Posts by Caleb D'Anvers
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I have seen people theorise that the rise of the British empire was due to getting at tea and/or coffee early, meaning that they had a safe liquid to drink that didn't make them drunk all the time.
In eighteenth-century England, coffee was seen as a utopian drink. The idea was that it would replace alcohol, leading to a new world in which people would be sociable, quick-witted, and above all industrious. Coffee-advocates saw alcohol as anti-social and regressive -- an unfortunate hang-over from the medieval past.
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I guess my unease with supermarket sales stems from the degree to which it normalizes alcohol, placing it on the same level as bread and milk. I'm still not entirely comfortable with that equation.
But that is the whole point. If alcohol is a forbidden fruit then the yoof will WANT it with a vengeance.
Yeah, but I really don't buy the line that it's because things are illegal that people want to consume them. I don't think that outlawing tea or test match cricket or the Winter Garden would suddenly make those things terribly sexy and desirable. People get drunk because they want to get drunk, largely.
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On the contrary, I was very happy that Lindauer Special Reserve was 2 for $20 at my local NW Metro, making it all that much easier to stock up for the New Year's Eve punch.
Heh. You should have seen the rush that special caused at Thorndon New World. Dignified it wasn't.
As opposed to abnormalising it, labelling it as dangerous, forbidden, naughty and hence glamorous?
Sure, but this goes back to the point made earlier about regulation being seen as the problem, not the (potential) solution. Arguments that regulations make bad things glamorous and we should therefore lift them are just a wee bit too convenient for those who market 'bad' things. I'm not convinced that people drink because they're drawn moth-like to the forbidden or naughty. I think it's far more the psycho-chemical effects of alcohol that people are attracted to. The left-libertarian anti-regulation position is just a wee bit too abstract and cerebral, it seems to me.
Anyway, we've now had a long period of alcohol being progressively normalized and marketed down every available pipe, and I don't see a Paris-style alco-utopia coming just over the horizon.
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They show an increasing trend, though not a steep one, and it needs noting that per-capita alcohol consumption remains lower than it was in the early 1990s, when regulations were tighter.
Absolutely, but I think it's worth pointing out that consumption did decrease in the mid 90s, and (i) only started to increase again when the drinking age went down to 18, and (ii), that this increase also correlated with the introduction of 'self regulation' in liquor industry advertising. This is in-line with international trends. In the states, for instance, the corresponding spike in drinking started in 1996, when a 'self regulating' industry ended its voluntary ban on radio and TV advertising and started to spend heavily in those areas.
It seems to me that government regulations can be effective, certainly much more than a shark-in-charge-of-swimming-pool 'self-regulation' regime.
But I'd rather have wine and beer being sold alongside food in a supermarket (where they're much tighter on who they'll sell to than your average hole in the wall is).
I buy most of my alcohol from supermarkets and the Northland and Kelburn dairies, so I'm probably the last one who should be talking here. I guess my unease with supermarket sales stems from the degree to which it normalizes alcohol, placing it on the same level as bread and milk. I'm still not entirely comfortable with that equation. And the fact that supermarkets have been using alcohol as a 'loss leader' doesn't make me feel any better about it.
The interesting thing about the process of Grey Lynn going "wet" after its licensing status was changed by popular vote in the 90s is that the residents there were willing and able to use the consent process to control what happened next.
This is a good point, but it is Grey Lynn. Do residents in, say, Wesley or Otahuhu or Otara have the time and resources to bring off similar results?
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What we're seeing now are the long-term consequences of the liquor industry's response to the bleak economic outlook it faced in the early- to mid-90s. Alcohol consumption, particularly among the young, was trending downwards in first world countries and sales were decreasing. The industry therefore embarked on an international campaign to get young people drinking again. Advertising budgets swelled, aggressive new marketing campaigns aimed at tying drinking to youth identity were conceived and launched, and governments everywhere lobbied to reduce restrictions on sales. The 'New Lad' culture and the near-tribal social-group identifications with brands like Tui didn't come from nowhere --they were the creation of advertising agencies. I think at this point we can say that these campaigns were devastatingly successful.
Allied to this was the extent to which libertarian thinking wormed its way into policy at both ends of the political spectrum. In the UK, for instance, the Blair government suggested that it was restrictions on pub opening hours that were causing problem drinking, not the pubs themselves. Policymakers managed to convince themselves that it was regulations that were causing social problems, not the substances they sought to control. So we ended up with the nonsensical situation where we were expected to believe that increasing the supply and availability of liquor would somehow lead to people using it more responsibly. Of course, it didn't -- it just led to more and more people getting off their faces more and more often.
So we're now in the ridiculous position where consumption keeps increasing, and with it crime and the cost of treating alcohol-related injuries and diseases, and sensible regulation is deemed somehow 'off the table'. I think instead that it's time to take stock. The lowering of the drinking was an abject failure on its own terms. It hasn't alleviated youth drinking; it's made the problem considerably worse. Relaxing restrictions on advertising have likewise just added to the problem. Alcohol itself, meanwhile, is far too cheap and far too widely available.
The drinking age needs to go back to 20. Alcohol sales in dairies and supermarkets need to cease, and bylaws at the local government level restricting the number of liquor licenses --particularly off-licenses -- need to be enacted and systematically enforced. Meanwhile, it would be nice if some of the huge social and public-health costs of drinking could be passed back to brewers and then onto consumers. Perhaps a nice big levy, tied to annual estimates of government monies spent cleaning up after the liquor industry?
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I can also report that town after the game was absolute carnage. I blame Jesse Ryder.
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I don't want to knock the list in any way, but seeing it in one block like that really brings home what a depressing year it's (largely) been.
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Minimum standards in literacy and numeracy. Does anyone seriously object to ensuring that kids can at the very least read, write, and understand the basics of maths?
Of course not. I think what people are objecting to is the element of bait-and-switch involved in National's policy.
Full literacy and numeracy are laudable goals. Whether they will be achieved by a testing regime administered by for-profit, (probably) foreign-owned companies who are demonstrably failing to achieve their briefs overseas is another question entirely. Asking who these companies are, what their educational philosophies might be, and what influence they might have had on National Party policy, are entirely valid questions to be asking. They are quite separate from the issue of 'is literacy important?'
On another level, National's apparent desire to control what goes on in the classroom while deliberately excluding teachers and the Ministry of Education from discussion seems to speak volumes about their distrust, fear, and, perhaps, contempt for both teachers and Ministry expertise.
It reflects a wider crisis in Conservative politics, where a general scepticism towards governance, professional expertise, and intellectual authority translates into inept, corrupt, and badly informed government when a Conservative party wins control.
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*Advisory: linked article fails basic paragraphing standards.
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Another interesting detail is: who gets to design and administer the new educational testing regime. Presumably, they will be contracted from the private sector. Might they even be some of the same companies that are doing such a poor job of applying No Child Left Behind in the US?