What To Do About British Chav Drinking Culture

[Wires 74]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educa...ide-Sunday.html

['Bart']

I blame the parents.

Seriously though, is the aim of drinking yourself into oblivion a trait or the modern generation or not? (serious question). There's a difference between getting drunk and being literally paralytic.

I don't remember much about people drinking in the 70s because I never saw much of it. If my parents went out in the evening, I'd either be at home with my gran or, if we went to the local pub, I'd be stuck outside with my glass of lemonade and packet of crisps. The inside of a pub was a briefly glimpsed part of the adult world.

Drink seemed harder to get in those days (or perhaps just not as conveniently available). The was the pub, plus the "off sales" section tacked on, where you could buy alcohol for home consumption. Not so many trendy bars (come on, the was Sheffield in the 1970s) and people *seemed* to do most of their drinking in pubs.

That's my subjective recollection anyway.

[Y-QUERK]

Embrace it?

[Dubai]

I blame the parents.

Seriously though, is the aim of drinking yourself into oblivion a trait or the modern generation or not? (serious question). There's a difference between getting drunk and being literally paralytic.

I don't remember much about people drinking in the 70s because I never saw much of it. Because I was pi55ed out of my head

Come on Bart.... binge drinking's not new. Remember Party 7's??

[Cogs]

I don't remember much about people drinking in the 70s because I never saw much of it. If my parents went out in the evening, I'd either be at home with my gran or, if we went to the local pub, I'd be stuck outside with my glass of lemonade and packet of crisps. The inside of a pub was a briefly glimpsed part of the adult world.

I think the pub, as an adult, is a bit of a disappointment. It never seemed quite as jovial and friendly as it seemed viewed through the distorted glass facing onto the "beer garden" (remember those old heavy trays? presumably far too much like deadly weapons now) or in the "family room" of places that sold Ploughman's lunches on the busy A-roads (contents, two tables, a dart board that looked like it had been blasted with a shot gun, a load of stools and a Space Invaders machine that couldn't go left, only right, Thatcherism got to everything...). Invariably The Jam or Dire Straits playing on the jukebox...I'm far from lost in some sort of Tolkienesque fantasy about real ale at the Sign of the Prancing Pony here, I just mean a normal pub in all its pseudo-victorian 70s flock-wall papered nastiness.

For a while I thought this was just that it seemed better at the time to a child, the glamour of the forbidden and all that.

Now I'm not so sure, I think it was actually loads better. Oh for the golden age of the unpretentious boozer

Don't want to sound a note of offensive controversy here but I blame, you know, people who should drink halves if they don't feel like a Babycham. It isn't their personal fault, its that everything has turned into bloody Ikea with baby changing facilities. The public house has become just like everywhere else.

['Bart']

Come on Bart.... binge drinking's not new. Remember Party 7's??

Did they ever have a No. 1 with "Baby I want your love thing"?

(Thanks to the magic of Google I now know what Party 7's were, although I should point out that they were phased out in the early 80s, about 14 years before I started drinking.)

Is binge drinking worse now than it was though?

[DementedTuna]

I'm 22 and love a good p*ss-up.

Especially after an insanely stressful university course, who can blame 'em, sheesh?

The fogies aren't seriously going to try and pretend that their youth was all victorian and polite and teetotal are they?

Love the response from the college anyway, great choice of words. They're not all that bothered.

Natasha Wear, president of the Newnham Nuns, said: "The college needed to be seen to be doing something to combat the problem of binge drinking."

[Prescience]

Is binge drinking worse now than it was though?

Indeed it is.

However, it is not drink, per se that is the problem: it is social collapse, contempt for the normal social mores, lack of self-control and lack of proper parenting.

The regular sight of young women rolling around in the gutter, puking up their guts is a sign of just how far British society has decayed.

One causal factor is obviously access to greater levels of disposable income: another, the relative low price of seriously strong alcohol: and perhaps largest causal factor of all, the multiple ways alcohol can now be purchased: corner shops: supermarkets, etc.

