenever we have a drink with a meal at home. Not very often mind, but I have a teenage son and I hope that by doing this I am instilling some common sense into the lad so that he won't go out and get wasted when he reaches pub-going age. I'm not saying he won't get drunk - we've all gone through that stage, but I hope that he will at least understand about drinking sensibly.
I must admit I am quite baffled by the going out, getting drunk and fighting culture that pervades our society. I've not ever felt compelled to do so but I suspect that it is some deeply buried part of our ancestral psyche back when we were either Picts, Celts or Saxons and always fighting against an invader or with each other.
(Jennifer) 17/06/08
A very observant last sentence.
(Oakwood) 17/06/08
I agree particularly with the point about the family budget. Families of problem drinkers suffered a lot when pubs were granted all day licences.
(Becki Fox) 17/06/08
It’s a long term problem and only a long term solution will fix it, not this quick headline grab.
(Bob Flowers) 08:02
You seem to be missing the point here, I’m not talking about 13 yr. olds we should do everything possible to discourage kids that age from drinking. 18 yr. olds are young adults.
(Anonymous) 17/06/08
I haven’t seen any Labour Party comment and I’m not speaking on their behalf but I will hazard a guess that it’s something like this :-
“We are in favour of tough measures and we support the concept of tackling binge drinking by youngsters but we are not convinced that this proposal is workable, we need to see more detail and have the matter discussed thoroughly”
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