There’s been a spate of stories recently about “middle class” drinking, which stem from a report produced by Liverpool John Moores University. The BBC’s coverage is reasonably typical
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1) The gap between purchased alcohol and consumed alcohol could (up to a point) be due to waste rather than accurate reporting. Apparently a sixth of all food bought in the UK is thrown away. I'm not convinced that this explains the discrepancy (alcohol has less of a tendancy to rot than vegetables, for starters) but I have definitely thrown away half bottles of vinegary-wine after parties, and I know of many cases where whiskey or liquor bought as presents has decorated shelves for many years. I would expect this problem to be even larger in pubs, where mark-ups are high and cask conditioned beer does not keep for more than a few days
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I think that's a little optimistic. Still, I admire your faith in me.
You could, of course, print this out and send it to your MP, who would in all likeliness send it to the Department of Health, who are 99% certain to reply with some form letter missing the point. But it would mean several people would have to read it, and a minister would have to sign in, which might be a useful prelude to them actually thinking about it. Perhaps.
And while I acknowlege DH are probably responsible for their guidelines, I don't see how university research reported poorly can in any (specific) way be our fault...
It's not your fault in a specific way, but it's your fault in a genearl way for nurturing a culture of absolute limits for alcohol intake. Also, I suspect that you may be financing the research in some way, but I could be wrong about that.
I think it very unlikely we financed the research as we tend not to have the money to finance anything; still, it is not beyond the limits of possibility as we do have a research and development directorate. Generally finance from "the government" for "university research" is (I think) Innovation, Industry and Skills (or at least definitely Not Us).
Even if we did finance the research, we are still financing some independant academic researcher. Except for in a very broad sense (in as much as the government is probably responsible for a whole host of things like poor education leading to rubbish researchers) I still don't think we are responsible for what they find - only for what they look at. And I think "what level of drinking is healthy" is not a bad question to be looked at.
As I understand the research, "what level of drinking is healthy" is not a question they addressed (although it should have been). The question they appear to have been answering is "what is the distribution of people who (a) drink at a level considered by policy-makers to be harmful, (b) drink at less than this but more than is considered by policy-makers to be safe?" I may be quite wrong about that though.
1) The gap between purchased alcohol and consumed alcohol could (up to a point) be due to waste rather than accurate reporting. Apparently a sixth of all food bought in the UK is thrown away. I'm not convinced that this explains the discrepancy (alcohol has less of a tendancy to rot than vegetables, for starters) but I have definitely thrown away half bottles of vinegary-wine after parties, and I know of many cases where whiskey or liquor bought as presents has decorated shelves for many years. I would expect this problem to be even larger in pubs, where mark-ups are high and cask conditioned beer does not keep for more than a few days ( ... )
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Good, I'm expecting to you to sort this out.
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You could, of course, print this out and send it to your MP, who would in all likeliness send it to the Department of Health, who are 99% certain to reply with some form letter missing the point. But it would mean several people would have to read it, and a minister would have to sign in, which might be a useful prelude to them actually thinking about it. Perhaps.
And while I acknowlege DH are probably responsible for their guidelines, I don't see how university research reported poorly can in any (specific) way be our fault...
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Even if we did finance the research, we are still financing some independant academic researcher. Except for in a very broad sense (in as much as the government is probably responsible for a whole host of things like poor education leading to rubbish researchers) I still don't think we are responsible for what they find - only for what they look at. And I think "what level of drinking is healthy" is not a bad question to be looked at.
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