'It was a woman who drove me to drink......'

‘And I forgot to thank her…!’

 

There is one thing our politicians know something about. Boozing.

 

I have forgotten how many bars there are in the House of Commons but it’s a lot. It is probably still the case that it is the only place where one can drink legally for 24 hours a day. It has produced some notorious topers, like the late George Brown, and no doubt still does.

 

Now the egregious Alex Salmond, Leader of the Caledonian Porridge Gobblers, is proposing a minimum price for alcohol, in a hopeless attempt to reduce one of Scotland’s traditions. What Scottish pastime will he attack next? Deep-fried Mars bars? Head-butting?

 

Just to show that he is not to be outdone in the ‘How to lose votes’ stakes, Cameroon is said to be toying with the same idea.

 

As it happens, the UK has the priciest beer of  the major beer-drinking nations, according to an Economist survey that has calculated how many minutes a person must work to earn the price of the amber nectar. In Britain it is about 12 minutes; in China only 10. The prize goes to the US with less than 5.

 

And the actual price is nearly the highest. Australia is just in the lead with a price of US$3.70 against the UK’s US$3.65. Nigeria is just 54 cents, which must be the cheapest Guinness on the planet.

 

So do these politicos really think we will drink less if it’s made more pricey?

 

For centuries the British have had a reputation for hard drinking and lascivious women. Shakespeare’s characters always seem to be quaffing something or other. Cruikshank, Gilroy and other cartoonists wonderfully illustrated the incredible amount of boozing that went on in London in Regency times.  The amount put away by the Pickwick Club would have felled a hartebeest.

 

Alcohol features heavily in our cultural and literary traditions.

 

Here is AE Housman:

 

‘Malt does more than Milton can

To justify God’s ways to man’.

 

And GK Chesterton:

 

‘St George he was for England,

And before he killed the dragon,

He drank a pint of English ale

Out of an English flagon’.

 

Keats:

 

‘O for a draught of vintage

That hath been cooled a long age

In the deep delved earth!'

 

Some Tennyson:

 

‘How goes the time?

‘Tis 5 o’clock.

Go fetch a pint of port!’

 

Coleridge:

 

‘And we should cry ‘Beware, beware

His flashing eyes, his floating hair.

Weave a circle  around him thrice

And close your eyes with holy dread.

For he on honey dew has fed

And drunk the milk of paradise’

 

And finally, Eden Philpotts:

 

‘Beer drinking don’t do half the harm of lovemaking!’

 

The Victorians, in their prissy way, tried to control it (only for the lower classes, you will understand).

 

Lloyd George introduced licensing laws during WW1 on the reasonable grounds that turning-up trollied for work in an explosives factory might be a tad –well -  explosive. The new laws were for ‘hostilities-only’. We had to wait for Maggie to loosen them.

 

So what is the prospect of the British giving up the fine old tradition of getting ratarsed now and again?

 

None. Booze is not very price-sensitive. Raise the price and people will simply spend less on non-necessities.

 

So Dave and Wee Jock may try to cut us back in these stressful times, like WC Fields – ‘Before breakfast I never drink anything stronger than gin!’

 

But there was a music-hall song that went

 

‘God damn their eyes

If they ever tries

To keep a poor man from his beer!’