Saddle sores and drug wars

One of the least appealing aspects of Gordon Brown's government has been the pusillanimous pandering to puritanism. The sacking of the government's drugs adviser for daring to advice ministers that scientific evidence and what the Daily Mail would like to be true are not the same thing is a classic example of this failing.

Admittedly, there is a counter argument that David Nutt's job was to advise rather than criticise ministers who failed to take his advice. In any case, he might have expected the flack that his observation that horse riding was more dangerous than taking ecstasy would attract.

That said, I am not aware that anyone has actually refuted his comments about horse riding, which does rather suggest he was correct. Not that drug policy should be based on bare statistics like that. If we are to have a mature and sensible debate about drugs we need to know how enjoyable each activity is so that we can evaluate the risks and rewards attached to each. I would also like to know whether anyone has ever died after riding a horse under the influence of ecstasy. If not, it might be worth trying.

Trollied Tuesday: notebook

Ever since I encountered a gentleman in a green shirt and jester's hat in the gold, white and green slumped pungently across a seat on the Tube on Sunday I remembered the best attitude towards St Patrick's Day: it's no big deal. If you are so inclined, you might wish to say a Mass. If you are in Ireland and have the day off, enjoy it. Not a day for proper drinkers, though. Too many amateurs about.

But excessive grumbling about it being a glorified marketing exercise aimed at plastic Paddies (which it is, outwith Ireland) is as foolish as going to Kilburn for the craic (an English word in origin, by the way). So when Eamon Forde writes in the Times (found via Harry's Place): "The celebration originally marked the arrival of the Catholic faith on Irish shores, but in an increasingly secular country, it now celebrates the futility of drunkenness" does make one wonder whether the bottle or the crozier has been a more harmful influence on Ireland. (Remember too that the Pope did sanction Henry II's conquest of Ireland from which a few, erm, difficulties sprang.)

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Worth remembering, too, on the day in which Guinness tries to turn Ireland into a marketing device, that there are other drinks. As I observed around this time last year:

There is a rather sentimental idea that Guinness tastes better in Ireland. It's not entirely true; for one thing the stuff you get in London is all brewed in Dublin these days. Besides, in Cork you should stick to Beamish or Murphy's… One's physical location, then, is less important than one's state of mind.

This theory might be tested by the news that the Beamish & Crawford brewery in Cork is to close this month. Production is be moved to the same place in which Murphy's is brewed (owned by Heineken). Apart from the sadness of an era ending, and the loss of 120 jobs, there is a vague unease about the loss of something else.

Rationally, there is no reason why changing the location in which the drink is brewed should affect quality. Guinness after all can be made in enormous quantities and, if kept properly, tastes superb. And yet this news creates a vague unease. The trend favoured by large brewers of consolidating production in ever larger plants has seen many fine beers lost, and many others have suffered an appreciable loss of quality.

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Worse is the latest affront: the minimum alcohol price. It seems that not even Labour is stupid enough to try and whack up the price of booze before an election in which it might struggle to win votes. I dolefully predict the idea will be dusted off after the election by whoever wins (okay, it'll be the Tories then).

It will not work, because people will find ways of getting drink if they must have it. Some other crude device will soon be found to bash the drinker over the head. If this blog has any purpose, and I try to avoid such fripperies, it is an implacable opposition to this sort of nonsense.

Leaving aside the shredding of the economy, which will probably see people drinking less (while wanting to drink more) the most curious aspects to this proposal are some of the unintended consequences. For instance, port and sherry - say at 20% alcohol - would most likely be among the drinks that would see the biggest price rises. (Someone at least has had a stab at the maths: a bottle of sherry could rise from £4.59 t0 £7.15 - roughly a third I make that.) Buckfast, of course, will not be affected: indeed its price might even fall. This isn't a way to tackle problem drinking.

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With nice circularity, then, a prediction. Tomorrow's Irish papers (north and south) will be full of hand-wringing about drink and violence. What does it mean? Simple, the press loves hand-wringing, lots of people in Ireland like drink and a significant minority can't handle it. Put them in a drunk tank, ignore them, or a combination thereof will be more effective in curbing their excesses than most other measures.