University students have always had the affinity for a booze up: difference now is that whilst "Outrageous" behaviour was the province of the few Hooray Henrys - and this was mainly in clubs and thus in private - the majority were pretty quickly setting off for their Summer Vac job in order to survive: or straight out to work.

Of course years ago there were a few boozers who turned to violence: normally solved by a large copper bouncing a truncheon off their ear and chucking 'em into a cell for the night, prior to their next meeting with the magistrate next morning!

Today, however, violence and aggressive anti-social behaviour are the norm: and once again symptomatic of social degradation.

[frozen_out]

Seriously though, is the aim of drinking yourself into oblivion a trait or the modern generation or not? (serious question). There's a difference between getting drunk and being literally paralytic.

However, it is not drink, per se that is the problem: it is social collapse, contempt for the normal social mores, lack of self-control and lack of proper parenting.

Have neither of your ever read Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. It's got it all. Binge drinking to oblivion, adultery, promiscuous women, young violent men, ad hoc abortion, the lot. Obviously no one had any moral fibre at all in the 1950s.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

Have neither of your ever read Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. It's got it all. Binge drinking to oblivion, adultery, promiscuous women, young violent men, ad hoc abortion, the lot. Obviously no one had any moral fibre at all in the 1950s.

It was also set clearly and unambiguously in a working class milieu. That was why the film version avoided being censored: the BBFC allowed it on the grounds that it portrayed such behaviour as being something that 'decent people' didn't do. There's actually nothing new about upper class chavery, either: as far as Oxbridge is concerned, just try reading a bit of Evelyn Waugh.

The difference here is lower middle, 'professional' class binge drinking. I agree with earlier posters that (i) it's comparatively recent, and (ii) the increased availability and reduced real price of booze has something to do with it. I was an undergraduate at Durham from 1992-95, and can only remember two or three occasions in all that time when I got drunk to the point of Technicolor yawn territory. Even then, that was an unintended consequence rather than the object of the exercise. Booze was more expensive and less easy to get hold of then (scrapping the 11pm pub closing time has been a disaster, IMO), and drunk and disorderly behaviour was treated with zero tolerance (one student who walked through a car wash naked after getting horrendously drunk was expelled from my college); but more importantly it was seen as a relatively small part of overall social activity, not a be all and end all.

[Guest AuntJess]

Indeed it is.

However, it is not drink, per se that is the problem: it is social collapse, contempt for the normal social mores, lack of self-control and lack of proper parenting.

The regular sight of young women rolling around in the gutter, puking up their guts is a sign of just how far British society has decayed.

One causal factor is obviously access to greater levels of disposable income: another, the relative low price of seriously strong alcohol: and perhaps largest causal factor of all, the multiple ways alcohol can now be purchased: corner shops: supermarkets, etc.

University students have always had the affinity for a booze up: difference now is that whilst "Outrageous" behaviour was the province of the few Hooray Henrys - and this was mainly in clubs and thus in private - the majority were pretty quickly setting off for their Summer Vac job in order to survive: or straight out to work.

Of course years ago there were a few boozers who turned to violence: normally solved by a large copper bouncing a truncheon off their ear and chucking 'em into a cell for the night, prior to their next meeting with the magistrate next morning!

Today, however, violence and aggressive anti-social behaviour are the norm: and once again symptomatic of social degradation.

I agree about the social decline, due IMO, to the lack of decent parenting and discipline. the Justice system too, does not send the right message. They may as well print leaflets which tell the malefactors that no matter what you do, a 'soft landing' awaits you.

As to drink: Having researched my family tree back a couple of hundred years, I found evidence of hard drinking in their death certs. I also know from ancient relatives - now gone - that their parents drank heavily. One of my grandmothers died as a result of alcoholism. Today it is mainly drugs that people turn to when they cannot face their lives, or they want to feel permanently happy, and the binge drinking too is part of this culture of permanent happiness/oblivion from the down side of life.

