Bad Monday

According to this morning’s news every 3 days an under 10 year is admitted to hospital with alcohol related problems, you would have thought he would have got the hang of drinking by now. Ok so it’s not a super funny joke, made me laugh though, but it was the only point of light in a very dull morning of news. Another report out this morning has said that the English drink too much. Well thank you for that, we all know that, now tell us what we can do about it. What’s that Skippy? They only have a couple of rehashed suggestions? Oh yes, ban drinks promotions in pubs and shops and make alcohol more expensive so that only rich people can get drunk. Now that is elitist any Republicans out there. This was about the 4 millionth report of recent years that added nothing useful to the debate about drinking and the abuse of alcohol in this country. None of them ask why people find it necessary to drink to excess so much. I know I have written about this before but I find it very annoying that this issue is being ignored in this way. By not asking the right questions you can have as many reports as you like but you won’t come up with anything useful. One of the reasons people drink is the same as the reason why they shop, their lives are empty and they are bored. It’s true. You drink to excess to numb the pain, there is no other reason. You shop because you have been told that this is how you fill that yawning chasm that is the meaning of your life, it doesn’t. it makes you feel worse in some cases because you have spent money you don’t have but the good news is the economy is doing well supported only by consumer spending, oh no, wait, it’s fucked now isn’t it. I honestly believe that if people had more in their lives other than work and ready meals and BBC3 there would be much less drinking and anti-social behaviour, don’t worry I’m not going to suggest that you all find religion but find something to do. Grow stuff, volunteer, take some exercise, do something and suddenly your life will feel better and so will you. In my opinion, there is a phrase that can make a roomful of people sigh simultaneously, it is not a coincidence that mental health issues have risen at the same time that working hours have increased.
The other thing that really pissed me off this morning, sorry for the bad language today but I had to work on a Monday morning and I really don’t like that, was the front page of The Sun this morning which was outraged, as they always are, it must be so tiring, that GCSE pupils might be asked to listen to/study Gary Glitter’s hit “Do You Wanna Be In My Gang?” My genuine question here is why? Do they think that if they play it backwards they will hear messages encouraging them to abuse children? The only reason that I could see for their impotent rage is the fact that the song is by Gary Glitter. That’s it. No more than that. He’s not going to make any money out of it, not going to be more famous, despite the Sun putting him on the front page every couple of weeks for no good reason and not going to have access to children. Does this moral outrage spread to all artists that have done something wrong or just paedophiles? Can I no longer watch the muppet show because Chris Langham used to write some of it and appeared on it? Do I have to stop listening to The Who? How about the Naked Gun films? OJ Simpson is in them and he’s in prison. How about Roman Polanski films? James Brown, Chuck Berry, Babyshambles, S Club 7 for god’s sake. Anything written or produced by Phil Spector. Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, Larry King, Bill Gates and Hugh Grant have all been arrested, should we avoid their products? I believe that the current President of the United States of America has at least one conviction. To completely bludgeon my point home go to www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/index.html for a very long list of famous people arrested.