to think that Britain's piss-can culture is a bloody disgrace?

[madmomma]

Or am I just getting old and boring? I like a drink as much as the next person, but it seems to me that our drinking culture is just crazily out of control . I live in a pretty deprived area, so maybe that has something to do with it, but when I walk around my town centre there are so many people drinking in the day time. And I don't mean one, with lunch. People drinking with a view to carrying on through the afternoon. It just seems to be that people who drink moderately or not at all are in the minority these days and binge/heavy drinking is the norm. I'm 33 so maybe someone older would say that it's always been this way and I've just started to notice it. I think it's pretty gross really. Boring old fart?

Hogarth

Gin lane

Nothing has changed.

I notice this in the rest of Europe too.... Daytime drinking, then they bugger of for a siesta to sleep it off!

chub do you mean it's always been like this?
olympia other europeans seem to do it in a less lairy, grim fashion though don't they? I

Apparantly the Romans commented on the binge drinking habits of the Celts and found it disgusting! As for the rest of Europe, can't say I've noticed the streets full of the very young wandering around shoeless in the city centre and worse, except for British stag parties...

Well I must be a granny then.( as am older than 33)....I hate the 'we have to get pissed ' attitude .In Europe alcohol is not seen as a banned item so kids grow up used to having it round and I see far fewer drunken French, Italian, Spanish, when on holiday locations than in the Uk. Mind you in many if the afore mentioned you see more drunken brits as well..........

Yup. Chub does mean that inappropriate use if alcohol has always been an issue and,is often been portrayed as an issue that relates to the socioeconomic ally deprived .

olympia other europeans seem to do it in a less lairy, grim fashion though don't they?

Sadly not in the Borough I live in, no.

Are you talking about people who can afford to sit in pubs all day, or people who just sit on benches in the parks and town centers?

I think probably some people in a society have always drunk like that and it's not new. I suspect as well that in some cultures it is more hidden or normalised - I was looking at what cooks in Victorian Britian were expected to drink, and basically these very respectable women were drinking from about 7am until midnight, and getting through a lot of units in the day. But of course people didn't know then it was dangerous and saw it as a working woman needing the 'tonic' of a sherry.

That said, I agree that there is a nasty culture around drinking, and given we do know the risks it'd be good if it changed.

Are talking about alcoholic and winos who sit clutching cans of Special Brew or White Lightening as they hang around the Market Square, or people sat having a few drinks on a day off?

I think you also have to bear in mind now that we have more people who work weekends and get their day off during the week, and pubs now cater to eaters as well as just drinkers.

I dont think it is any worse now than it was 20 years ago.

The Normans planned their invasion knowing the Brits would be pissed by mid afternoon.

Nothing new.

But I see where you are coming from; I went to an Olympic Flame hand over and was quite amazed at how many people were clutching cans. Mind you I started to think the DM was right in it's scare mongering on endemic obesity, East European street traders; I wont even go into tattoos, shaven heads, bare chested sweaty men, screechy women with pierced kids and I thought "ew, I'm getting old because the general public never used to look like this"

I think it has a lot to do with how you're brought up. I'm 23 and drink very, very rarely, only when I'm out with friends. It would be completely alien for me to come home after a day at work and open a bottle of wine to relax. But my parents are exactly the opposite, they're classic binge drinkers and a lot of their social life / holidays etc revolve around boozing, which I find quite sad especially as I have to leave them and their drunken mates home

As a result getting really off my face has never held much appeal for me or my sister. It's nice to get "merry" once a while with friends, but any more than that I'm not interested.

I agree with you squeaky that I'm not sure it's got worse, but I do think the stereotype of an alcoholic being someone who drinks special brew in the morning is wrong. It could equally be the person who seems very respectable but actually drinks two bottles of wine a night when no-one else is looking.

I think there have always been contexts in which alcoholics could kid themselves their drinking was normal. I think it is easier to do it now, though.

