Brits are the worst drunks in Europe

16 May 2008 - 15:13

Two items on yesterday's TV news both shocked me and made me ashamed to live in England. Football fans leaving an UEFA Cup match in Manchester went on the rampage and attacked police, nearly kicking one policeman to death. And an item on girl crime showed young women in states of near total inebriation fighting and kicking almost as viciously as the football hooligans. Why are the British such violent drunks and why is nothing being done to stop it?

Growing up in Britain, I always believed that it was people in other countries who drank too much. The French, for example, with their liking for wine with every meal and no restriction on children going into bars, were always regarded as drinkers. When I went to Ukraine in 2002 I expected to see a lot of men staggering around after vodka-fuelled binges. In fact, I saw nothing to match the scenes you can witness any Friday or Saturday night in the main street of the small country town that I currently call home. My wife grew up in a big city in Ukraine, but she never witnessed such scenes of drunken loutish behavior as she has seen in the few years she has lived in the UK.

In many holiday resorts in Spain and Greece British tourists cause terrible trouble with their drunken antics. When we were in Prague the Russian owner of the flat we were renting asked my wife (in Russian): "Why do the British behave so badly here?" I was embarrassed when she told me, afterwards.

This reputation is nothing to be proud of. And medical experts are rightly concerned about the long term effects of widespread alcohol use. So why does nobody try to do anything about it? I suppose that our self-serving politicians are too busy pretending to sort out the rest of the world to focus on problems closer to home. The only answer our pathetic leaders can come up with is to suggest increasing taxes on alcohol - ignoring the fact that alcoholic drinks are already more highly taxed here than anywhere in Europe except Scandinavia and that has done nothing to help the problem.

We have had hard hitting campaigns advertising the perils of smoking. Why not something on the same lines about alcohol? And why don't the police start enforcing the already existing laws against drunk and disorderly behavior? Let's have a blood alcohol limit for pedestrians, like there is for motorists, and start breathalyzing people. It's about time someone did something about this loutish drink culture before our town centers become no-go areas for civilized people at night (and after football matches.) If they haven't already.