Well, OK, this still leaves that difficulty of nature and nurture I guess.
According to Breast Cancer UK, quoted in a recent article in The Independent, one in three people say that they need alcohol to get on the dancefloor. In other words, one in three people cannot walk into a social space without a drink in their hand. This rises to forty per cent amongst people aged 18 to 24, but this is not a quirky statistic about youth culture; it is a direct indictment of our cities, our policies, and our collective priorities.
If alternative hubs of connection existed, whether they be cafes, libraries, or community centres that are all too often invisible after dark, people would not be dependent upon locations where alcohol has to be used as a drug to overcome social fear of interaction. Young people are not choosing to drink; they are being forced into it. And society is quietly letting it happen.
Booze loosens social inhibitions. This will be true however many cafes, libraries and community centres there are.
Sheesh and Jeez etc.
What’s even more hilarious is he ignores the fact that almost any hostelry anywhere sells some form of non- alcoholic drink. Whether soft drink, non- alcoholic beer or spirits and increasing quantities of the latter certainly. Guinness Zero is probably the number three seller among bottled/ canned drinks in my local. So the ‘problem’ such as it exists at all is being taken care of. As for Cafes even in Manhattan the demand simply was not there (and they had some coffee places open very late!!)
But when you’re dealing with a tin foil hatter (which it has to be said increasingly Murphy is in many ways) the younger generation will take their cue from it.
Definitely in the genes. I happened to be reading New Scientist (yes, I know) in a library today, and there’s an article on narcissists. They quote from the DSM on Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
“NPD is characterised by grandiosity, a desperate need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. People with the condition frequently overestimate their abilities and inflate their accomplishments.”
Remind you of anyone? There’s more in the article in that vein, which also fits.
Seeing as people on fire move better than I do, I choose not to dance at all, sober or pissed.
And the other two thirds need coke or speed.
Commie dick Murphy just swerved into a bridge abutment.
His mission to sell communism to the masses just ended: only a handful of white women are going to accept banning alcohol. Mass quantities of alcohol are necessary to get people to accept living under it.
Somehow the expert in the economics of walking around has missed the cafes on every street corner. And the expert in asking questions hasn’t asked why Starbucks doesn’t open until midnight – they would if the demand was there.
If the hordes are demanding late night cafes then why doesn’t he open one? He’d surely make bank according to his logic. But no, the emeritus potato won’t open an envelope unless he’s given a grant.
The last time I was in a library (about a year ago, I sat down and read Chris Pavone’s Expats), there was a shitload of social interaction going on.
In my boyhood some people were described as permanently one drink below par.
I say “permanently” but the fact that the measure was just one drink suggests that trials had established that one was enough.
At the other extreme, some drunks were said to be “one over the eight”.
That’s the basis for Mitchell and Webb’s sketch about the world being run by the Inebriati.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_f7IqYEk-w
“One in three people say that they need alcohol to get on the dancefloor. In other words, one in three people cannot walk into a social space without a drink in their hand.”
No, This is dancefloor specific. You care less about being a jackass with booze in you. I remember going to the work “break up” bash at lunchtime in a pub and just not wanting to get down to Blue Monday because I was about sober. Normally I did it after I’d had 5 pints and didn’t care if I looked like a twat.
But I go to business networking events and have coffee. Although there is a fun one with cocktails. I never seem to get any work from that, but it’s fun.
“If alternative hubs of connection existed, whether they be cafes, libraries, or community centres that are all too often invisible after dark, people would not be dependent upon locations where alcohol has to be used as a drug to overcome social fear of interaction. Young people are not choosing to drink; they are being forced into it. And society is quietly letting it happen.”
So obviously a beg for money for a department of community centres with Tre Professore Pere et Fils Limited in charge.
There are “alternative hubs of connection”. I find the gym to be a better social space than a pub. You have a chat in the locker room, a chat by a machine. A chat sat in the pool. Pubs are full of sad old men most of the week (except Spoons). There’s a Costa in Swindon open after 9. I know someone that runs a game shop that does evening events. Go play some D&D or Magic: The Gathering with others. No booze.
The gym has replaced the pub a lot because people are driving, doing office jobs. Want fitness. It’s not like bashing rivets in, where you at least partly went to the pub because it was thirsty work and a way to get energy.
And there’s no pressure to drink. Not like when I was a young man and people would ask why you didn’t do it. In hindsight, that was pretty weird.
Or is Ely different? The six toed boys don’t end quite at the Norfolk border? Nothing to do but drink a load of Tolly Cobbold, and your brain starts thinking that boning your cousin is a good idea?
I find the gym to be a better social space than a pub. You have a chat in the locker room, a chat by a machine
Jezus! Gyms are the haunt of the obsessives & those with self confidence deficits. (Just count the tattos) You’ll become a vegan next. Definitely to be avoided..
Maybe people find it harder to get away from him at the gym? When he’s got them in an arm lock and has got up to “Eighteenthly …” in his rant even the strongest man might scream for help.
