This new puritanism would drive anyone to drink

Sunday January 10, 2010

As smokers told you they would, the puritans have now switched their censorious gaze from cigarettes to wine and beer, writes Nick Cohen in The Observer

I can see why journalists failed to recognise that last week’s report from the Commons health committee was the first shot in a war against drink. The party leaders had said in advance that they would ignore its findings. The government had already made it clear that it agreed with the supermarkets’ arguments that the MPs’ plans to stop discount drink sales would hurt successful businesses. It didn’t seem much of a story.

But the health committee has form and we should not dismiss it. In the 1990s, few thought that its denunciations of smoking would get anywhere, but in the end cigarette advertisements were banished from billboards and smokers banished from the public sphere. More important, the MPs’ criticism of the drinks trade represents the consensus view of the NHS, royal colleges and academia – and the medical profession normally gets its way.

The English character is not always attractive. The preference for irony over honesty is wearisome, while the occasional escapes from repression into drunkenness justifiably appal foreigners. Worse than both, however, is English puritanism, whose first priority has always been to prevent pleasure rather than relieve pain.

Full article:
The Observer (10 January 2010)