(Above: sob, oh the horror, the waste, the horreeeuurr).
This site stands eternally vigilant and ready to join in any campaign calling for the banning of anything.
When someone comes along and urges a ban, our only question is what have you got?
We've already endorsed the campaign to ban divorce, and take us back to the good old days when Princess Margaret announced she could never marry a divorced cad, because Christian marriage was forever, and so she married a fornicating cat on a hot tiled roof instead. Great result.
We've called for a ban on gay marriage, influenced as we are by the squawking of loons on the pond. Why would any sensible gay want to embark on the travesty of heterosexual marriage?Hence our campaign to ban marriage in general for everyone, so that all those competing religions have to settle for homo and hetero couples living in de facto common law couplings.
Naturally we're at one with the call to ban sex. We think that sex is best left to people over the age of 70, when they know what to do, but do it in a measured way. Our fall back position is to ban it, except for certain people for certain moments in certain months, following what the Catholic church pleases to call the completely useless rhythm method.
Perhaps a ban on breeding is the next step, because really there's too many people in the world. And prattling politicians.
We've endorsed the call to ban cats and dogs from the city, or at least all parks, and we've also argued for the banning of cat and dog haters, and we're at one with Miranda the Devine in banning Tony Abbott from wearing lycra or riding bicycles, the lycra clad lout.
We've reluctantly endorsed the wearing of budgie smugglers, but heck, if you mount a decent campaign, we'll endorse the banning of all swimwear.
Naturally we believe in banning gambling. But most of all we believe in banning young people. They're extremely offensive, partly because they're young, and have a natural vitality and exuberance which we find ... extremely disturbing.
Walk out and about in the town, and there you can find the young gambolling around like frisky young bambis. Laughing and cavorting and drinking and fighting and vomiting in a corner, and feeling insecure and emotionally uncertain. It's just damned exhausting watching them make fools of themselves ...
Well okay, banning the young is a tad ambitious, but our fall back position is to ban the young from doing anything, including, but not limited to, the reading of comics, the watching of television, snogging in the back row of the movies, the playing of video games, the petting and tongue bumping and spittle exchange associated with the exotic art of French kissing, the wearing of short skirts with high waists (that's a not a new season fashion, that's a new season folly), the getting of tattoos, the speaking back to parents and dignified members of the older generation, the deployment of swearing, the taking of any drugs and, it almost goes without saying, the drinking of alcohol.
As a corollary, we'd love to limit the young to infinite glumness, instead of any sense that life is there to be explored and enjoyed. The wretches should know their fate consists simply being seen and not heard until they turn 21, but preferably until they make 30, which you will recall was the minimum age for voting in the Achaean League.
Never mind that older people are inclined to be dysfunctional or problematic. That's only because they look on the young and see a disaster area. All the fault of the young!
I came to thinking about this once again, by the happenstance of reading James Pitts' heartfelt plea Ignore the whines of protest and raise the drinking age forthwith.
It reminded me just how tremendously successful prohibition in the nineteen twenties and thirties was in ridding society of the vice of alcohol. (Prohibition). And as a bonus, we got lots of excitement, with Eliot Ness and gangsters and illegal brews that could rot your brain faster than coca cola will produce a shiny penny.
Australia has had a long proud tradition of prohibition. That grand and leafy area of Camberwell in Melbourne, one of the early homes of JB Hi Fi, once had a proudly dry outlook - in the sense that you couldn't visit a pub or a bottle shop, and so had to discreetly do your drinking in the parlour with the vicar, or the study with the major, while certain estates in Adelaide were also designed to remove the evil drink from a middle class too often tempted to provide some excitement in their lives. Ah the good old days when you couldn't get a drink in a restaurant.
Perhaps it's all the fault of Jesus (and yes we can ban him and his like any time you like). What was all that turning water into wine riff? Did they have low alcohol wine in those days? Was he encouraging priests to get on the grog as a substitute for the drinking of human blood?
King O'Malley led the charge in the ACT to keep the mixed grazing lands grog free back in 1910, and it took seventeen years to repeal the law. It's rumored the sheep were terribly distraught. And of course there are now dry areas all over the Northern Territory, which allows whites to drink themselves insensible as a way of showing how the consumption of alcohol can be done in moderation.
But back to James and his impeccable logic:
Most of us adults, depending on our age, remember when we were able to drink legally. That age for many was 21, which coincided with the age at which you were able to vote, sign a contract and get married.
At the University of Michigan, where I graduated, on your 21st birthday you went with friends to the Pretzel Bell. It was a popular hangout on campus where they supplied you with a one-litre jug of full-strength beer, which you were expected to drink non-stop while the crowd urged you on to the sound of a bell. It rang 21 times until you consumed all of the amber fluid.