I don’t think Murphy could get anybody in an arm lock.
Ok the other hand, Murphy Jnr needs to do something to build his self- confidence. Why not a gym? If you can’t have a real job, at least have abs & pecs.
There are some gyms like that, but places like Nuffield are full of normies.
I sit on my arse writing code, so I like to swim a few times a week. And council leisure centres are absolute shit. Most evenings, it’s set aside for some special interest group so completely useless.
“Young people are not choosing to drink; they are being forced into it.”
What is it about the collectivist mind that concludes that nobody has any agency of their own and everyone is incapable of making decisions? Everyone is being forced to do things and hand over their money and are unable to resist the evil capitalists.
Maybe it gives the collectivists hope that they can force everyone to hand over their money and obey their natural lords??
The answer is in the term: “collectivist”…..
These people cannot make decisions as an individual and *must* be sure there is “consensus”. And are quite agressive in manufacturing that “consensus”.
Which at the same time leaves them extremely vulnerable to this thing called “peer pressure”.
They’ve got no spine of their own, so cave in all to easily to “Social Expectations”.
There spoke a man who not only never succeeded in getting onto the dance floor but has never pulled crumpet in licensed premises in his life. Which explains so much. If he’d been socially successful he’d now be a Farage disciple & advocating tax evasion.
Socialism is the politics of losers..
Imagine, if you will, the Soviet Union without vodka.
That’s what Commie dick Murphy dreams of turning the world in to. With him in charge obvs.
Impossible!
Some places the coffee houses do open late. Vienna you can sit down for a coffee at midnight. I was in Riga earlier this year and their cafes were open well after dark.
Coffee places are no longer tearooms run by old ladies, a lot of them are savvy businesses, well aware of how to screw money out of young hipsters. If there was enough custom, they’d be open.
Of course the idiots don’t understand that the reason that the (equilibrium) quantity supplied of something is less than they desire is that there isn’t demand for more of it.
It does become easier to deal with drunks when you’re half in the bag yourself.
Not physically of course, but they’re much less boring.
It’s exceptionally rare to find a dance floor in a cafe, though tea dances still exist. Is there one in a library anywhere?
What would Breast Cancer UK know about the average guy?
Being naturally clumsy I prefer to avoid the dance floor no matter whether or not I’ve imbibed alcohol
Try having to “dance” on stage whilst trying not to hit bum notes. Never my strongest suit, which is why I preferred to be hidden by the keyboards. I also found being inebriated didn’t help the horizontal dancing I hoped to do afterwards.
No thanks – my musical lack of ability is on par with my dancing lack of ability.
Until January this year when I started drinking a glass of red wine with my evening meal as a sort of medicinal alcoholic intake, I was a lifelong teetotaller. I still hate the taste of it. But I have spent more time in sticky carpet pubs and clubs with heavy drinkers than I care to recall, and spent more on other people’s drinks than I prefer to calculate. And throughout all this I have never once had a problem getting a soft drink. Nor had any grief about being a non-drinker (bar one twat at a house party in Newcastle. I think they are all permanently pissed up there, its the only way to put up with the wet and cold weather).
So there is no social pressure to drink. Maybe there was 40+ years ago, I couldn’t say, that was before my time. But IME experience of the last 35 years of being legally entitled to drink its entirely down to the free choice of the individual. If anything from my conversations with younger folk, its the other way around now, the drinkers are the ones made to feel odd man out.
We used to have thes “hubs of community connection”. They were called things like Church Socials, where adults carefully guided people transitioning to adulthood, taught them how to interact with other people and the other sex, and twatted the rough corners off them. But, of course, that was unacceptable societal imposition on personal choices, so had to be destroyed.
I always thought churches added value to communities, even though I didn’t believe the polytheistic mumbo jumbo. Their value is not in saving souls.
Maybe there’s a decent number of us that need a couple of jars in us to quieten that sensible voice that points out what we look like to other people…
https://youtu.be/lAkuJXGldrM?si=AHHeOd0JA8KKdXuk
Steve Ballmer of course also famous for suggesting the odd tipple might improve work performance too
Between this and the IPPR putting out stuff about people being pressured to drink at work functions, it feels like the Blob reckons it’s pretty much won on ‘baccy and is softening us up for the next assault on booze.
I missed your comment when posting mine. Absolutely. Establishment rags like the Times and Telegraph are full of articles berating you for drinking, suggesting some godawful alternative or rolling out an endless line-up of old soaks with sorry tales of life-ruining boozing.
The original Breast Cancer UK ‘research’ is the usual nannying tripe designed to bully/scare women into avoiding alcohol. It says the lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is 14%, which rises to 15.5% for those who drink up to 2 units a day. If you drink 6 units a day (which incidentally is equivalent to a bottle and a half of gin a week, so hardly standard practice) the risk rises to 22%.
Even taking their data as gospel (and it will be subject to all the usual caveats), who gives a fuck? 14% vs 15.5%, whatevs.