Except mockery. Remember The Simpsons: "All this drinking, violence, destruction of property... are these the things that we think of when we think of the Irish?"

Trollied Tuesday: hitting the Scots where it hurts

Who'd have thought it would be Scotland that would come up with a puritanical, penny-pinching and somewhat empty gesture? But there is is: the plan for minimum alcohol pricing.

Cut price offers encouraging bulk buying are also to be banned along with money saving promotions like "3 for 2" deals.

The display and marketing of drink is to be restricted to specific areas within off sales premises.

To be honest, apart from allowing the SNP to be seen to be doing something, I doubt it will make much difference. Sure, it will make life that bit more difficult for retailers.It might, if the Scots whisky trade is to be believed, have the unintended consequence of harming one of the country's most profitable industries. Depending on how draconian the minimal price is, it might significantly disadvantage every drinker because of the actions of the minority.

One figure bandied about is that from a University of Sheffield study: "a minimum price of 40p per unit caused overall consumption to fall by 2.6%, with larger decreases amongst young drinkers and excessive drinkers". If someone's drinking is going to be significantly affected by an 80p can of lager then I suggest that the price of drink is the last thing you or they want to be worrying about. I also note in passing that this sort of pricing would still make shop-bought drink much cheaper than a pint in a pub: so not much help for the poor old publican who is still being clobbered by the smoking ban.

This whole business of singling out cheap booze as the villain of our days, rather than a small nutmeg of consolation, is that it hopelessly muddles up cause and effect. From the Times report:

Ms Sturgeon said the government wanted to hit “low-cost, high-alcohol” products, such as ciders and beers, which she described as “the products of choice for young drinkers”. Despite their hopes of targeting young people, Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, admitted that tonic wines, such as Buckfast, would probably not be affected by the proposals.

So not so much action on alcopops or the neds' drink of choice - Buckie. (For those who don't really understand the peculiar potency of this drink, this should enlighten you). Besides, the real problem with Buckfast drinkers is not that they are damaging their health, that's their look-out. It's that they are more likely to make life miserable for everyone else.

But taking away their drink is beside the point really. If someone is the type of person who is going to drink Buckfast (or, as one acquaintance of mine does, Scotsmac), then something is already badly wrong. And fixing that defies glib, headline-grabbing solutions.

Horses and shit

Three things united only by an equine theme.

1. White Horse bigger than Nelson's Column planned for Kent. That it appears to be act of almost unspeakable ghastliness scarcely needs to be said: the aesthetic of the porcelain figurines favoured by menopausal, sentimental women plonked into Kent on a gargantuan scale in the vain hope of impressing foreigners arriving on the Eurostar. What's wrong with a bigger Nelson's Column to welcome them anyway?

One can live with the prospect that the French will have an excuse for another 100 years of so of sneering at the vulgarity and poor taste of Les Rosbifs. One can accept that it's a damnable waste of money; even that the people building it struggle with the proper distinction between small and far away (thereby completely undoing the Renaissance development of perspective).

What's really so bad is the justification for it: it will impress people. Art doesn't work like that, the imagination and the sense of beauty doesn't: people are impressed by that which grabs them, not by that which sets out to bludgeon them into submission.

2. Government drug adviser "sparks tabloid fury" by pointing out that more people die from riding horses than from taking ecstasy. Does anyone dispute his figures? They have not. Do some people get upset by suggesting drugs might not kill them? They do. Should we care about that? Well, no.

That the government is packed with pusillanimous panderers to puritanism is not news. When said drug adviser suggests that, since ecstasy is less lethal than horse riding, it might be a waste of time to impose punitive sanctions on ecstasy use it's a waste of time, and gets ignored for fear of what the Daily Mail might say, again it's not news. (Nor is the boundless contempt one feels at this form of governance).

