This country has turned into a nanny state. It is MY choice to decide if i want to drink, didnt a gov report say it is the middle classes who are drinking themselfs into an early graves as opposed to the working class? the middle class have plenty of spare cash so how is putting more tax on alchole going to stop them drinking?

And if children are drinking themselfs stupid then i think the gov are missing the point….. Children shouldnt even be buying alchohole in the first place so how the hell is putting MORE TAX ON GOING TO STOP IT!!!!! AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHH

They arent actually addressing the issue its just another way to get YET MORE TAX OUT OF US.

AN Example of this is recently introduced Green tax on Air travel.. is the money received from this tax money put back into to schems which help the enviroment etc????. ERRRR NO. Just goes into the GOVERNMENTS coffers.

They interfering prats who came up with tis b******ks might want to ask WHY so many people feel the need to drink themselfs stupid in the first place. If people are that determined to drink tax isnt going to stop them.

This is all anothe scam TO GET MORE TAX OUT OF US

As regards petrol it’s a complete scandal. For every £10 of fuel you put in your car, more than £8 of it is tax. I once had a friend who had a petrol station and she said for every litre of fuel she sold (price roughly 90p a litre then), she made a grand total of 1.5p profit. She very soon went bust.

It’s a prime example of the government taxing the things we use the most, the things they know we can’t do without and so HAVE to pay whether we like it or not.

You may not accept this, but we live in an ultra-capitalist state where the economy rules and influences almost every aspect of our lives. People spend most of their time in jobs they care little about and are expected to devote even more time if they want to be considered “successful”.

The problem is not entirely down to working hours, however. Over the past 60 years we have witnessed the decline in all communitarian aspects of life. From family to religion, class to ephemeral social movements (punk), even benign self-respecting patriotism have all been significantly eroded. Despite the issues of communitarian groups, they bred social meaning, definition and belonging for the individual.

You might have been led to believe that this country underwent several social revolutions post WWII: feminism/gender equality, class equality, racial equality, sexual equality, sexual freedom etc. There was in fact only one revolution and that was of capitalism, the economy. You are told that individuals fought for the rights of a group: I dispute the actual effect they had. Humanity did not re-evaluate its greedy heart overnight. People in the right positions of power realised that converting oppressed groups into equal consumerists made money and was generally good for the economy. For example, women left motherhood to pursue careers.

Each person who “plays ball” with the economy is subject to the rules of the game. Basically, you earn to spend. Your colour, creed, gender shouldn’t matter. However, the economy and mass media prevail upon you to spend your disposable fuelling a prestigious individualist identity, at the expense of more humanistic communitarian pursuits. You probably remember noticing the first times *** identities were used on TV: this is not solely an expression of equality, but that there is a significant market for this identity to be profitable.

The advent of popular culture has increasingly shone the spotlight on not the group, but the individual. Elvis was an individual, Kurt Cobain was an individual: this is the sale of identity. If a person in the fifties bought an Elvis record, or had a hairstyle like him, they made a statement: I embody part of what makes Elvis so special. Reflected glory for a golden social passport into universal acceptance.

Without the close family networks of the past, people are left without a sense of belonging. They seek it in fractured social environments such as pubs. Alcohol is becoming an increasingly necessary lubricant to a people who lack self-belief, who are unsure of their identity, people who think buying a certain product and displaying it will give them some sort of social validation.

The British people lack the time and self-belief to form proper, often complex, opinions and world views. They shy away from conversations they think they aren’t knowledgeable enough to discuss. They spend masses of time vegetating, not just in front of the TV after work, but in the office or wherever it is they seek definition.

The economy as a whole is responsible for both size zero and obesity. It is responsible for excessive binge drinking. The government will never do anything to restrict the economy. Binge drinking is therefore here to stay for a long time. They know this, but they too see the chance of making some money.

The NHS has always been in trouble, but that has nothing to do with people “abusing” their bodies as you put. If people want to abuse their bodies then so be it. But if you are gonna do something with the NHS then privatise it 100% across the board, and make everyone pay, including you, the elderly, the handicapped. No exceptions.

A lot of the problems stem from the financing of the NHS as well as all the red-tape, incompetent managers, crap pay, the amounts of money the PCT’s skim off the top, millions wasted on inefficeient IT systems, etc etc the list goes on.

You go on about an irrisponsible society, I think what you want is an fascist state rather than a democracy, with people becoming souless drones and “do as I say, not as I do” being the norm.

Are you a New Labour voter? sounds like something they would come up with as Labour and fascism seem to go hand in hand these days and I take it you are not a smoker or a drinker either?

regards x kitti x