The difference between then and now, is that in the olden days you could lose your job for drunken behaviour/ time off work due to hangovers. They did not have nanny state to prop them up.

The 'down side' of life was also a different kettle of fish in the early 1900s, compared to the mindless inability to entertain oneself, that we witness today.

[Guest AuntJess]

Have neither of your ever read Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. It's got it all. Binge drinking to oblivion, adultery, promiscuous women, young violent men, ad hoc abortion, the lot. Obviously no one had any moral fibre at all in the 1950s.

I think that your smiley needs a 'roll eyes', or do you seriously believe that last statement? Mayhap you are looking for a reaction from one of us?

Well... you got one.

I lived through the 50's, spent my childhood/early teens there. I was also living in a poor, W/C neighbourhood with W/C parents - terraced house - outside loo, etc. and don't remember real life being like that at all. In my community the church ran all manner of special events - pantos, fetes, etc. in addition to the church events like Whitsun walking, Easter and Christmas choral events. we all took part and enjoyed these simple pleasures. We weren't the blase lot that seems to abound today: the "seen it - had it - looking for a bigger thrill" type that has developed since.

There was a seamier side to life then, but it was in a tiny minority compared to today. There was not a nanny state to bestow largesse on the 'undeserving poor'. Blimey! the 'deserving poor' ( my family) found it hard enough to get by then, but my pa did not turn to crime: He got a second job, working a 7 day week for many years. Having been brought up to have sound principles. he felt it was his duty to support his family.

[Mrs Bear]

I agree about the social decline, due IMO, to the lack of decent parenting and discipline. the Justice system too, does not send the right message. They may as well print leaflets which tell the malefactors that no matter what you do, a 'soft landing' awaits you.

Isn't there already an offence of 'drunk and disorderly'? I don't know why they don't just enforce it, with really hefty fines. Anyone p*ssed who's also vomiting, peeing, fighting in the street or shouting abuse, hit them really hard in the wallets. And if they're under-age, hit the parents even harder.

But they'll never do it - a whopping Yoof vote loser if ever there was one.

I'd particularly like a retrospective whopping fine for the late-20s girl who borrowed without asking my daughter's brand new wool coat at a wedding. Hadn't bothered to bring her own to a December wedding in Ireland, but had no qualms about taking someone else's when she felt ill and wanted to go outside - where she promptly puked a massive gutful of red wine all down it.

And didn't even have the manners to offer to pay for the dry-cleaning.

[Guest theboltonfury]

Did they ever have a No. 1 with "Baby I want your love thing"?

(Thanks to the magic of Google I now know what Party 7's were, although I should point out that they were phased out in the early 80s, about 14 years before I started drinking.)

Is binge drinking worse now than it was though?

I reckon it was just as bad. My old man who's 61 says in the 60's they used to drink until a coma was minutes away and then all drive home (legally)

At least we seem to have a relative handle on DDing

[Scunnered]

I think the pub, as an adult, is a bit of a disappointment. It never seemed quite as jovial and friendly as it seemed viewed through the distorted glass facing onto the "beer garden" ...

I'm guessing you're not from Glasgow then.

[Prescience]

Indeed there are any number of offences which police totally fail to enforce.

Drunk and Disorderly in a Public Place.

Using obscene language.

Obstruction: bearing in mind that when any member of the public is forced to leave the pavement because two or three oiks are congregating, then that's obstruction.

Also worth bearing in mind that the licensee of licensed premises commits a criminal offence when they serve a customer who is already technically drunk: so when happy hours proceed with gay abandon, all the bars are guilty invariably of this offence.

Core problem is IMO, since Thatcher when we had Willie Whitelaw her first Home Sec promising toughness on crime and youth offenders all we got was words: and since then each successive Home Sec has mouthed stirring rhetoric, sound bites and platitudes.

An informative morning is to attend one's local Magistrate's Court (Anyone can, BTW) and see just how contemptuous youth is of a system which has failed.