What is worth noting is that no one has asked the important question. Is horse riding more fun than taking ecstasy? It's pointless trying to weigh up whether either activity is worth the risk without this sort of information.

3. Now for the good good news: Tony McCoy's 3,000th winner. In a world with justice this achievement, with all it entails, would get the recognition it deserves. Ah well.

All morality is quite useless

An addendum to the previous. There is one especially corrosive and long-established form of idiocy: the desire to impose one's moral views on everyone. Lamentably it has always been popular. Of course, the people who do this sort of thing usually fail to distinguish between morals and ethics, and they are usually wrong about whatever it is that they wish to moralise about, but these are mere details beside the fact that such sanctimoniousness is unutterably annoying.

Take, if you like, this week's news that some people in Worthing are seeking to remove a plaque commemorating Oscar Wilde.

Chris Hare... points out that Wilde, a homosexual man married with children, had a documented taste for seducing teenage boys. At least one of his victims, a 14-year-old newspaper delivery boy named Alphonso, had to flee Worthing when the scandal of his relationship with Wilde became public knowledge. "This role model, a man preying on teenage boys with little or no education - I don't think that would be regarded as heroic today."

This is the perfect type of a perfect preposterousness. It is exquisite and leaves one wanting more. And, of course, it encapsulates the trouble with moralisers in one anecdote. One would not regard that sort of thing as heroic today, of course, but Wilde lived in a different age when sexual mores were rather different to our own. The age of consent for girls was 13, there was no age of consent at all for homosexual sex and lesbianism was not illegal because, the story goes, Queen Victoria refused to believe such a thing existed.

Besides: Wilde is not honoured for being a fat old queen. Sex with teenagers was not what bothered the Victorians at all: it was the homosexuality. That no one would really expect to be taken seriously if, today, they objected to honouring Wilde on the grounds he was posing as a somdomite highlights the folly of trying to impose contemporary moral values on the past. Were Hare's argument to be taken to its extreme, we should revile Plato and a host of other Greeks for their advocacy of pederasty. (Admittedly there has been the odd prep school classics teacher who has taken Grecian mores rather too much to heart, but that hardly detracts from the main point).

News of Wilde's sexual inclinations

came as a great shock to the Victorians

More lamentably, the inability to distinguish between the artistic work and the person who produced it shows a woefully distorted set of perspectives. It is wrong-headed, it is philistine and shows an inability to distinguish the valuable from mere dross. One could see this, to an extent, in some of the responses to Harold Pinter's death. It is not that people criticised his political views (which were admittedly asinine) nor that they were a factor in considering the man as a whole. For that matter there was nothing wrong with criticising those political views immediately after his death: it's the inability to judge his plays as plays that disturbs.

Admittedly, Pinter's is a fairly trivial example. But the attitude is, I think, a dangerous one too. The fact that Wilde's work was ignored for decades because of the desire to allow moral considerations to trump everything else should cause the modern day moralists to pause before we head down the path of ignoring work by people of whom we do not approve. Totalitarians, both political and religious, have always been rather keen on this after all, and taste and decency are but staging posts along the road of silence, censorship and suppression.

Let's let Oscar sum up:

I never came across in anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts. I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue. It is unnatural virtue that makes the world, for those who suffer, such a premature Hell.

PS: Is this effort by a contemporary pederast so terribly wrong because of the values espoused, or is it the fact that such a terrible-looking old roué singing a bloody awful song presents such an unpleasant spectacle? I shall have to listen to some music by that vile anti-Semite Wagner to recover.

Trollied Tuesday: drink - the agent of progress

If you are planning a trip to Indonesia, it might be time to reconsider. According to the BBC the country is being afflicted by serious shortages of booze.

On the shiny tables of the capital's five star hotels, little cards have appeared next to the silver dishes of peanuts, delicately warning guests of an embarrassing lack of alcohol.

Menus at some of the best-known cocktail bars on the tourist island of Bali have shrunk to a single page. And the country's top Japanese restaurants are reported to have run out of sake.

