I need a drink

So as expected and blogged about previously here comes Dishface Cameron and his tight lipped, clenched buttocked puritans and bansturbators determined to grind any bit of pleasure out of our lives and wielding a 45p per unit minimum price for alcohol.

It's all for our own good of course as they keep banging on about in those awful Keith Haring-esque animated propaganda ads; we're all naughty boozers killing ourselves and costing the NHS a fortune. But  I fail to see why ending the three for a tenner wine offers in Tesco is going to stop the arseholes getting shitfaced on jaegerbombs and lambrini in every town centre in the land as I can bet your average town centre aircraft hanger sized theme pub will be charging a shitload more than 45p a unit.

No, this is an attack on, well, me to be honest, your middle age hacked off working guy who likes a drink or three in the comfort of his own home when he gets in from the office or factory. We're the problem you see, drinking ourselves into an early grave and if we're not being wage slaves we're a drain on the state; quite ignoring the fact that the duty I've paid on booze over the years could probably equip a medium sized intensive care unit.

By my back-of-a-beer-mat calculations your average 11 unit bottle of wine will have a minimum price of just shy of a fiver and to be honest if you're paying less than a fiver now for wine in the UK you're likely drinking shite. But given you can at the moment get bulk buys of a 6 or 7 quid bottle for 3.50 or so then kiss those kinds of deals goodbye. And remember this is just the introductory rate. You know that above inflation rises will follow on swift wings and that bottle of cheap but cheerful midweek Barolo that makes your pizza slip down a treat will start setting you back eight, nine, ten quid in a couple of years.

If you're a gin and tonic fan it's worse. You get punted right in the bollocks from the get-go. A bit of googling shows me you can get a litre of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference export strength (43%) gin goes for 14.49 a litre, it's got 43 units in it so under the new puritans that's going to cost you 19.35. Ouch. You might as well buy Tanqueray No. 10 and be done with it.

Well I for one am not going to play. You're not going to get a single red cent in duty from me because I'm going to make my own. To be honest as part of my downsizing and off-grid plans I was going to start making most of my own wine anyway but this has just sped things up. The equipment is cheap as chips, about 35 quid and the better kits cost around the same for 30 to 36 bottles. Two batches and your kit is paid for.

Sure you're not going to knock out an '07 Malbec in your attic but from all the reviews I've read these kits have come on a long way from the crap you got in the 80's and with a little aging stand up well to stuff you'd pay 6 to 8 quid for. And the best thing, not a single penny in duty to the government.  As for the good stuff, well an annual trip to France and pleasant week trundling round Gascony gets that sorted.

OK so what if you like a G&T. Ah well they have kind of got you there. You see whereas right now it's perfectly legit to brew your own beer and wine you can't distill any kind of spirit without a licence from HMRC, not even for your own use and not even if you're trying to make ethanol for fuel from your home grown spuds.. There's no health reason for this, they are not trying to stop Mr Average brewing up a batch of what he thinks is vodka but turns him and his neighbors blind because he cocked up the distillation, this is purely a revenue raising scam.

OK so I'll apply for a licence. Ah no, no you won't Little Dragon. Because HMRC have rather kindly put together "Notice 39" which tells you everything to know about getting a licence to make your own hooch and you aren't getting one because...

2.3 Can you refuse or revoke a licence?

We may refuse to issue a licence, or revoke an existing licence, where:

    the largest still to be used has a capacity below 18 hectoliters

That's a minimum still size of 18000 liters, the size of a medium sized road oil tanker. 

However just like there's nothing that says you can't own, say, a bong and a packet of hemp seeds there's equally nothing that says you can't own a still. You can and what's more you can buy them online for around 100 quid for a simple one or 350 for something a bit more flash. The days of miles of bent copper tubing and fretting about fusil oils are long gone as these things are semi automated and judging by the demo videos a piece of piddle to operate. You could be knocking your own, admittedly illegal, gin out for a couple of quid a litre in no time.