It's a game: solicitors working under the Legal Aid system build a criminal practice at taxpayer's expense: probation officers, generally are another of the same ilk as Social Workers: and the kids know this and take the proverbial.

JPs years ago tended to be paragons of their community: today, it's an ego trip for the bored housewives and generally people with too much time on their hands.

My perspective on so much of the current social malaise is simple: the left Wing Bleeding Heart Liberal apologists decided that the causes of most crime were social deprivation and environment: it was not their fault, poor lambs. They could be saved. Hallelujah!

Thus instead of providing a big nasty wake up call, the system increasingly tried to forgive and rehabilitate.

In the Real World in which I live it aint like this!

Motivation is a mix of Carrot and Stick: if the carrot fails, then the stick comes out. And if the little stick fails to work then a bigger stick comes out!

Unfortunately in this social system gone mad, where the malfeasors enjoy more rights than the injured breaches basic tenets of accepted human behavioral traits: and human behaviour we are taught when we study behaviouralism is little different from animal behaviour, since humans are pack animals by attavistic nature.

Watch a leader wolf sort out a would be alpha male invader!

Instructive.

Trouble is now this bland homogenous synthetic socially engineered society eschews Alpha Males: which is how and why David Beckham, e.g. becomes a role model!

[Johnny Storm]

Drinking makes a crap life seem less crap. So as people continue to work to make life and society in general in the UK crapper this will continue to be an ever increasing side effect.

It does facinate me why other euro countries dont have the same problem? Or is that not true and they do?

[Bosh]

When I was young, it was my ambition to drink in the pubs like the older folks. It was in my opinion my right of passage. I managed to get away with drinking in boozers from the age of 15 onwards. The problem I see now is that pubs are dissapearing and new restrictions in ensuring under 18`s and in some cases under 21`s are not allowed in pubs through ID is another contentious point.

When I was young, it was our peers and decent bar staff/landlords etc that would attempt to make sure we did not go too far and come 11pm it was time to go home. I met all my mates in the pub and spent many and most nights in a controlled enviroment.

If we fecked about and played up in our locals the adults would put you back in your place and if you persisted then you would be barred.

Measures were controlled and you knew how much you had drank.

Today, kids are necking bottles of vodka and dangerous cheap strong cider/ lager from supermarkets in parks and on street corners and drinking dangerous volumes of alcohol with the sole purpose of getting hammered.

We drank enough and often too much at the same age but we went to the pub to socialise and to pull the girls. We were off the streets and used the pub toilets and not peoples front drives and gardens

If you drank so much that you threw up or acted a knob, your mates would take the piss out of you next day and you would consider your actions and we all dressed smarter back then as well to ensure we got in the pub/club to give us a chance to go sharking for the ladies.

I`m not saying we should allow 15 year olds back into the pub but it should be noted that back then to some part it was controlled and impo this is one of the reasons why we have increased anti social behaviour today.

It was not perfect at all and I offer no answers but that`s my opinion on just one of the reasons why it has got so bad.

[Guest theboltonfury]

When I was young, it was my ambition to drink in the pubs like the older folks. It was in my opinion my right of passage. I managed to get away with drinking in boozers from the age of 15 onwards. The problem I see now is that pubs are dissapearing and new restrictions in ensuring under 18`s and in some cases under 21`s are not allowed in pubs through ID is another contentious point.

When I was young, it was our peers and decent bar staff/landlords etc that would attempt to make sure we did not go too far and come 11pm it was time to go home. I met all my mates in the pub and spent many and most nights in a controlled enviroment.

If we fecked about and played up in our locals the adults would put you back in your place and if you persisted then you would be barred.

Measures were controlled and you knew how much you had drank.

Today, kids are necking bottles of vodka and dangerous cheap strong cider/ lager from supermarkets in parks and on street corners and drinking dangerous volumes of alcohol with the sole purpose of getting hammered.