Indonesia is facing a nationwide alcohol shortage. As the bar manager of one international hotel put it: "We'll be dry by the weekend."

It seems there is something of a culture war going on here, albeit under the guise of a crackdown on the black market. "Government officials admit they want to discourage consumption; that they are worried about Indonesians drinking more; that it needs strict regulation." It's the dream of our own domestic "puritans"; but the context is considerably more baleful in Indonesia as it is being driven by genuine religious extremism.

I should stress that I do not regard drink itself as the sole mark of civilisation (unless you mean in the historic sense of stopping hunter gathering to spend time brewing and wine making); I do not think not drinking is itself barbaric and most especially do not think that Muslims who choose not to drink are backward and uncivilised.

However, my caveats do not apply to those with strong religious views who seek to impose them on others. In this instance foreign visitors to Indonesia, bars in Bali (a primarily Hindu island) and businesses may suffer if the zealots have their way. But the BBC piece focuses on one Indonesian Muslim woman, Miranti, as the symbolic heart of the struggle.

She is 34, single, an architect. Like her friends, she knows how to run a business, deal with jet-lag, and how to mix a margarita.

What she does not know is that she is at the heart of a battle being fought here in Jakarta - over alcohol.

Does it seem such an outrageous leap in logic to suggest that a large number of people who object to the consumption of alcohol in Indonesia also object to the existence of educated women, who run their own businesses and remaining unmarried and childless into their thirties? I suspect not and get the strong sense here that allowing the fundamentalists a victory in this little cultural battle will set up more profound conflicts in years to come. Should the more open-minded, urbane variety of Islam, one that permits Miranti and her friends to continue doing what they're doing, win out, it will be better all round.

Personally the only thing I can see to object to about Miranti and her friends is their fondness for chocolate martinis (what an abomination) and the overly close embrace of the glossy, aspirational TV shows about incredibly annoying American women lifestyle. The point is that my trivial objections should carry no more weight than those of the average religious fundamentalist.

Incidentally, if you were planning a trip to Indonesia and this piece has put you off, then you might want to visit southern Sudan instead. They're opening a brewery there; needless to say it is a symbol of freedom from an especially vicious fundamentalist regime.

EDW: John Milton

Coming slightly late to the great man's 400th birthday party, but there has been a superfluity of comment on his works – with commentators across the board, from Theo Hobson and Terry Eagleton in the Guardian, through Boyd Tonkin in the Independent to AN Wilson (since disembowelled) and Simon Heffer (sounding a little surprisingly sympathetic towards what Marxists used to call the English Revolution) in the Telegraph – all eager to claim the man for their own worldview.

I don't wish to add to this babel. Not least because if you don't appreciate his importance, I doubt I'll be the one to change your minds, and if you do then there's no point in boring you with it. Besides, the best line about him remains Blake's observation that he was of the Devil's party, but did not know it.

Satan is key to it all, of course, the defiance of the perpetual tyrannies of existence, the unfulfilled and unfulfillable aspirations (the perpetual fate of revolutionaries that; Milton was no great lover of the Cromwellian oppression that replaced the Stuart one), are all there – along with the Charles I-like over-inflation of one's own importance and powers, the unreasonable self-righteousness. It's the human condition captured in the supposed arch-enemy of man.

If a shower of contemporary hacks can reflect these contradictions, then so can some of the great poets who followed Milton: without Milton I doubt we should have Byron's Vision of Judgment or Baudelaire's Litanies de Satan. No Blake either, of course. Even if one dismisses the preposterous notion that Milton was better than Shakespeare, this range of influence does support the case for regarding Paradise Lost as the true English national epic (then again, why do the English need one?).

Although I most often use the term puritan as one of abuse, Milton represents another, better side to that complex skein of non-conformist thought – independent-minded, inquiring, free-thinking, unbending and unwilling to put conscience to one side. In other words, a libertarian if not a libertine. Besides that, one cannot wholly dislike a man who spent several years travelling, studying at university and a further six doing little except reading books in preparation for his career as a poet. That's the sort of work ethic I admire.

