So I’m awake early – I always get up super-early on changeover day, weird tradition of mine, I gather that you’re meant to lounge in bed for the extra hour – and the News is full of this:

[news.bbc.co.uk]

Public transport ‘drink ban plan’

A ban on passengers drinking alcohol on all forms of public transport, as well as on domestic flights, is reportedly being considered by the government. According to two Sunday newspapers the measures have been proposed as part of a crackdown on binge drinking.

…and on the TV news they talked about this being …part of a Government crackdown on the horrors of binge drinking and Antisocial Behaviour.

The mistake that they made was to continue: Binge Drinking, which the Government defines as anyone drinking more than the UK recommended daily intake of alcohol… – given my statistics background I stopped listening to the fear and terror and instead wondered how much is that, precisely?

A little Googling and we get:

UK daily recommended alcohol site:gov.uk leading to: [www.statistics.gov.uk] [PDF] which cites:

Current government advice on drinking is that for men, consistently drinking 4 or more units a day is not recommended; for women, the equivalent amount is 3 units a day. These recommended maximum amounts are referred to in the report as daily benchmarks.

Them’s the limits. In fact I already knew the “unit” count, but it’s nice to have them confirmed. So even for me – a 6-foot-4 BLABSH male, that’s a total of 4 units of alcohol per diem:

If you don’t want to be a Government-mandated “Binge Drinker”, in any given day you may consume:

• two pints of beer or…
• one pint of strong beer[1] or…
• four shots of spirits or…
• four small (125ml) glasses of table wine

…or any obvious fractional permutation of the above.[2]

That’s it. Them’s the limits. Not a drop more!

People, know thy limits!!!

So there you are – if you are an Customer Account Executive and you have a pint at lunch, and the accidently follow it with two pints in the evening, then THE GOVERNMENT KNOWS THAT YOU ARE A BINGE DRINKER, YOU ARE A CHAV, AND YOU ARE A SOCIAL ILL THAT DEBILITATES THE WELFARE OF THE STATE.

In fact you are exactly the sort of person that you complain about having read your Daily Mail on the train, en-route to the City.

Seek an ASBO for yourself, and turn yourself in to Downing Street.

Love, Alec (who, when out with friends last night, having spent the entire morning trimming the hedges of a little old lady who was too frail to do it herself, over the course of an entire evening consumed four pints of really rather nice Cornish real ale plus a curry, and yet have neither strangled any puppies nor vomited on the streets, nor purchased a Burberry baseball cap. Fie upon you, Tony Blair.)

—
[1] Here i presume they’re taking aim at Tennent’s SuperExtraGetsYouPissedPurpleStuff – beloved of slurred city drunks, although the same superstrength beer or cider designation could equally well apply to some posh Belgian Triples of which I am aware.

[2] Examples worked-out c/o [www.bupa.co.uk]