They still leave little clues lying around, mind. Like this, from Sunday's BBC article on incorrigible gin-soaked pensioners.
Older people are much more likely to drink every day than those of other ages, according to an NHS study into alcohol use.They can use qualifiers if they like, but less can only mean less, and has been lessening for quite a while now.
While the rest of the population is drinking slightly less, and slightly less often on average, this is not the case for older people, it said.
ONS General Lifestyle Survey 2008:What's more, if all the oldies are not only intransigently refusing to change their lifestyles to fit in with the trendy church of public health, but doing the opposite instead, and consumption is still on the wane, that must mean the young are reducing their levels by an even greater degree. No?Following an increase between 1998 and 2000, there has been a decline since 2002 in the proportion of men drinking more than 21 units a week, on average, and in the proportion of women drinking more than 14 units.ONS General Lifestyle Survey 2009:This trend seems to be continuing under the new methodology; between 2006 and 2009 the proportion of men drinking more than 21 units a week fell from 31 per cent to 26 per cent and the proportion of women drinking more than 14 units a week fell from 20 per cent to 18 per cent.
Well, yes, actually.
Despite changing the way unitary intake is measured to make consumption appear worse, young men definitely - and arguably all young people taken as a whole - are still drinking less of those units than they were in 1992.
This'll be the irresponsible, binge-drinking, liver-diseased, perennially-sozzled alky section of society who are driving the crisis level booze epidemic we keep hearing about, and for which we require acres of illiberal and collective punishment style primary legislation to solve.
Seems a bit odd, that. Where are Mulder and Scully when you need them, eh?