As for the poetry itself: he might go on a little for modern tastes (that's what you get copying Roman epics rather than the Greek lyricists and epigrammists) but there's a grandeur matched with a sinuous subtlety in those mighty lines.

Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure--
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see! the angry Victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid
The fiery surge that from the precipice
Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.
Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not, what resolution from despair.

Just don't, for goodness sake, bother with Samson Agonistes.

Trollied Tuesday: thank goodness for that

The Government has realised that bullying drinkers isn't the wisest move when it is becoming increasing unpopular and the economy is looking so parlous.

Happy hours will not be banned and there are some other sources for cheer.

Plans to put health warnings on alcohol labels, to raise the minimum age children can drink at home and proposed rules for supermarkets to have specific check-outs for alcohol sales have all also been shelved..

Instead pubs and supermarkets will be barred from "irresponsible" promotions such as all you can drink for a set price or offers aimed at specific customers such as women under a new mandatory code for the licensed trade.

It emerged yesterday that ministers have dropped plans for a minimum price for alcohol and retailers will not be stopped from running so-called loss leaders on drink sales.

The Government is concerned that responsible, taxpaying drinkers will object to increasing costs at a time when their living expenses are already hit by the recession.

You reckon they might? Still, not being treated like idiots (apart from, you know, the whole Britain is well-placed to deal with the economic crisis which is all America's fault shtick). We should get drunk to celebrate.

Only the feckers have already gone ahead with a petty and pointless tax on beer and wine to pay for the petty and pointless VAT cut. Arse and double arse. Not a good way to win popularity.

Government annouces plans to close lap-dancing club by wrecking economy

The Government has announced plans to close "the vast majority" of lap-dancing clubs in the country by ensuring no one can afford to visit them any more.

Ministers believe that the forthcoming economic wipe-out will leave people with so little spare cash that the vast majority of lap dancing clubs will attract so few customers that they will be forced to close.

Minister for telling people what to do Harriet Harman said in a speech to the Women's Institute: "Let's face it, lap-dancing clubs are primarily for City boys and others with far too much spare cash to flash around."

Ms Harman also told the conference that she believed that throwing the majority of lap dancers on the dole would allow them to develop a proper sense of self-worth and a correct their misunderstandings about the right way to conduct themselves with regards to men.

The government also hopes that its plans to ensure that men do not mis-use their disposable income will effect massage parlours, saunas and other establishments were it believes prostitution might take place.

Campaigners have expressed concern a the numbers of foreign women working as prostitutes, warning that many are effectively lured to the country on false pretences. "Typically, they will be told that the economy is in great shape and that there are plenty of jobs. It's only when they get here that the horrible truth dawns on them and they find themselves trapped," warned the Rev Harold Davidson, a clergyman who has made it his lives work to visit every "house of vice" in the country to discover first-hand what goes on in such places.

However, groups representing lap-dancers, prostitutes and other sex workers have warned that the government plans are likely to cause significant harm to them, by hitting their incomes and placing them in greater danger by forcing them underground.

"Who cares what these filthy harlots think?" responded Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. "What's really important is making a counterproductive moral gesture that makes us feel good."

Trollied Tuesday: a bad role model

James Bond is, according to quite a few people.

Paul Johnson: "the sadism of a schoolboy bully, the mechanical two-dimensional sex-longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude snob-cravings of a suburban adult".

Bidisha: "The Bond films are generally sexist. I don't like anything that descends from a sewer of misogyny."

Theo Hobson: James Bond's sexual career does real harm to the male psyche. Heroism, British boys learn from the age of five or six, involves treating women like toys, thrilling and dangerous toys. Women will admire, even worship you, if you are a cool philanderer. We must resist the urge to titter here: I seriously believe that Bond is a big factor in the sexual malfunction of our times; the difficulty we have finding life-long partners, and the normalisation of pornography.

It's easy to mock this sort of nonsense and quite rightly when it derives from people who have that meta-priggishness of the truly humourless: the inability to spot things that are not intended to be take too seriously; come on, it's not as if Bond is Flashman (more's the pity, Flashy is far more fun).

