Clutching At Straw

Welcome to a whole new year, the same as the old year. Welcome to another 364 days when the humble pint of beer can be demonised as the greatest threat to our civilisation since Adolf left the army, little Osama decided against joining dad’s construction business and women/blacks/the poor were allowed the vote.

So two days of 2009 have gone and already J.D. Wetherspoon’s decision to cut beer prices is being hailed as a Licence To Binge by those indignation-hawkers at The Daily Mail. Now I’m not getting involved in the politics behind beer. That isn’t why I periodically mash my face into this keyboard and let the spellchecker pick the bones out. Others can fire-hose opprobrium around, but I just like beer. Anyway I’m sure that you have your own opinions and they are no doubt less fabricated from ill-conceived mouthguff than mine.

But we need to look to the future for beer. We must - primarily so we can get there before a junior minister sees fit to flop his swollen credentials onto the dispatch box in an attempt to sate an imagined demographic that only really consists of Melanie Phillips and her bubonic afterbirth.

But I have a nifty plan. If we create our own headline-grabbing programme of anti-booze measures we can discredit any future governments plans. After all anything and anyone that appears on this blog is instantly discredited.

So we must create a raft of measures and thus render them all laughable. They must also be radical, they must be draconian too because any Speakers’ Corner driveller can call for curfews or increasing the minimum drinking age to 21.

In fact, someone somewhere on a forum is probably right now advocating the return of National Service for anyone who has ever consumed more than a small gin in a 24-hour period. It might be fun though. After all watching the CAMRA membership run over an assault course would at least be a cheap laugh and somehow more dignfied than some TV programmes.

Go Guantanmo On Their Arses
The Government have already nabbed these high-visibility orange jumpsuits for their Community Payback idiocy but that shouldn’t stop us. Originality is no bar is it Jack?

To further distance the deviants who like the odd glass of ginger wine from the rest of decent, honest, puritan, white society, anyone planning a night out or even a swift pint on the walk home should be forced to wear one of these orange jumpsuit. Not only will it have safety benefits as drivers will know to expect their toddleresque lurching on the way home but now all you need to do is pop granddad into his day-glow romper outfit before he has a Harvey’s Bristol Cream and the rest of humanity will know not to listen to his deranged and racist ‘reckonings’ anymore.

Pedestrian Breathalyser
Roads are a dangerous place to be boozed-up, sure, but what about pavements? Have you ever had to walk too near a crumpled prole or a gutter-hobbit because of their unreasoned foot-stumbling? All we need to do is equip every copper - and borderline authority figure such as teachers/masons/T.A. members- with cuffs, a breathalyser and some weapons-grade sarcasm. Combined with some comprehensive SUS laws, we could even dress it up as part of the fight against knife crime, and the GWAT. Or just introduce it into infant schools from Monday.

Warnings On Booze
Printed cigarette warnings have clearly proven a vast success; there isn’t any evidence to prove this – except that it is a fact. So logically beer warnings must use the same technique of stark slogans and big print. No, in fact the font must be bigger, bolder and the words somehow less nuanced - because remember these people might be drunk. Surely the simple sloganeering of: “No!”, “Bad” and the Alice in Wonderland-themed “Don’t Drink Me” would suffice?

To truly save the youth from the demonic drink perhaps we must take this whole principle further and attempt to shatter the traditional link between alcohol and fun. So from now on all booze should be advertised under the slogan "Party with Shami Chakrabarti”. All we need to do is let Liberty's misery in mascara glower her way through any advert for alcohol and even the delightful Old Purple Tin won’t taste so sweet.

Failing that one in every twenty bottles of Budweiser contains a surprise. Instead of ricey-goodness, each special bottle would fire steel bolts from high-pressure rams up into the roof of the mouth piercing the brain and performing an instant Budotomoy.

Alcoholic-proof bottle caps
Clearly a major problem with these unruly booze-hounds isn't just the quantity of hooch consumed, it is the timing. So by simply adding alcoholic-proof bottle caps to the top of any bottle of spirits, the hours that the grog can be consumed can be cut. Much like the childproof caps on pills, these simple devices would click annoyingly until the next Centrally Mandated Drinking Hour sounds when they would be able to unleash their intoxicating contents.

Start Your Two Minutes Of Hate
Can you do better? Of course you can, you aren’t Jacqui Smith. But why not pretend to take a hammer to the Statue Of Lady Justice yourself with your own short-term idiocy designed to appeal to Simon Heffer and his hellspawn. Type them here. Go on, it’s that or talk to your co-workers.