People used to drink alcohol all the time basically, as water was full of crap and toxic. There is a suggestion that the British have always been heavier drinkers because they didn't work out that boiling water makes it safe until way after, e.g. Indian people.

I think drinking a lot was not seen as a big deal even 50 years ago, if you could afford it which most people couldn't. Churchill used to drink a hell of a lot pretty much constantly.

Booze is so much cheaper now that everyone can afford to get off their face.

The French have a phrase for this: le binge-drinking

No surprise that there's not a French phrase for it.

I knew someone through work who would always drink an insane amount, like 4 bottles of wine at a party, but because he never got lairy and could pretty much hold it no one ever commented to him... I think middle/upper-class excessive drinking is seen as more acceptable

craic, I would disagree with that from my own experience. Most people I know who have come from families who are big drinkers are big drinkers themselves.

It doesnt seem to work the other way around though, because although my dad was teetotal (after a bad experience of alcohol poisoning in his early 20's) and my mum would have the odd glass of wine or half a lager occasionally, I grew up in the era where it was unusual for any of my peers to be non-drinkers. The late 80's was when more and more nightclubs opened, wages were high and living costs were low, drinking hours change dramatically, and the emergence of alcopops and the party culture hit the UK. I spent most of my late teens and twenties in a lovely half pissed haze most evenings and every weekend.

I have never been able to drink during the day though... one half of lager sends me to sleep at lunchtime. :)

I'm talking about all kinds of people. It just seems to me that we have a huge, huge problem with the normalisation of alcohol abuse. On streets, in pubs, in homes. It could well be that I'm just noticing it more because I've recently lost my Dad to alcohol-abuse. Maybe I'm primed for it. But out of my 7 closest friends (all of who are from middle-class backgrounds) I worry seriously about how many 4 of them drink. They each have different patterns to their drinking, but they all binge drink most weekends. Two bottles of wine would be an average Saturday night's drinking for them, each. Surely that says something a bit alarming? Plus, 3 people who were in our year at school have recently died from alcoholic liver disease. I don't know, maybe it's just coincidence.

Drinking habbits have changed and diseases from over consumption/binge drinking are on the increase.

I do wonder if we are seeing more liver/kidney/cancer because men are not dying as young from heart attacks, though.

There is a big increase in health problems in women because we are drinking morenow than we did in the past.

However, i don't think that seeing daytime drinkers is an indication of anything except changing work/lifestyle patterns.

I'm White, British born and bred and alcohol isn't something I ever want. Therefore I have one or two glasses per year. Birthday, Christmas etc. Today I spotted a young guy with a can of lager in a clothes ship. Twat.

its more a northern european cultural thing, so its useless to compare it to southern europe where its about wine.
We're like the belgians and germans and vikings

Shop

Booze is also a lot stronger, though. People used to make a really weak beer, just to make the water safe, that was about 2%. Looking at records for labourers in the 18th century, they drank pints of that through the day, but of course it would not get you drunk very fast, if at all, because it was so weak.

I find it quite scary how much stronger beer and wine have got. I used to think wine was normally around 12% and beer around 3 or 3.5, but lots of new world wine is 14 or 15 and I've seen beers that are as much as 5.5. of 6. That is a big change in a short time, IMO.

"I agree with you squeaky that I'm not sure it's got worse, but I do think the stereotype of an alcoholic being someone who drinks special brew in the morning is wrong"

I wasnt stereotyping, I was specifically talking about the drunks who are sat in the park with a carrier bag full of cheap booze at ten in the morning, usually with a group of friends, or hanging around on a particular street corner where their local hangout is.

I would say every town has that known area, and every town has those known group of people.

Just today because of the weather?

Or are you talking about folk who are queuing outside weatherspoons for it to open?

birds - that's a good point, I'd not thought of that.

But then they do say that women dying of alcohol-related diseases is going up hugely, too.