We drank enough and often too much at the same age but we went to the pub to socialise and to pull the girls. We were off the streets and used the pub toilets and not peoples front drives and gardens

If you drank so much that you threw up or acted a knob, your mates would take the piss out of you next day and you would consider your actions and we all dressed smarter back then as well to ensure we got in the pub/club to give us a chance to go sharking for the ladies.

I`m not saying we should allow 15 year olds back into the pub but it should be noted that back then to some part it was controlled and impo this is one of the reasons why we have increased anti social behaviour today.

It was not perfect at all and I offer no answers but that`s my opinion on just one of the reasons why it has got so bad.

Too true. I am 33 and so 18 years ago me and my mates used to get wrecked on strong cider and go to pubs. Our mission was to get wallopped on booze and weed, and we often meandered around streets off our heads at 15! It's like a coming of age, but then we decided to get jobs and grow up, which I think is the missing factor these days. Maybe it's due to our overly generous Welfare State that overs the youths of today an easy option?

[Guest Skinty]

Maybe there's just no excitement in the world anymore, no real danger, no way for people to test themselves ...

We're all just cogs in one very large soul destroying machine and we're judged by how economically active we are. Young people are particularly looked down upon in today's society because not only are most of them not that rich, but they also have to stay in education for longer.

Alcohol works by inhibiting parts of the brain in stages, the newer parts first (in evolutionary terms) , with the older parts being inhibited the more you drink. The sweet point is when you are merry after a pint or two or a couple of shots. It is this point where you have fewer social inhibitions and can relax more. But this takes time to have an effect, so as people are now binge drinking due to the whole macho risk-taking culture that has grown up due to the banality and futility of life, people don't associate the transient sweet spot with the correct amount that they have drunk. Added to this is that the more of a seasoned drinker you are the more you have to drink to reach the sweet point.

Youngsters need to learn how to enjoy themselves again. Imagine if instead of sending 50% of them off to university we kept grants for only the most academically gifted as used to be the case. But instead of providing them with money to throw away on alcohol we provided them with food and accommodation vouchers. Students would have to figure out how to enjoy themselves rather than have it all laid on for them. As it is now, universities have to try and get money where they can, and they often try to get it from the already cash-strapped students by enticing them into bars. Now also imagine a world where those that did not go to university had the chance of buying a house, starting a family and to save up for something special. Getting rodent bottomed would no longer be the sole focus of many people.

It is too easy to just exist in modern society, but very little of what is available is worthwhile having.

[Guest AuntJess]

Indeed there are any number of offences which police totally fail to enforce.

Drunk and Disorderly in a Public Place.

Using obscene language.

Obstruction: bearing in mind that when any member of the public is forced to leave the pavement because two or three oiks are congregating, then that's obstruction.

Also worth bearing in mind that the licensee of licensed premises commits a criminal offence when they serve a customer who is already technically drunk: so when happy hours proceed with gay abandon, all the bars are guilty invariably of this offence.

Core problem is IMO, since Thatcher when we had Willie Whitelaw her first Home Sec promising toughness on crime and youth offenders all we got was words: and since then each successive Home Sec has mouthed stirring rhetoric, sound bites and platitudes.

An informative morning is to attend one's local Magistrate's Court (Anyone can, BTW) and see just how contemptuous youth is of a system which has failed.

It's a game: solicitors working under the Legal Aid system build a criminal practice at taxpayer's expense: probation officers, generally are another of the same ilk as Social Workers: and the kids know this and take the proverbial.

JPs years ago tended to be paragons of their community: today, it's an ego trip for the bored housewives and generally people with too much time on their hands.

My perspective on so much of the current social malaise is simple: the left Wing Bleeding Heart Liberal apologists decided that the causes of most crime were social deprivation and environment: it was not their fault, poor lambs. They could be saved. Hallelujah!

Thus instead of providing a big nasty wake up call, the system increasingly tried to forgive and rehabilitate.

