Calibrating the Englush.

All dull-eyed and bushy-tongued are we this morning? Liver quivering in fretful anticipation of any further toxic toil? Lifting your head from the pillow turning out to be difficult, tiring, fraught with mendacious pain? Wondering when the blood clot inside your brain will rupture? – you are paying the high cost of low living.

So, step away from the computer for a hour or so, stagger to the first-aid box for pain medication (codeine is good) and as much water as your body can hold.  Back to bed and lie very, very still with a cold cloth on your forehead and eyes to block out the light; breath slowly through your mouth as air moving through nostrils is too much movement for the brain to handle.  Wait until pain subsides. Get up; now is the time to read Ms Raccoon’s offering.  Feel good for about 1 hour then vomit and slowly slide back into oblivion for the rest of the day.

Nu-Labour have banned the high pitched recheat of the hunting horn from disturbing your New Year’s Day Vomitations but the shrill screech of the Nanny State is still issuing forth in Government press releases. Prepare yourself – your painful problem lies in the fact that you are Englush.

The Department of Health (National) have been ‘conducting a series of experiments‘ on the Englush, curiously, only on the Englush, despite being a national body. The Scots, the Welsh, and the Northern Irish, who would never dream of over-indulging in the demon alcohol, appear to have escaped their Mengeles experimentation.

They have discovered that you, yes, you,  Englush with the aching head, are not sufficiently regulated within your own home. This will not do, up with this they cannot put.

A series of experiments across England found that the average ‘home barman’ pours themselves 57ml when they drink a spirit such as vodka, gin or whisky – 32ml more than a standard single 25ml measure. These extra sips equate to 17 units instead of 7.5 units over a week – which can make all the difference for people who might wrongly think they are drinking within the NHS recommended limits of 2-3 units a day for women and 3-4 units a day for men.

Minister for Public Health, Gillian Merron, said:

“It’s easy to get carried away and it’s worrying to see just how much more people might be unwittingly pouring for themselves and their friends at home on a regular basis. Over time, such over-generosity may backfire and harm your health.”

They have been examining you, and your over generous habits  whilst within the privacy of your own home,  in minute detail, and learnt that ‘people aged 31 to 50 were the most ‘generous’, pouring an average of 41ml, whilst men poured considerably more than women, 43ml compared to 32ml’. Worryingly over New Year, these ‘home barmen’ are likely to have even more opportunity to fill their glasses, as almost two thirds of home spirit drinkers (61%) never or rarely use a drinks measure at home.

Noooo! A small area of our lives that Nu-Labour hasn’t managed to regulate, legislate, calibrate? What an oversight!

I was planning at this point to write a spoof press release describing the Pavlovian alcohol meter to be installed in every home complete with web cam that would release a calibrated dose of 10ml of Chinese brewed alcohol upon receipt of a completed Nu-Labour voting card, but sadly, I am too late.

Up in Scotland, a former nurse, John Sharp,  who now sits on the Moray Community Health and Social Care Partnership Committee, and the Local Authority ‘healthier’ theme group in his spare time. Oh, and he’s the spokesman for the ‘SNP group for health’, just in case he’s tempted to get a life and enjoy a pint in the pub instead, or even go home to his wifie, has positively galvanised the over-excitable men and women of the national anti-alcohol abuse faux charity world.

He’s invented a glass that reveals your alcohol consumption!  His idea has been backed by Professor Grant Cumming, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Dr Gray’s hospital in Elgin. Naturally a lifetime of peering into vaginas is an excellent scientific background for declaring “The idea is brilliant, what you’re doing is graphically seeing how much you’re drinking.”

So enamoured is Professor Effectsof Cumming of Sharp’s glassy eyed graphics, that the pair of them have patented their idea, and the Scottish Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon is backing them. Cue excited civil servants; the Weights and Measures Department quivering at the thought of all those new inspections to ensure that landlords now have 4.5 units printed on the side of their pint glass, just in case they are asked for a pint of Snakebite. The glass manufacturers are also elated, for you will need a separate pint glass engraved with 1.8 units  to hold a pint of low alcohol lager. The shop fitting crews are preparing for a bumper year fitting out pubs with 17 different racks for the different pint glasses. Negotiations in progress with the EU to make it ilegal to sell a glass for alcohol consumption without such calibration.

So much new employment! Such a boost for the economy! All because Rantin’ Rab, swaying on his bar stool in Yates Wine Lodge, can’t be expected to remember how many units he’s just downed in that pint!.

“See you Jimmy, I’ll ha’e another 4.5 units for the road”

“Ha’e ye not exceeded yer recommended weekly units for tha’ week, wee Rab?”

“Nae, this wee glass still says 4.5 units Jimmy, it na’e changes”

“Gi’ it here, I’ll gi’ ye a fresh un”

Daft Gits!