Now am I going to get into home distilling, Well no, I really don't drink enough spirits to make it economically viable and when I do have a drop of the hard stuff it tends to be of the more expensive range and only available directly from the distillery or more specialist retailers.. However if you're a bit of a gin hound or a bit of a chancer on some estate with a ready market I could see it being more attractive.

But as for wine there's no excuse. Starve the beast and stick up a hearty English two fingers at the puritans. I'll let you know how I get on. Mine's a large one.

My liver, not yours.

Here we go again. Having demonised the smokers out of existence The Righteous are, as we have come to expect, training their guns on anything else that, heaven forfend, might give us some kind of pleasure and of course the next demon to be slain is the drink.

Latest on the block are pseudo-charity the British Liver Trust. Pseudo charity? Well when did you last see these people rattling a tin on the street or were accosted by a cheery Aussie chugger demanding you sign over your children yea unto the seventh generation to them? You didn't because they are funded largely by the Government, this from their most recent filing at the Charities Commission:

Key fundraising successes of the year include a three year grant amounting to a total of £489,506 from the Big Lottery Fund’s Reaching Communities Programme to expand our support group network ...

OK so not funded out of taxes but its a reasonable supposition that they're not going to be wanting to piss off Whitehall any time soon or no Lottery cash for you Mr Hepatitis.

But look, you could say, they are having a go at the government, it's all over the BBC...

Government-led policies on alcohol throughout the UK have been branded a joke by the chief executive of the charity the British Liver Trust.

"We need to see direct action to prevent the daily death rate from liver cancer increasing," said Mr Langford. "At the moment all we are seeing are weak policies or no action at all. However, there are so many solutions to the problem."

And rather conveniently, up pops a government spokesman to say...

"We will shortly be setting out how we will tackle all the health and social impacts of alcohol in our alcohol strategy," he said.

 Well wasn't that convenient?

And you know, you just know, that "our alcohol strategy' will be "tax the fuck out of the dragon because he's got the money and he likes glass or two of wine when he gets home". But all for my own good of course, see the Liver Trust says we have to do these things to help you; you're only a dragon, you can't possibly be trusted to make your own descisions about your health. Trust us, we are The Worthy, we are The Righteous.

Well you can all go and fuck yourself with the biggest dildo Bad Dragon make*  Look it's not as if I don't know what alcohol does, you tell me often enough. Do I drink more than your reccomended 21 units a week? You bet on Fafnir's scaly tail I do, but that's my call, not yours. I will take that risk.

And it's not that much of a risk when you look at it...

In 2010, an estimated 3,788 people died from liver cancer across the UK, equating to an average of 10 people each day

... to put that into perspective that's 0.006% of the population.

"But the problem is growing!' screams Dr Liver...

Mr Langford said the condition seemed to be the poor relation to the other big killers, but was the only health problem out of the big five - cardiovascular, respiratory, circulatory and general cancers are the other four - showing an increasing trend.

Well how about the reason for that is that people are surviving some cancers and dying from others, that and we are all living longer so we're more likely to get rarer cancers, plus the rise, since 1977 which is their baseline in the report, of HIV/AIDS and associated conditions such as Hepatitis? You can't just point at the booze and say "that's your cause, right there, outlaw that and you'll see liver cancer rates drop" - that's just bad science.

Look I'm sure the British Liver Foundation do good work supporting people with liver disease and the like but will you please stop using dodgy statistics and cozying up to government giving the po faced arseholes an excuse to demonise and tax the fuck out of one of the few affordable pleasures we have left.

Or I could come round to your place, douse you in a fine XO Armagnac and sneeze in your direction; up to you.



* it's the Sea Dragon in aquamarine with the integral spooge-tube in case you're interested

Lies, Damned Lies and the Central Limit Theorem

Children who see their parents drunk are twice as likely to regularly get drunk themselves, a survey of young teenagers has suggested.

Poor parental supervision also raises the likelihood of teenage drinking, said the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

And in other news Pope Ratzinger confirms the catechism of the Catholic faith and a bear in the woods said "I say, do you mind, I'm having a crap".

That must have been the easiest piece of research in the universe. I hope to The Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) that none of my taxes went to fund this shite.