I'm surprised that this self-righteous attitude hasn't been more directed towards Bond's drinking; this is after all a character who has to be packed off to a health farm to dry out on occasions. Admittedly this aspect is toned down in the later films lest American sensibilities be offended – but you can't have Bond without the martinis and other drinks.

And yet herein lies the problem with Bond's character: his fastidious but promiscuous taste for drinks closely mirrors his creator's (one might say the same about women, I suppose). We might raise an eyebrow at the fact that this supposed Scotsman shows such a fondness for bourbon, but consider the signature martini (taken from Flemming's own favourite recipe).

Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?'...

(The passage is reproduced in full here).

Shaking the stuff weakens it by diluting it with ice-water, lemon peel is a bit effete compared with the sharp salt snap from an olive, and the prissy affectation of insisting on a mass-produced gin (NB: in strict fairness Gordon's was at least a bit stronger in those days, they've watered it down since) indicates a real problem with Bond and drinking. Showy bad taste. As the BBC article linked to at the top notes:

The third major charge against our superspy is harder to excuse - excessive brand usage. Fleming's novels were full of name checks for products. Bond drank Smirnoff vodka and Dom Perignon champagne and wore a Rolex. But the film franchise has taken this to even greater lengths... In Die Another Day he changed his mind on the vodka issue and preferred Finlandia.

… the purpose these brand adverts served in the Fleming novels wasn't as a generator of filthy lucre, but rather as an indicator of class.

How vulgar. Champagne, as I have noted before, is fine at breakfast and lunchtime, but a discreet and constant consumption of claret and brandy bespeaks a far great sophistication. As it is Bond seems like the sort of fellow who would insist one can never drink red wine with fish.

Bond, again like his creator, was an Etonian. One should not be surprised that a man who was schooled there should be a cold-hearted psychopath, a snob and have a brutish attitude to women. But that they should show such poor form with regard to drinks is a grave disappointment. It is, to use the adjective for the second time in successive days, Widmerpoolian; and his gravest failing in Powell's eyes was trying too hard.

It's one reason why I wouldn't even think to ask whether Bond is a good role model: how could he be?

Trollied Tuesday II: what's in a name?

A couple of examples of the self-important foolishness to which this blog, and the Trollied Tuesday thing particularly, stand firmly in opposition.

The first is the suggestion that the Orcardian beer Skullsplitter be withdrawn from sale. The name was singled out in a study for the Portman Group.

It was highlighted in a report by management consultancy PIPC on the grounds its name could imply violence and also the impact the strength may have on the drinker.

Management consultants. Is there no field of life which they cannot make intolerable? Now if a well-known Belgian beer were to market itself as Wife Beater, PIPC might have a point. As it is, they can sod right off. You'll be fascinated to know that I have tried this beer– an entertaining taste, I thought, but it did not make me want to cleave anyone's skill in two – and I'd thought that the name was a warning of what would happen if you drank too many.

In reality, it's named after a Viking earl of Orkney – Thorfinn Hausakluif. There's a reason why there aren't many Viking chieftans with names like Ragnar the Responsible or Sigurd the Social Worker, but the ignorance aside, the logic of the Portman Group's recommendation is difficult to follow. There is a rather weaselly objection that is that if a name is "associated with" violence it should not be permitted: either they object on the grounds of taste (God knows what they'd make of the Dog's Bollocks beer) or they believe that the name might somehow inspire violence. To take this logic to an extreme, the beer should make drinkers want to rape and pillage along the east cost and maybe sack Newcastle on the way home. I don't think the sort of people who drink craft beers really do this very often, however.

The second suggestion comes from the government. It's part of a wider code of conduct for the drinks industry, including a ban on free drink being offered in bars, and contains the following suggestion:

It warns that drinks should not be promoted as a means of boosting one’s “social, sexual, physical, mental, financial or sporting performance”. The practice of selling cocktails called Sex on the Beach, or more sexually graphic names, will also be scrapped.

