Looking Through Ian Gilmore's Eyes*

Proper cunt Ian Gilmore has been spouting off again. Further confirming the Devil's very accurate appraisal of him.

Professor Ian Gilmore is a mouthpiece for the government and should probably have his tongue ripped from his lying head before being hanged by his testicles in a tank full of ravenous piranas. The cunt.

Why the vitriol? Well, perhaps it has something to do with press releases such as this.

Responding today to data in Smoking, drinking and drug use among young people in England, 2008 that suggests the likelihood of a pupil drinking alcohol increases with the number of drinkers per household, Professor Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians said:

“These figures show very clearly that we need to tackle teenage drinking from every possible angle. While it’s absolutely right to focus on issues of price, and illegal sales it is equally vital that parents, teachers and other role models acknowledge that their own behaviour shapes children’s attitudes towards alcohol. In a sense this cuts to the heart of what we mean when we talk about our drinking culture. If we are to encourage healthier attitudes among the young, adults need to think more carefully about the examples we set for our children.”

Welcome to a significant step in promoting the denormalisation of parental alcohol consumption. Porky Liam Donaldson invented the term 'passive drinking' to tack on the back of the anti-tobacco fantasy of passive smoking, which many of the great unthinking still believe, and now one of his minions has a firm grip on placing the concept of the alcohol version in the mind of every Sun reader and gullible fuckwit in the country.

Can you smell the faint whiff of future prohibition with regard to uncorking a Pinot Grigio in front of the kiddies yet?

The ONS study to which Gilmore refers, commissioned by the NHS to back up lardy Liam's assertion that under 15s should never drink even a small glass of wine at Christmas, runs to 219 pages. Considering its remit to prove what the fat cunt asked it to, the ONS produced a precis exactly as ordered, and Gilmore had his thinly-disguised temperance movement commentary at the ready.

It's to tackle that 'epidemic' of teen boozing, you see. Except that there isn't one. And the ONS study confirms it.


It's quite clear that there has been no change, apart from boys drinking less, since 1988, and the current overall trend is decidedly downward. Gilmore mentioned none of that.

There were a few salient points that the document did state though. And if Gilmore actually bothered to read it, for some reason he didn't see fit to include them in his one-sided judgement.

For the first time in this survey series, pupils were asked how many of the people they lived with drank alcohol; this could be parents, siblings or anyone else they lived with.

The first time the question has been asked, and Gilmore's press release only focusses on that one aspect. Hmmm.

The rest of it seems to confirm that responsible attitudes to drinking in kids tends to emanate from parents who are only mildly restrictive.

Pupils whose parents did not mind them drinking, as long as they didn’t drink too much were least likely to have been drunk in the past four weeks (50%of pupils who had drunk alcohol in the last four weeks) or to have tried to become drunk (30%). Compared with this group, pupils whose parents disapproved of their drinking but who had drunk alcohol in the last four weeks were more likely to have been drunk (66%) or to have tried to get drunk (45%).

Proper cunt Gilmore (if he read this far) would have loved to read that parents who didn't give a shit tended to have kids who are right animals, of course.

Those who answered that their parents let them drink as much as they liked were most likely both to have been drunk in the last four weeks (75%) and to have deliberately tried to get drunk in the last four weeks (59%).

Except that there are almost no parents who are actually like that.

Few pupils of any age said that their parents let them drink as much as they liked.

As comprehensively illustrated in this graph which - oh fuck me, no - Gilmore also appears to have missed.


A big, loud, percentage for a very tiny portion of those surveyed. Quite a soundbite, doncha think?

The thrust of this study, and the probable reporting of it, is fully intended to make parents believe that if they drink in front of their kids, their offspring will inevitably turn out to be raging alcoholics.

To tackle a problem which doesn't exist, righteous extremists are again using skewed data to force their will on everyone in society, and their methods are becoming more rancid by the day. Make no mistake, the denormalisation of alcohol is underway and following the same rules as the template laid down by those who don't like the smell of tobacco.

Coming just a few days after the British Beer and Pub Association talked of 52 pub closures per week, this new attack should set some alarm bells ringing. With the BBPA insisting that the smoking ban isn't a problem and that the way forward is to attract families with food, it would kinda put the kibosh on it if parents were scared into thinking that having a beer with their meal was a form of child abuse.

Hey, and BBPA, good luck with that campaign to reduce alcohol duty which Alistair Darling completely fucking ignored in April, you daft cunts. If the government are commissioning surveys to prove that just the sight of your principle product is harming kids, then I wouldn't hold my breath for a bit of respite if I were you. Perhaps you might like to rename yourself the British Cheap Restaurant Association instead.

Just two people saw this survey as a denigration of parents' attitudes in the general non-event of a binge-drinking culture which doesn't actually exist. They would be the cunt Donaldson, and Gilmore, who seems to see whatever his temperance movement paymasters want him to see. For the good of all of us, I hope he goes to Specsavers sometime soon.

But Comrade Beeb dutifully reported it anyway, complete with fake charity input. Quelle surprise.

* Brownie points to anyone who can spot the punk reference

UPDATE: Thanks to Jay in the comments who pointed out the new Think B4U Drink web-site. Doesn't that suggest that the site must have been designed before the study was even published? Stinks, huh?

UPDATE 2: Snowolf and Frosty got it. For those who didn't.