Also we have this gem from the same "report"

In a survey of 5,700 children aged 13 to 16, carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, researchers found one in five claimed to have been drunk by the time they were 14.

Yes and I recall back in the 70's when the moral panic of the day was "video nasties" that some asshat came up with a survey that showed 50% of kids under 16 had seen a splattery gore movie. Well that was until another team did a similar survey and put in a whole bunch of fake but plausible titles like "I spit on your zombie apocalypse" and, surprise, a whole load of kids claimed to have seen those too.

"Yeah I'm 13 and I've been drunk loads and shagged seven girls" - no you haven't you're just bigging yourself up you nauseating adolescent, now get back to your WiiBox360 won't you.

Whilst the rest of the adult world prepares for yet more taxes on booze because we have to "protect the little kiddies"

More new year resolutions

Whilst on the subject of new year resolutions one I'm making a booze one this year. You maybe know how it is, end of the day you come home and crack open a bottle of wine to have with dinner with Mrs Dragon. You're having a nice time and oh dear wine's finished, maybe we have another little glass...

... next thing you know, and it is the next thing because it creeps up on you when you're not looking, you're drinking a bottle of wine a night, every night, and maybe a nightcap or three at the weekend. I did a little tot up the week before and I made it 75 units. Now I know the government pulled those unit limits out of their arse but even I can realise that that's a bit too much and if I keep this up my liver is going to be applying for a transfer to the ghost of George Best.

So I think a bit less wobble juice would be in order.

Classy

Rather surprisingly it turns out that Moorhouses can brew something that doesn't initially taste like engine oil that's been filtered through a camel's anus and the pub had a "custom" beer on for my brother in law's birthday do (well it had his name on it but I imagine it is one of their standards). It did rather take on a "chewy" texture though about two thirds of the way down the glass as it started to warm up.

They had Timothy Taylor's Landlord on but TTL is a fussy beer that doesn't travel well and needs looking after; this beer had not been well looked after.

So as I had to drive the following day I went onto Heineken, a beer it is impossible to actually drink enough of to get drunk.

Apart from that I didn't know anyone so stood around looking like a spare part for most of the evening until a respectable length of time had passed and I could make the excuse of a full work week and a long drive up to bugger off and get some kip.

Mind you it was a really classy joint as you can see from the flyer they were handing out advertising their Valentine's day special.



Ah how romantic, a candlelit dinner for two plus someone howling their rendition of "I Will Survive" exactly one semitone flat in your ears. Yep that'll get her knickers off for sure.

All this and the following day I get to visit Ikea under orders from Mrs Dracunculus to pick up some bits and pieces. I have this love / hate relationship with Ikea. On one claw I rather like their furniture and design and the prices are very competitive, on the other claw the whole Ikea shopping experience makes me want to set fire to "Ektingbøg" sofas and "Hürdiburgle" lamp stands. Sunday was no exception with nowhere to fucking park, the obligatory shuffle round the maze before actually getting to the bit where they keep the plates and spoons in the company of every screaming, misbehaving child east of the Pennines plus queueing up for half an hour to pay for everything.

If you were travelling past Junction 27 of the M62 yesterday and noticed a small green dragon eating Swedish meatballs on top a flaming pile of affordable wardrobes, colourful throws and screaming children, that was me.

This is going to be a long night

I've just been down to the pub where my brother in law is having his party with my sister to help stick a few balloons up.

The good news: They have some reasonable looking real ales on including a Copper Dragon (yay!) and Timmy Taylors' Landlord (oooer, that could be dangerous)

The bad news: On the way out one of the "guests" who said he would be "along later" left the pub at the same time. "It's a full moon, a fool moon" he said through a face that had been repeatedly beaten with the ugly stick.

"Are we expecting werewolves then" I said

"Oh don't worry about him" I was told, "He thinks he's James Bond. 007. Licensed to Shag"

This is going to be a very long night

Soma

Well after a brief break from blogging I'm back at work (although not in the saddle) and so coming into contact with the usual plethora of morons in the big wide world so, grumpiness revived, I'll start stomping and breathing on random fuckers once more.