I don't particularly object to the main proposal. One could argue that getting a bunch of girls liquored up has a social benefit. I make no comment. However the banning of names that might associate alcohol with fun is plan silly. It so happens that I find drinks with names like Sex on the Beach to be garish, tasteless and vulgar and the type of person who drinks them to be of the same type. (Then again sex on the beach is a bit, well.. the sand is a problem) But it's really no business of government to be trying to stop any of this.

The idea that naming a drink is an absurd infantalising of people and suggests that no one can be trusted to make decisions about how they conduct themselves. I can see why the average drinker of Sex on the Beach might give you this idea, but using your prejudices as an excuse to interfere in people's lives is something always to be resisted.

As with Skullsplitter, there is a suggestion that, somehow, the name given to a drink dictates the way people will consume it and how they well act after drinking it. I've a nagging suspicion that there is a term from philosophy to describe this, but I'm damned if I can remember it. In any case, does anyone seriously think if the following gaudy, cloying concoctions were renamed along the lines I've suggested, that the people who enjoy them would turn into the sort of earnest puritan who ends up deciding policy.

• Sex on the Beach - Diversity Awareness Seminar
  
• Slippery Nipple - Empowering Women to Reject Objectification and Gender Stereotyping
  
• Screaming Orgasm - Speech by the Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP, Minister for Women
  
• Long, Slow, Comfortable Screw - Public Health Initiative
  

William is drinking: Famous Grouse. Doubtless if it changed his name he'd be finding fewer things to complain about.

Trollied Tuesday: the best and worst of Scotland

A splendid idea from Scotland: a beer to help conserve red squirrels.

Part of the proceeds from sales of Red Squirrel Ale will be donated to the Dingwall-based Highland Red Squirrel Group.

Would you like to be asked, in a few years' time, "What did you do to help the red squirrel, Daddy?" and to find yourself unable to answer? I would not, and so I will be doing what I can to encourage the Atlas Brewery in Kinlochleven.

Now a lousy idea from Scotland. Bad as being over run by hordes of grey squirrels is, the fact that Scotland has apparently been over-run by a bunch of bullying, small-minded puritans is of far greater concern. The Scottish National Party's great idea to tackle drink-fuelled violence was to ban all those under-21 from buying alcohol from off licences.

Now, speaking as someone who, when I lived in Scotland, was assaulted on several occasions by precisely the type of person this law is targetting , I may say this is an abomination. Being bothered by Fife and Dundonian neds was bad enough, but not being able to drink wine at home would have been far, far worse.

It's bad enough that fans of the national football team aren't being allowed to get drunk before their game against Norway (good luck stopping the Norwegians, by the way, they put the Brits in the shade at that sort of thing), but the Under-21s ban is the sort of vindictive and pointless stunt that politicians love because it gives them cheap headlines and deflects attention way from the fact they aren't doing the boring long-term things that solve these problems.

Shuggy, is on the money by describing it as "stupid and illiberal". If the majority of Holyrood politicians think it's a bad idea, you really are getting into the palbably moronic territory. (As one of the MSPs says "a soldier returning from a tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan at the age of 20 cannot buy a bottle of champagne from the off-licence to celebrate with his wife on his return".)

The people of Scotland have been asked for their views on this proposal. I hope and trust that the people of Scotland used their national genius for invective to full effect.

Fat bloke has problem with food shock

The trouble with John Prescott's bulimia is that it falls into the category of things which are funny if they happen to someone else; rather like having a man like Prescott spending 10 years in high ministerial office is funny if it happens to another country.

The man himself recognised the black comedic elements to his condition with his rueful comments.

Mr Prescott… said people would never suspect he suffered from the disorder and that some could accuse him of not being "a very successful bulimic" because his weight did not drop.

Pretty on a par with his ministerial record, then.

