Posts by Stephen Judd
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
The notion that the state has an interest in the health of your body so that you can serve the nation better is at heart a fascist one and I do feel a teeny bit uncomfortable with the way some public health advocates carry on sometimes, all hygiene and imperialism and blithe assumption that keeping it in tiptop shape is the only point of having a body at all. But just a teeny bit, mind.
-
-
-
Judging by the website, SpinItWide is basically an automated mass-email service to allow clients to spam media contacts and maintain their own contacts database. So although the Inwood connection is very interesting I wouldn't leap to the conclusion that all its clients are equally skeezy.
-
Cannibas: like cannabis, but much worse.
-
... a piece by the late Kingsley Martin--the greatest journalist ever to hold the editorial chair of this magazine [The New Statesman]--which he wrote during a visit to Paris soon after the end of the second world war. As far as I can remember, the article consisted entirely of sentences like: 'The politics are more interesting in France, because the wine is cheaper. The food is better in France, because the wine is cheaper. The girls are prettier in France, because the wine is cheaper. The literature is more profound in France, because the wine is cheaper...' And so on, ad infinitum.
-
Ah, here we are:
But these days it does not seem to work like that any more.
"Our societies resemble each other more and more, and binge drinking, especially at weekends, has developed in recent years in France," says Patrick Bloche, mayor of the 11th Arrondissement, or district, of Paris.
Mr Bloche has just initiated an extension of the "dry area" in his district.
"We have to fight this bad habit, this growing trend for some Parisians, especially teenagers, to gather outdoors, in public, and drink for hours until they're drunk," he explains.
The health ministry says the number of children under 15 admitted to hospital for drunkenness has increased by 50% in the past four years.
The number of people under 24 treated in hospital in connection with alcohol rose by the same percentage.
Dr Philippe Nuss, who treats people with alcohol-related problems at the St Antoine hospital in Paris, says one factor in the growth of binge drinking is that teenagers are now starting to drink at a younger age."They start drinking earlier because the family is less cohesive," he says.
"They used to be more strictly controlled by their parents but now they tend to go out and start drinking in groups from the age of about 13 to 16."
-
I think it's clear that traditional French drinking culture -- the one we perhaps unwisely romanticise -- is being replaced by the UK model. A 50% increase in four years? Something unusual is happening there.
Cue my standard hand-wringing about the levelling effects of global capitalism on local culture.
-
The 3rd place showing of the Irish is particularly scary given the oft-claimed factoid that per capita Ireland has more teetotallers than any other European country.
-
Obviously you have more expertise than me, Ross, but I am a bit uncomfortable with your page there. Eg:
Research has found that the younger people begin drinking, the more likely they are to become alcohol dependent later in life. [6]
The reference is to this paper. Now the Finns have many admirable qualities but a restrained attitude to drink is not one of them. True, the notion that drinking patterns are a culturally determined thing is itself something we ought to prove, but I don't think you can show that French drinking culture is bad by pointing to studies of Finns. The other studies cited in support of not introducing booze to the young don't come from France either.
On another point, I think minimising alcohol consumption, and changing people's behaviour when they do consume, are two different things. Can't we aim for the minimal binging of the French while keeping our lower per capita consumption?