One thing I noticed whilst I was off was that our lovely nanny Labour are getting all het up about supermarkets selling ultra cheap lager which is supposedly cheaper than bottled water, so cheap in fact that they must be making a loss on every tin they sell.

Now you don't need to sample this product to know that it is going to taste something like chilled horse piss and therefore not something that'll find its way into the shopping trolley of anyone who reads this august journal. No this is chav-fuel, own brand shit for the lower orders so they'll have some money left over after buying 24 tins of Tesco Value Horse Urine for scratch cards and Silk Cut. But no doubt lulled by the soma of cheap beer the estate scum flop around in front of their widescreen tellies and don't cause any bother apart from to their equally slimy neighbours on the sink estate.

Now although NuLab are a bunch of lying, mendacious cunts they are not uneducated and I cannot believe that none of them have read Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World" - hey they made a movie out of it if they can't be bothered to actually sit down with the book. The lower orders, the "Epsilon Minus Sub-Morons" were kept quiet with their daily doses of "Soma".

So take the soma away from the pond scum and I wonder what will happen. Can't imagine that they will be very happy about it and I bet the resultant riots as the morons start to think a bit and see the shit they are in without the happy fog of booze will make for great TV viewing. Hint to any aspiring right wing politician: you may want to latch onto this and blame the muslims because they hate alcohol, right?

At least he died happy

From the London Evening Standard...

A City trader who jumped to his death from the 19th floor of the Park Lane Hilton was driven to suicide by the pressures of work, an inquest heard. Credit Suisse employee Darren Liddle, 26, spent the night bingeing on cocaine and also drank alcohol from the hotel's minibar before falling 200 feet while his girlfriend looked on.

Well if you're going to go you might as well go whilst you're pissed as a rat and out of your tree on Columbian Marching Powder.

For the record your scaly green friend used to work for BigCo Credit Suisse and left after 18 months without waiting to pick up his annual bonus; yes it really was that bad, quite the most dreadful place it has ever been my misfortune to sit at a desk in. Honestly it it wasn't for the truly world-class sausage sandwiches they did on the 9th floor I would have left after a month. I'm actually amazed that they don't have to put netting around their Canary Wharf premises to catch the falling bodies.

Then they came for the drinkers

Well as predicted our nanny-knows-best rulers having done for the smokers are turning their guns on the drinkers. And are they going for the pissed up morons who turn our towns and cities into battlegrounds every Saturday night? Nope they are going for your law abiding dragon who drinks three or four bottles of wine a week which apparently makes me a "harmful drinker".

What makes me harmful is shite like this emanating from a government I pay for and you are going to find out just how harmful several tons worth of screaming, flaming dragon can be should you come round my house looking for my vote. But what are they going to do... well they are "working hard to change attitudes." How about working hard to keep your fucking nose out of our business. Look you fuckers, we are talking about well off middle class people here, we're not a burden on the NHS because we've all got BUPA and if we want to float into an early grave on a lake of Chianti then that's up to us and not fucking you so just go and give yourself a vodka enema.

But who is working hard to "change our attitudes" (and if you won't change them we'll force you to)?

Public health minister Dawn Primarolo said

Ah, you would be the same Dawn Primarolo who decimated the IT contracting industry trough IR35 then. Yes Dawn I'm really going to take notice of everything you say you utter, utter cunt. Now just chuck a bottle of sambuca over yourself would you¹, I find the blue flames it produces when I breathe on you most pleasing to look at.


¹ you can stuff a coffee bean up each nostril to complete the effect if you like.

First they came for the smokers...

... and I did not speak out, for I was not a smoker.
Then they came for the drinkers,
and the little green dragon finished that nice bottle of Barolo,
fired up the lappy and went positively apeshit.

I fucking hate this fucking government. I mean just who fuck do they think they are.

Look you cunts, I will make this perfectly clear to you. This is my body, mine. Not yours. It is not the property of the fucking state. If I want to stick chemicals into it so that it explodes that might not be very wise but it's my choice so to do. I won't even be a burden on your crappy heath service (hey, I have some respect for my body and really don't fancy coming home with a free bonus c.difficile infection) as I have private medical insurance, and I still have to pay the NHS jizya tax.