And yet, and yet, it's hard not to have some sympathy for the man. And the attempts to politicise this story seem both low and silly. For instance, the Telegraph asks "Did Tony Blair know of John Prescott's bulimia?" in tones of breathless, sub-Daily Mail hysteria as if there were some ghastly deceit perpetrated on the public. Assuming that it is not being seriously suggested that Prescott might have sold state secrets for a bag of chips or accidentally started a war whilst on a sugar high after gorging on M&S trifles, I would imagine that had Blair known, his response would have been "so what"?

However, buried within the story is the most ridiculous comment of all. The fact that it comes form the TaxPayers' Alliance – a rentaquote mob whose sole point is that spending public money is a bad thing (I'm half- waiting for one of their spokespeople to start complaining that solider are being given expensive kit when they could make do with swords or bows and arrows). In this case the comment is:

Mark Wallace, the campaign director for the TaxPayers' Alliance, said he should have disclosed his condition, especially as he had claimed £4,000 in food expenses a year.

It's hard to look both ridiculous, sanctimonious and vindictive at the same time, but Mark Wallace manages it with ease. This is the type of thing that makes me want to vomit.

Fantasy Worlds

While typing out the previous post, the thought started to dawn on me that the smart thing to do would be to a devise a series of computer games which would appease today's moralisers. I'd need someone to do all the geek stuff, of course, but I reckon this little collection has something for everyone and, as such, is a sure fire winner.

Guardian Reader Commando: armed only with a copy of the liberal-left broadsheet and impeccable ideals, your character is sent on a series of missions in the most deprived parts of the city to see if you can save the underclass from themselves. Enter an inner city comprehensive and single-handedly inspire your charges with a love of Shakespeare and transform them from feral thugs into the people who write poems empathising with the plight of children in the Gaza strip. Win points for luring poor people away from the BNP by giving them tea and some kind words; for not running away when you meet a gang of black youths late at night; score a bonus for taking children into care if their parents insist on smoking inside the house and watching too much daytime TV; fight off the evil chip shops, kebab vans and cheap cigarette sellers who are exploiting the people of the area.

Richard Littlejohn's Extreme Taxi Driver: you are a taxi driver and your mission to get the Daily Mail's voice of common sense to a TV studio to castigate political correctness gone mad. Your path is beset with dangers including speed cameras, asylum seekers, and feral chavs. What do you do when a single mother pushing a pram steps out into your path? Will you be able to get Richard there in time, or will the gays get you? Lose points for every occasion your passenger is forced to utter the phrase 'You Couldn't Make It Up'.

Jihadi Training Camp: this unique interactive religious learning experience offers you to play a number of parts including a young warrior for Allah sent on the ultimate mission; a charity worker who must find a way to get vital humanitarian supplies of arms, rockets and high explosives to the muhjadeen in Afghanistan (just watch out you don't get caught by the evil Americans, will you be able to convince them you are there for religious study?); and a preacher who must turn a group of disaffected youngsters into a crack squad who have learned the Koran by heart and are now ready to die for Allah. Just make sure you convince the visiting BBC camera crew you're no threat to anyone. Comes complete with interactive fatwahs and map of public transport systems in 10 major cities.

[NB: even reading about the above game is an offence under the Terrorism Act. Please turn yourselves if you have read it.]

Victorian Patriarch: (a much healthier game than Miss Bimbo) protect your wife and daughters from unhealthy influences. Win points for shielding their eyes from unhealthy literature, for keeping their minds unsullied by dangerous political ideas (and for soundly whipping any harlots you may encounter). Knock up the parlour maid, but just make sure you don't get caught.

On The Tiles With Patricia Hewitt: learn to enjoy alcohol moderately and responsibly while celebrating the former health secretary's many achievements.

And this last is a harmless fantasy which will appeal to many hacks.

Fleet Street Classic: get pissed, get in a fight with the news editor, go and have a three-hour lunch with a contact. See how creative you can be with your expenses. Go off to see your bit on the side when you're meant to be following a story. Fight off the unreasonable demands of owners, the advertising department and the dreaded members of the public. Just make sure you get back into the newsroom on time to file 600 words on the shocking standards of modern behaviour.