Tuesday 14 July 2015

Battling History And Humanity

Where, oh where, do you start with this from New Zealand?
New Zealand has a problem and not enough is being done about it. Williams says drinking has been "normalised" in New Zealand, clouding the incredibly high risk that alcohol places on our health and several aspects of our well-being. 
"The drinking culture and pressures to drink and continue drinking are very persuasive and pervasive," she says.
This is from, you will not be surprised to learn, Alcohol Healthwatch director Rebecca Williams who gets paid for having such an opinion.
"There's (sic) very few areas or occasions you can go to in New Zealand where alcohol isn't an expected part of the activity. 
"It's seen as an essential element to relaxation, an essential element to social connection and an essential part of all our gatherings, generally."
Probably, Rebecca, because alcohol is very good as a relaxant and brilliant for encouraging social connection. Parties at your place must be pretty crap if you aren't comfortable with that.
These trends also worry New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell, who believes drinking is "extremely" normalised. 
"We celebrate the birth of a child with alcohol and we commiserate the death of someone with alcohol," he says. "It's seen as such a normal thing that people buy it when they do their weekly grocery shop."
That's because it is normal, you berk. It's the very definition of the word normal.


Since you are one of the vanishing few who don't subscribe to the consensus, that makes you the one who isn't normal. That's how it works, y'see?
Bell says there's something about humans and the "pursuit of getting out of it". 
"Most, not all, cultures have had some form of intoxicant. Part of alcohol's popularity is it does what it says it's going to do. It give you warm feelings and it loosens your inhibitions."
Yes, it's been the same throughout the world for millennia, and it's a good thing. So why don't you just piss off and leave people to enjoy what they are clearly happy with?
Dry July's Scott Savidge acknowledges he's not an expert on alcohol - Dry July is first and foremost a fundraiser - but he says our longstanding relationship with alcohol is pretty clear. 
"It's so intensely socialised and so embedded in the culture and so freely available. 
"People have been eating plants and fermenting things to go to different spaces in their consciousness since the beginning."
Indeed, and that is never going to change, so stop trying.
Savidge believes the often-slated youth of today are no worse than other age groups and generations. 
"Younger people, students and so on are often targeted or highlighted because they're visible. What people don't see is the large numbers of people who aren't visible who are drinking problematically; the older people who drink at home in a way that's not monitored."
Were these people ever young themselves, because I'm struggling to imagine it. And 'monitored'? What sort of fucked up mentality would even consider the idea of monitoring people making free choices in their own homes?
Williams, of Alcohol Healthwatch, says there needs to be drastic action to stop the normalisation of alcohol becoming even deeper entrenched.
It's been entrenched for thousands of years, you sour old crone, stop wasting your pathetic life and go do something more constructive for society instead. Like peeling the pavement with your chin.
"The industry says it comes down to personal responsibility, but that's rubbish. It's a mix of personal choices and our environment. 
"The environment determines and sustains the culture. Every single review of our drinking habits says we need to restrict advertising of alcohol, yet we do nothing."
Every single review? Written by purse-lipped puritans like you, perchance?
Change needs to be made at the population level, she says. 
"No amount of education or social marketing will make a significant impact. There's (sic) so many studies and experts that say there needs to be taxation and restricted availability."
"So many", as in a few isolated professional miseries amongst millions of people who are quite content with how they choose to live their lives. You're outnumbered by orders of magnitude; you're the outliers here, the abnormal ones, not us, so go boil your heads in chip fat or something yeah?
At the moment, there's too much acceptance of drunken and drugged behaviour, according to Makary. 
He cites the drink-driving advertisements with a carload of drunks and one sober driver, implying it's okay to get drunk as long as you don't drive.
Yes, because it really is okay. That is just about the sum of it.

Look, I'm not a supreme idealist, I know that people like this have to exist - we've suffered their tedious ilk for just as long as some caveman first sucked on a weather-fermented fruit and knocked himself out - but can politicians please stop taking the hideous fuckmuppets seriously?

Humanity loves alcohol and history proves that will always be the case. Just because a handful of grumpy social outcasts open their miserable gobs once in a while doesn't mean anyone should be listening.


11 comments:

Tony said...

Jesus Christ Dry July??? Didn't our (UK) arseholes have one over here in January? What about Abstinence August, Sober September and ..... Ah better stop there don't want to give the fuckers any ideas.

Vinny Gracchus said...

Those activists that are worried about the 'normalization' of alcohol and 'renormalisation' of tobacco are totalitarians. They are driven by their 'healtist' ideology to ban activities like drinking, smoking, using sugar, eating so-called unhealthy foods, etc. because those activities conflict with their ideology. They aren't content to allow free choice and liberty. They must enforce their 'neo-puritan' viewpoint. The evidence for their ideological rants is weak and/or manufactured. Every effort to expose their lies and intolerance and reverse the bans on legitimate activities must be taken.

jude said...

Yep, and governments of a totalitarian bent, (like the one currently, but temporarily in power in my country), love to use these anal anti's ideology to push for higher taxes and more restrictions on any behaviour that allows individuals to make their own choices in life, and they use the force of law to police people's lives. This is what smoking bans are all about, and this is what the proposed tax hikes on alcohol are also about.


Bans that extract a financial penalty, such as outdoor smoking bans etc, are also a great way to create revenue for the state, as is continually lowering the drink driving level. Its really all about the money for the governments, and the pinch mouthed puritans are the useful idiots of the totalitarian state.


The puritans have ramped up their rhetoric in the media lately, and this has coincided with the increasing totalitarian bent of the government in my country, who have been ramping up their own fear campaigns so that people think terrorists are lurking on every street corner and under the beds. Its all a part of the push for complete control, (Anyone else noticing this??)

jude said...

Governments started using them as tools for greater control of people's lives, as well as a very successful tool for extracting more money from the populace. I don't know that they take them seriously, (does any rational person??), but they are definitely very useful idiots.

moonrakin said...

Yes ...... the beneficial crisis is a gift to mendacious politicians... and these Public 'Elf goons are a perpetual resource for them - that's a fact.

gray cooper said...

Why do paid from tax politicians and health dictators think that I want to be like them?

truckerlyn said...

Are you saying that you believe our MPs are rational?

truckerlyn said...

Doesn't the Bible tell us that Jesus turned water into wine? Where do these puritanical idiots get off with undermining Jesus? Or are they all atheists?

jude said...

There is the rationality of greed and self interest.

truckerlyn said...

True, hadn't thought of that - was on a totally different track!

DP said...

Dear Mr Puddlecote

These are not public health officials, these are public hypochondriacs.

I hope they don't notice that eating, drinking non-alcoholic beverages and breathing are pretty much 'normalised' too.

'Public health' professionals are paid pretty hefty salaries out of taxpayers' pockets to tell government what it wants to hear. Why does government want to hear such drivel?

DP