So for you twats to go and tell me that I shouldn't be having a glass or two of wine of an evening, and more start having a go at a respectable business trying to offer me a decent deal on this perfectly legal product (which incidentally you have no problem in taxing) is indicative of the level of presumption that I have only come to expect from wankstains like you. Listen, Mr Denham, a retailer does not have to be "responsible" in the "light of the Government's alcohol strategy", Tesco's responsibility is to its shareholders (including me) and to its customers (ditto) and not to whatever Blair has farted out of his scabby arse this week. The concept of "freedom" just passed cunts like you by didn't it. And get some balls, Mr Tesco Man, if someone is buying five tins of SMA every week, why the fuck shouldn't you send them a voucher; you were far to nice to that NuLabour creep, you should have stabbed him in the arse. I'll cut you a bit of slack though because Mrs Dracunculus got a fiver off the shopping yesterday thanks to the clubcard vouchers.

You know what I'm going to do next week. I'm going to get into my nice big polluting 4x4, drive to France and fill it with as much wine as I want (and fill up on cheap diesel whilst I'm there). Then I'm going to drive back and wave my big dragony dick at the customs men as I come through Dover. Lots of nice wine for the dragon to drink and not a penny piece to NuLabs coffers.

Fuck the lot of you.

Cough

The muslims are at it again and this time on my home turf. Mind you what I find really amusing (unlike this story (hat-tip to Frank Chalk) which had me spitting blood) is that this particular hijab wielding numpty does not even know what her own religion says on the subject of tobacco (hint - "nothing"). Take a wander around any major metropolitan centre in an islamic country and the blokes in the dishrag hats will be puffing away on the woodbines like it's going out of fashion. What with lack of ale, shagging and pretty much anything else that might possibly be fun there's precious little else left to do unless you have a fondness for camels.

And what about those nice fruity flavoured baccies that they make for the shisha pipes? I'm not even a smoker but during my sojurns in the middle east, Lebanon in particular, I rather enjoyed those with one of those minty teas they do - almost made up for the lack of decent beer and the Syrian army trying to shoot me (it's a long story - don't ask)

Mind you this could be a really good way for Tony's cronies to crack down on the binge drinking culture. Imagine the scene in a typical ghastly city centre pub on a friday night.

Chav: "Ere mate, give us three pints of snakebite and an absinthe and passion fruit alcopop for me bird"

Barman: "No kuffir I will not. Alcohol is haraam!"

[Exeunt with alarums and excursions and fisticuffs and the summoning of the rozzers]

Stop trying to steal my money!

Doctors have called for a sharp rise in alcohol prices after a report said 28,000 victims of drink-related violence are treated in A&E each year.

Look just fuck off will you. I enjoy a couple of glasses of wine in the evening and have been know to go out for the odd pint or three after work. Please explain to me why I should be penalised for this because some nineteen year cuntsnot can't hold his liquor of a Friday night and starts chucking his weight and pint glasses around.

You want to sort out this. OK here's what you do. Lets take all those dickwads who rock up to A&E beered up to the gills or end up in the cells because they threw a punch at a copper and charge them the full price of their treatement or processing. The full cost mind you, probably several hundred pounds; and if they can't pay then send in the baliffs becuase a pound will get you a penny they (or their feckless parents) will have a nice plasma TV, some sort of motor vehicle or some other goods that can be sold off to raise the funds for the fine. I guarantee that you do this for a few weeks, really do it mind you - no "oh he's poor, he's from a broken home, he's being vicitmised" bollocks - and I guarantee that once a few scrotes have seen everything, yay even unto the Ben Sherman shirt off their backs, taken off them to pay their share of a Friday night's policing bill you will see peace in our towns and cities come the weekends if for no other reason that the troublemakers won't have a bean to spend on the booze.

Regrettably it'll never happen - the dickcheese that passes it off for political leaders these days don't have the backbone.