More than 10 million 'drinking at hazardous levels’ - Telegraph
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
More than 10 million 'drinking at hazardous levels’ - Telegraph.
25% of the adult population is drinking at hazardous levels, according to our lords and would-be masters. Personally, I blame them. Consider the following;
In a speech on public service broadcasting, at the London School of Economics, Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, will say: “It’s not good enough for Channel 4 to say they are doing their bit with a Dispatches programme on alcohol abuse like Drinking Yourself to Death when 18 per cent of the screen time in Hollyoaks was accounted for by alcohol references.”
He would not advocate the removal of all alcohol from television, he will say, “but just as it would be wrong in a plural and democratic society to require broadcasters to produce programmes that meet government objectives and promote social behaviour, so it is also wrong for broadcasters to produce programmes that legitimise negative social behaviour.”
We the politicians, not society at large, have the right to define what is "negative social behaviour." And while we don't (yet) insist that you should broadcast our propaganda, you shouldn't broadcast anything that contradicts it.
It's enough to drive anyone to drink. Cheers.
"18 per cent of the screen time in Hollyoaks was accounted for by alcohol references"?
What utter rubbish.
When you look at the study in question you find that this statistic is wildly misleading.
First of all, one of the main characters in the soap apparently manages a bar. Any scene set in the bar is, therefore, counted as an "alcohol reference". You might as well call Dot Cotton's scenes in Eastenders "laundry references".
Second, this figure includes scenes where alcohol can be seen but is not being consumed - so, for example, a scene set in the Italian restaurant is counted as an "alcohol reference" if there is a bottle of wine at one of the other tables.
This type of "alcohol reference" accounts for over 10% of this "18%" number. The component of this figure that relates to actual consumption of alcohol in Hollyoaks - as opposed to seeing it behind a bar - is 8%. To put this into context, in a 25 minute episode of Hollyoaks, that's two minutes.
Oh, and last but not least, there's this gem from the study in quesion:
The characters used alcohol to help them enjoy dates and to celebrate special occasions.
Heaven forfend!
I don't watch Hollyoaks, but I've seen enough of it to know that their alcohol consumption is by far the most realistic element of the show. "Jeremy Hunt" is aptly named.
Posted by: Mr Eugenides | Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 01:37 PM
One doesn'thave to drink that much for it to be 'hazardous' though.
I rarely binge drink, but I'm probably on 40-50 units a week. I go to the pub most nights and usually have between three and four. At weekends I'll drink more.
I take these dire warnings with a pinch of salt.
Posted by: Crushed | Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 08:25 AM
From "The Telegraph": The Government recommends a limit of 14 units a week for women and 21 for men, but 31 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women now regularly drink above this level.
“Hazardous” drinkers are women who regularly drink between 14 and 35 units a week and men who drink between 21 and 50 units.
So... HMG is recommending 14 / 21 units per week, even lower than the, totally un-based-in-science, guesstimate of 21 / 28 units from the BMA. So, follow your doctor's advice and you become a "hazardous" drinker. I wonder when the campaign to stamp out "passive drinking" will get under way.
If one may be permitted to preempt Mike Denham, is this "boozo-wibble"?
Posted by: Pogo | Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 07:36 AM