Can white men sling the booze?

A bit of home drama today. My main computer died this morning and I had to leave for work before fiddling it back into working order. When I returned I found that it was actually the UPS (battery backup thingy in the buzzy box with the flashy lights) that had died. I switched that with the one on my backup computer because that’s rarely used, and bingo, computer fully operational again. The failed one probably needs new batteries, it’s been in use for many, many years. A new one is probably the cheaper option now.

But no internet. Huh? All I did was… oh wait.

The battery backup thingy on the second machine had the phone line running through it because it can. It apparently protects against voltage spikes on that line too. I had pulled out the plugs and plugged one of them into the modem. The wrong one. Well, it looks like an explosion in a spaghetti factory behind those computers – the second one has my video-editing attachments plugged in and can suck the info off any videotape (except Betamax. I don’t have a player for that, but I think I have all sizes of VHS covered), as well as the thing that lets me record my vinyl records onto CDs – and it’s been some time since I dusted back there so all the wires are now the same colour.

There were many bad words, but they worked as well as any magic spell and everything is now back to normal. Including the whisky (Grant’s ale cask reserve, £12 in Morrison’s but I bought the last one, ha ha).

Tomorrow is Friday. I think I’ll get another Ben Bracken in Lidl. It’s a nice whisky and at a penny or so under £18 for a single malt, it’s a good deal. There should be a smoky-drinky at the Booze Brothers’ house tomorrow but whether I go or not will depend on the iciness of the pavements. We are once again in a freeze-melt weather situation, there is snow but not much, it’s melting rapidly by day but refreezing into sheets of clear ice at night. I have no wish to spend another six weeks waiting for a rib to heal. If it’s icy, I’ll stay home. There will be other smoky-drinkies and they are more fun if your ribs don’t hurt.

I have reduced my drinking (I know, it can be hard to tell) because now that I have to go to work almost every day, polishing off a bottle in one evening is no longer a good idea. Not when some wild customer with a prehensile rectum has had an unfortunate rear-end episode in the toilets. It doesn’t happen often but you never know when it will. It’s really best not to be hung over. It’s probably largely my fault that figures show declining drink sales. Sorry about that, Big Booze, but if it’s any consolation, I can’t make my own whisky and even if I could, I don’t want to have to leave it in a barrel for twelve years until it’s ready. You guys are safe for now, unlike the tobacco mob.

Soon there will be minimum pricing on booze. it’s a stupid idea, it won’t work, nobody with any sense at all wants it, it will drive the criminal production of dodgy moonshine through the roof, booze trips will race the smokers to the continent, but the government will do it anyway. Wondering what they are thinking? Wrong question. Wonder ‘whether’. Hint: The answer is ‘no’.

It’s guaranteed not to work. It’s already proven not to work. How?

The anencephalics pushing this idiotic idea believe that if people drink less, then there will be less hospital admissions due to drink and it will save the NHS money. The NHS could save billions at a stroke if it wanted to and improve patient care in the process, by firing at least three layers of managers. They won’t do that. They prefer to stop people using the service they pay for so the managers can get paid and not have to do anything.

As VGIF and others have shown, more than once, the rate of booze consumption has been falling steadily for years. As a nation, we are drinking less every year. I know quite a few youngsters who rarely or never bother drinking, even students – which is unnatural and would, in my student days, have marked them as probably possessed by demons. More and more youngsters drink a beer now and then, fewer of them get to the stage of melting eyes and waking to the pounding of the drink-goblin’s skull-hammer.

A friend of mine had a theory. This is the same friend I went drinking with in Prestwick, many years ago. We visited every pub and one night, in the last one, we solved the riddle of the meaning of life but neither of us could remember what it was. Anyway, his theory was that you get one drink-goblin for every drink you have in a night and when you’re asleep, they smack you around the head, rub their thumbs in your eyes, coat your tongue and teeth with wallpaper paste and spray you all over with shit-smell. One or two can’t do much harm but ten or more of them…

Back to the point. Booze consumption in the UK is in a steady decline. Ransacking of town centres by the Living Drunk isn’t. Neither are hospital admissions of pissheads who have woken up to find they have been in a fight with someone much bigger and they quite clearly didn’t win. The current reduction in consumption is having no effect at all because those who are reducing their intake are not the ones whose brains float in a sea of beer every weekend. Those people will be violently and stupidly plastered every weekend no matter what it costs. If they can’t pre-load with cheap supermarket booze they will brew their own (it’s not hard) or they will buy unmarked bottles of dodgy hooch and go blind. Will that save the NHS money? I think not. I suspect it’s going to cost the NHS a lot more, while reducing the tax intake required to pay for it. But government, being composed of drips from the Idiot Tap, will do it anyway.

It will hit those who drink moderately. It will hit those of us who drink immoderately but don’t go out smashing things up or ending up in casualty. I’ve been in casualty twice but I was stone cold sober both times.

It will have no effect at all on those for whom getting blind drunk and being a git about it is the very essence of a good night out. It will boost all levels of criminality. It will increase costs to the NHS, not reduce them.

Does anyone imagine the government will ever realise this? I don’t think they will, not even after it has become reality. People just keep voting for morons.

(If the title of this post makes no sense, then your musical education is in a terrible state).