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Drink and be damned
 national |
miscellaneous |
news report
 Tuesday December 10, 2002 16:16 by B. Ronan
Drinking and Ireland, what have we become Drink and be Merry The Mafioso Italians, the extremist Arabs, the sex crazed Swedes and the dirty travellers, stereotypes that demeans people as badly as it represents them We educate our children not to believe them and we condescend those who advocate them. In spite of this, recent revelations on RTE’s current events show “Prime Time” demonstrates that we live one.
The Drunken Irish, a shadow that follows us around the world has proven itself true. Our culture is steeped in drink, our bus stops advertise it our school kids buy it. Is this the reality of post “Celtic Tiger” Ireland? Unfortunately yes, but where did all this abuse of the national pass time stem from?
The papers seem to be pointing at alco-pops (small bottles of lemonade laced with spirits) and advertising aimed at teenagers. Some blame the parents; others point to the extra cash that has being floating around for the last ten years or so. I’ve even heard that it’s in our blood.
So lets start with the legal road, where is the national identity card scheme now, how many off-licences and pubs have being closed for serving alcohol to minors, and why are publicans allowed to serve drink to people that can’t even stand up? Well the national ID card idea seems to have faded into the mist, a lucid dream based less in reality than the concept of the Garda asking obviously drunk minors to produce one. Several pubs have being fined or temporally closed for serving minors, at least two in Dublin in the past six months. Publicans usually go to court, pay a fine, about equal to the minors bar tab, and reopen the next weekend.
The government’s solution to our national pathological obsession with alcohol has being a hike in the tax rate. But will this clear our hospitals on Saturday nights, where the majority of patients are suffering from alcohol related ailments, self inflicted or otherwise? We cannot forget the extra cash everyone seems to have these days. Surely the most determined among us can still muster up the 60 Euro it takes to get so smashed that you chalk up a free trolley for the night and the customary stomach pumping that the Matter serves up so well. For these victims of shrewd advertising and bad parenting the problem may be more serious than “one to many”. The taboo word, only whispered in good company, Alcoholic springs to mind, and Mr. McCreevy can tax alco-pops until Jesus can’t even afford to turn water into wine, but they will still wake up with the usual “Good Morning Doctor”.
As we blame the Celtic Tiger for giving us the opportunity to stupefy ourselves every weekend the facts take a turn for the worst. The consumption of alcohol has increased in most areas of society, but the lower end of the scale, those who benefited least from the 1990’s have the largest increase in consumption of alcohol. Yes, you remember the people on social welfare, the people who didn’t get an extra farthing while the rest of us got SSIA accounts? It would seem that the governments plan to stop us from drinking by making it to expensive will only serve to fund our SSIA accounts with tax money paid by the most vulnerable and isolated in society.
Soon enough we won’t be able to afford our stereotype and will have to go back to the older image of tramps sitting on park benches drinking obscure liquors from brown paper bags. Cause if the tax just goes up and the poor just get poorer the alcohol problem will never be solved.
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Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6Blame the government, blame the publicans........blame everyone but the people who drink.
We need to take responsability for our drinking. Noone puts a gun to our head and forces us to drink.
We do it because we want to and because we like to. We need to change the cultural attitude ourselves and take responsability for what we drink and stop placing blame.
think its friday ok-
well i'm just after spending 40 hrs busting my nuts to make sure the profits keep rolling in for my boss, i hate my job, i know i can be creative but it don't pay, my work really pisses me off, but i've got a mortgage, and oh shit a car loan too, and i got to pay the childminder this week, bollix, i got two days off, ah at last the kids are in bed, i'll have a can, ah fuck it i'll go down the local, my mates pissed off too, but he's never tried smirnoff black ice, ah now i'm so relaxed etc. etc.
what i'm trying to say is that the society we 'live' in is at the root of the problem, capitalism, thats the reason for every major problem we have, and now its a cliche, down with capitalism heehee, so we're fucked, ah well i'm going home, probably won't have a drink, but will still have a hangover in the morning, shit man we need a revolution, not more whinging and crying(not having a go at anyone, 'cept perhaps myself), so what does everybody think? ah shur lets leave it til after Xmas, thats a bit of craic, and shur maybe after the next world cup, tell ya what, we'll see, alright?
Yknow Pete, as I read through you're paragraph I was nodding my head in amusement and agreement, until I came to the part where you start blaming it all on capitalism...what a load of bollocks, if you dont like it then fuck off out to the middle east somewhere where democracy is a distant dream and they'll cut your hand off if you dont burp after dinner.
I bet if you sold your crappy car and morgaged house you would be able to buy a nice self sufficient farm up the mountains of Kerry somewhere to live out your non capitalist life. Do it.
Stop blaming your own shortfalls on capitalism. No system is perfect (especially not capitalism) but to blame it for your miserable life is a little sad.
Bloody capitalists stole my milk yesterday morning aswell.
YOU ALL KNOW YOUR LIFE WOULD BE MISERABLE WITHOUT ME, YOUR GOOD FRIEND CAPITAL.
DON'T BOTHER WITH YOUR UTOPIAS BECAUSE THEY CANNOT DEFEAT THE POWER OF GREED. GREED AND DESIRE.
ANYONE FOR A PINT?
The gun put to our head is advertising! I am Irish living in Sweden where drinking is not so heavily promoted and surprise surprise people have discovered other things to do besides drink.
Walk into Dublin airport and start counting the ads for drink till you get to the massive Guinness billboards in town, the economy thrives on the booze we consume, the government provides little else for the young to do or to look forward to doing.
Drink was brought to us by an invading empire, successive Germanic armies drank beer rather than water as ration as it didn't go stagnant and was easier to keep, it soon became the norm, similar to the rise in popularity of smoking after the 2nd world war as cigarettes were soldiers ration and were then brought home after the war ended.
Relate the economic "boom" and the massive drive to promote alcohol and the transformation of the local pub into the drinking factory it is today and you might realise it is more than just a coincidence.
Since I stopped drinking I realised what it is to be Irish an old culture rich and varied that like so many indigenous cultures was broken not in war but in peace with the oldest known chemical weapon, ALCOHOL.
Yeah I think the author was saying that all the frenzy about drink is this country never concludes with the disease Alcoholism, and that the GOV doesn't even try to change that path for 12 year olds, I bet If someone wrote about alien life on Sirus one of ya would blame the capitalists, relax there is more to life that being parnoid about who's pilfering your time and money.