I am put in mind of an earnest discussion, which I hopped in on, taking place in a 6th form Common Room. Two of the typically PC teachers - who seem to have dominated education for the last 2+ decades - were discussing a particular boy, who was a RIGHT piece of work. The came to the joint conclusion that allowances must be made for someone unfortunate enough to be living on a council estate and that punishment should be withheld. This kind of Lady Bountiful condescension gets right up my nose, so I regaled them with a potted history of MY youth, on just such an estate: With a drunken wife-beating slob living on one side of us, and a draughtman - librarian couple on't other side, whose daughter taught at Sunday school. You couldn't get two more extremes. I asked them how they accounted for my - and my decent neighbour's -socially appropriate behaviour, if council estates living was such a disadvantage. Never did get an answer.

In the Real World in which I live it aint like this!

Motivation is a mix of Carrot and Stick: if the carrot fails, then the stick comes out. And if the little stick fails to work then a bigger stick comes out!

Unfortunately in this social system gone mad, where the malfeasors enjoy more rights than the injured breaches basic tenets of accepted human behavioral traits: and human behaviour we are taught when we study behaviouralism is little different from animal behaviour, since humans are pack animals by attavistic nature.

Watch a leader wolf sort out a would be alpha male invader!

Instructive.

Trouble is now this bland homogenous synthetic socially engineered society eschews Alpha Males: which is how and why David Beckham, e.g. becomes a role model!

The animal kingdom abounds with examples of parental 'guidance' , with 'tough love' being the principal tool. Once that breed of PC, clueless twits - from sheltered backgrounds - are removed from positions where they do most damage, we might make a bit of progress, with our young.

[Guest AuntJess]

Maybe there's just no excitement in the world anymore, no real danger, no way for people to test themselves ...

We're all just cogs in one very large soul destroying machine and we're judged by how economically active we are. Young people are particularly looked down upon in today's society because not only are most of them not that rich, but they also have to stay in education for longer.

Alcohol works by inhibiting parts of the brain in stages, the newer parts first (in evolutionary terms) , with the older parts being inhibited the more you drink. The sweet point is when you are merry after a pint or two or a couple of shots. It is this point where you have fewer social inhibitions and can relax more. But this takes time to have an effect, so as people are now binge drinking due to the whole macho risk-taking culture that has grown up due to the banality and futility of life, people don't associate the transient sweet spot with the correct amount that they have drunk. Added to this is that the more of a seasoned drinker you are the more you have to drink to reach the sweet point.

Youngsters need to learn how to enjoy themselves again. Imagine if instead of sending 50% of them off to university we kept grants for only the most academically gifted as used to be the case. But instead of providing them with money to throw away on alcohol we provided them with food and accommodation vouchers. Students would have to figure out how to enjoy themselves rather than have it all laid on for them. As it is now, universities have to try and get money where they can, and they often try to get it from the already cash-strapped students by enticing them into bars. Now also imagine a world where those that did not go to university had the chance of buying a house, starting a family and to save up for something special. Getting rodent bottomed would no longer be the sole focus of many people.

It is too easy to just exist in modern society, but very little of what is available is worthwhile having.

In terms of effects of booze on the brain, the cortex/ reasoning part is 'damped down', whilst the midbrain seems to be more stimulated, or maybe it is just getting a freer rein, freed from the inhibiting aspect of the cortex.

Hence the appetative drives come more to the fore - fighting, eating etc...the emotions much more evident, but the ability to talk sense disappears!

[SHERWICK]

I blame the parents.

I blame the immigrants.

Oh wait... that's another thread.

[Bosh]

I blame the immigrants.

Oh wait... that's another thread.

FFS, you are obsessed.

Someone mentioned recently that certain people follow certain posters. As soon as they see them post they jump onto a thread and bait them.

Online stalking

[Guest AuntJess]

I blame the immigrants.

Oh wait... that's another thread.

Thus you demonstrate an inability to address any topic, with other than the narrow-band views your PC dominated education bestowed upon you, poor soul.

Or is it just a case of

Awooooga!!