Tuesday 5 June 2007

The State Machine as Terminator

Further to excellent posts by Mr Eugenides and Devil's Kitchen on the issue of patronising, authoritarian, interfering knob-jockeys wanting to impose price controls on alcohol, the issue prompts me to misquote from the excellent Terminator:


Kyle Reese: Listen! And understand! The State is out there. It can't be bargained with! It can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!


Update: from further BBC reports. hat tip Phil A.


"Big" Vern

It seems "Big Vern" Vernon Coaker (who would be wearing a sheepskin coat if the weather was not so clement...) says

"It is unacceptable for people to use alcohol and urinate in the street, vomit and carry on. It's almost regarded as acceptable to drink to get drunk and we want to change that attitude."

Well, I think it is unacceptable for a Government to use our money, urinate over our traditions, freedoms and rights, vomit up more legislation and then carry on. It's almost regarded as acceptable to fleece the taxpayer and I WANT TO CHANGE THAT ATTITUDE!

If there is a problem with drunken yobs on the streets, lock 'em up in short term solitary, fine them properly and treat their behaviour as seriously as we "hazardous middle aged drinkers" do. It is not as if nothing has been said along those lines in the past!

8 comments:

CFD Ed said...

Price controls? This is worse - Ministers have a new Strategy. Health minister Caroline Flint opines sternly: "There are people, adults, who on a very regular basis are probably drinking twice the amount that is recommended."

This time they are not just after younger people out on the town. No now they are also planning to target people they consider drink ‘too much’, in their own homes.

Roger Thornhill said...

I expect they will add the functionality to count units to their ID-carbon-roadcharge card.





I am not joking.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Test.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Bugger, it shows me as "Mark", not "Mark Wadsworth". How do I change this?

This thought-crime is getting ridiculous, they had some blithering tosser from Alcohol Concern on BBC News 24 yesterday, and to fight our corner, a sozzled old wine critic, who "admitted" to drinking nearly a bottle a day.

Like f*** he does, about half a case more like, but he's no longer allowed to JUST TELL THE TRUTH.

He's a wine critic and he can drink as much as he wants IMHO, good luck to him.

CFD Ed said...

Mark, It seems to do the lower case thing with Google - Hence phil a instead of Phil A. ditto the rest of the comments.

The Alcohol Concern spokes person you refer to may as well have been a Government civil servant.

Though Alcohol Concern (billing it’s self as ‘the national voluntary agency on alcohol misuse’) likes to imply it is an independent registered charity. It actually receives very significant funding from the UK Department of Health.

You can bet they push the line the Government wants so the Government can then ‘respond to public opinion’ once they have.

Roger Thornhill said...

phil, you make a valid point about such "charites". I posted about this a while back.

CFD Ed said...

Roger, You are on the mark there.

Neal Asher said...

At present the alcohol dulls the pain, but when we've all sobered up we'll truly recognise what these authoritarian pricks are doing to our country. Maybe then, hands shaking from withdrawal, we can put the ropes around their necks and hang them from the lamp posts.