Virginia Blackburn

HERE we go again. Yesterday came a host of different stories involving alcohol. Some people apparently consume their week’s worth of units every night while elsewhere it has been revealed that better- off people drink more than the badly off. Well, there’s a surprise. Odds on they take more holidays too, thus incurring their risk of contracting nasty tropical diseases, but you don’t hear people getting wound up about that.

The attitude towards drinking in this country is getting increasingly bizarre. On the one hand you have that laugh- aminute health chief who says she can’t even look at a glass of wine without ruminating on the increased risk of breast cancer, on the other you have our motley crew of lads and ladettes drinking themselves into oblivion in city centres.

Periodic stories arise about yet another British stag night in some unfortunate European capital that ends with mass arrests or diverted planes, while various resorts around Greece and Spain complain loudly about the annual infl ux of drunk Anglo Saxons – all the while salivating at the fact that fi nancially they’re about to clean up.

Never let it be said that we don’t do our bit for Europe. Our young must be solely responsible for keeping places such as Magaluf afl oat.

And then there are the rest of us, the vast majority who like a glass of wine or three but tend not to run amok or pick fi ghts on aircraft and yet are still constantly berated for a nighttime snifter. Here’s another fact you won’t fi nd the health chiefs coming