Pictured: A NuPuritan Stripped Bare...

Joan Smith reveals all in the 'Indy':

Just about everyone claims to dislike Britain's binge-drinking culture.

Translation: 'Just about everyone' = Joanie's fellow Puritans...

It's widely believed that the British, unlike the French, have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Supermarkets are full of cheap booze, bars lure passers-by inside with "happy hours" and our drinking culture is loutish and competitive.

It's widely believed that AGW is a threat to our survival and there are panthers in our woods. Doesn't make it true.

It's all dreadful and somebody should do something about it...

Aha! Nice to see someone issuing the hunting cry of the hot-blooded bansturbator again, eh?

...but that's where the agreement ends. Firm proposals to reduce alcohol consumption, such as those published yesterday by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), are generally greeted with scepticism and even outrage.

Well, yes. What did you expect? The proposals were torn to shreds by pretty much everyone with a brain because they were unworkable, unfair and possibly illegal under EU law.

Nice is advocating ... better screening for drink problems in the general population. The latter proposal means GPs taking the extraordinary step of asking patients about their drinking habits, an idea which has been greeted as though it's a massive and distasteful invasion of privacy.

Because it is (as well as being a further imposition on doctors time that they could well do without). Who could argue agains...

Oh. You, of course:

(Do it, I say. And ask them about their weight while you're at it.)

Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, eh, Joanie?

Public attitudes to drinking in the UK are confused, irrational and mixed up with other factors such as celebrity and class.

Those stupid peasants! They refuse to listen to the one true wisdom imparted by their betters...

The public disapproves of alcoholism in general but is willing to make endless excuses for individuals such as the late George Best, who was romanticised even as his life was visibly being destroyed by drink.

Because they recognise that it was his choice? And that taking away his choice 'for his own good' would be worse?

Lucky you have no such scruples, eh?

There is a semi-excuse for this: anyone over the age of 40 grew up thinking that half a bottle of wine with dinner each night qualified as "moderate" consumption, so it's a shock to look at up-to-date tables which show how small a single unit actually is.

It's a shock because it's not true.

You don't have to drink seven pints a night to have a drink problem; a couple of large glasses of wine each evening adds up to several dozen units per week, way above "safe" limits for both men and women.

Hmm, I note that, despite your slavering desire to control us all, you are cunning enough to put those scare quotes in there.

Because you are fully aware that those limits are pulled straight from the north end of a southbound bureacrat...

...the cultural norm is still to drink more than doctors recommend.

That's the thing about recommendations, Joanie. You don't have to take them...

That makes it easy for sceptics to dismiss any attempt to tackle binge-drinking on the grounds that the medical establishment is much too cautious in its approach to alcohol. Why should "moderate" or "sensible" drinkers be affected by measures which clearly ought to be targeted on young people who regularly drink themselves legless?

Why indeed?

It's true that the Nice recommendations would make booze more expensive for everyone...But there is an element of targeting here, since higher prices have the biggest impact on the heaviest drinkers and on young people, who spend a relatively high proportion of their income on alcohol. If the rest of us cut down as well, that would bring more health benefits, as well as reducing the cost to the NHS of drink-related illness.

Aha, this is the 'Let's all pay more to stop others doing as they choose' argument, isn't it? Well, no thanks...

People who complain about the "nanny state" ignore the fact that alcoholism and other lifestyle conditions, such as obesity, place a huge burden on taxpayers.

Which is more than offset by the amount pulled in by the Treasury in VAT and other taxes...

...some Labour MPs shy away from minimum-pricing because they see it as an imposition on their working-class constituents. The same people opposed the ban on smoking in public places, as though poor people's lives are so resistant to improvement that they have to be allowed to smoke and drink themselves to death.

We have to save these people from themselves!

Cultural change is often most effectively brought about by legislation. Thirty years ago, people didn't think twice about drink-driving but a crack-down by the police has got even some of the worst offenders out of the habit.

Yes, and the police did that by charging everyone driving a car with drink driving, even if not a drop had touched their lips, didn't they?

Oh, wait. No, of course not.

They targeted the offenders. The ones who were breaking the law. Just as drunken revellers causing damage and noise are breaking the law.

Strange how you seem to rule out targeting the people who cause the problems in favour of controlling everyone, isn't it?