You see! That's how to learn to drink responsibly. You make sure the buggers can't get hold of a legal drop, and then at the age of 21, they can indulge in a bout of excessive, really dumb binge drinking, so that they can get legless and slump to the floor in an alcoholic stupor. All achieved by shifting the age of responsible binge drinking from 18 to 21. Then they can go on binge drinking for the rest of their lives, having been taught that prohibition is just a short period before you get on the piss in vomit-inducing style.
Then you can Wake in Fright at any time in any pub anywhere in Australia.
MORLEY: Come and have a drink, mate.
GRANT: No thanks.
MORLEY: Come and have a drink. Only take a minute.
GRANT: I’ve given up for a while.
MORLEY: What’s wrong with you, you bastard? I just brought you 50 miles in the heat and dust. Come and drink with me!
GRANT: What’s the matter with you people? Sponge on you, burn your house down, murder your wife, rape your child – that’s all right. But not have a drink with you? Don’t have a flaming bloody drink with you? That’s a criminal offence! That’s the end of the bloody world!
MORLEY: Yer mad, yer bastard.
Oh dear. Could it be that Australian adults have a problem with responsible drinking and set a bad example? No, no, no, remember it's all the fault of the young:
The lowering of the drinking age to 18 years was the result, to a large extent, of the war in Vietnam and the large number of young people who lost their lives in that war. Their lament was they could die for their country, but had no right to vote in its policies or drink alcohol legally.
Foolish young people! You can get trained as a professional killer, go kill people, get lots of praise for your deeds, or not, and can't get a drink to toast your kills or erase your haunted memories. Talk about the double standards of the young. What a bunch of young hypocrites.
So by banning 18 to 21 year olds from drinking, we'll really begin to tackle the problem of children binge drinking between the ages of 12 and 15:
Today, young people start drinking much earlier. In a study of residents in treatment at Odyssey House, 90 per cent nominated alcohol as their first drug of intoxification at between 12 and 13 years of age.
In the general population the proportion of 12- to 15-year-olds consuming alcohol at risky levels for short-term harm has doubled since 1990 from 2.5 per cent to 5 per cent. As opposed to the totem of ritualistic behaviours in the past, the consumption of large quantities of alcohol has become a ritual in itself. Drinking to excess has become an entrenched and normal behaviour. It has become a way for many young people to establish their identities and thus ensure themselves a "place" within their preferred peer group.
I'm not sure how it will work - is 12 to 15 really the same as 18 to 21? Who knows, they're all young. Ban them I say!
Heck, any banning is a really handy, thought through strategy, up against the more difficult problem of tackling the breweries, their youth targeted drinks, their advertising strategies, especially when it schemes its way into the Australian heart via healthy sport, and the problem of adults showing some kind of responsibility in their own drinking while educating the young on how to handle the demon drink.
Ban the breweries and the wineries? I say, steady old chap, we're just being a little silly here, no need to go barking mad.
Beyond what we need to do as parents and a society, it's now clear we need to consider raising the legal drinking age.
Many feel it wouldn't work, but given what we know about the effect of alcohol on developing brains, wouldn't the debate be worthwhile?
Surely it is worth the risk of short-term protests against the benefits of lifting the drinking age to ensure the long-term health and welfare of our young people.
In a culture riddled with binge drinking? Well I guess it'll be great to see the piles of discarded plastic skins and boxes of chateau cardboard at the perimeter of schoolies week, outside schools and colleges and universities, just as you see when approaching the dry areas in the NT.
Old enough to learn about the meaning of life, but too young to learn how to handle grog.
And in my old age, I can see a new career unfolding. Heading into the pub to buy some grog for the frisky young things wanting a drink before they head off to their tour of duty in Afghanistan, as the war drags into the twenty thirties.
As usual, James met with the type of response you always expect from malcontents, dissidents, ratbags and ne'er do wells, who can never seem to understand the appeal of being Mother Grundy to the masses:
I don't really understand your argument. Kids are drinking at 12 years of age. Do you really think raising the drinking ago will make them stop? It'll just make them drink illegally for longer!
... Once again we see a simplistic solution being offered to a multi layered issue. As legal age states above, why woud raising the legal drinking age have any impact on young children who have access to alcohol and limited parental supervision to prevent its consumption. Answer - it wouldn't.
The silly fools prattle on asbout education, and the teaching of and accepting personal responsibility.
When we could have a whole new class of cops on the beat! Fining sweet young things, and banning them. Alcohol sniffer dogs, and special jails for brat drinkers. A brand new industry.
Well enough of that. Ban them! Ban the stupid commenters and their foolish anti-banning platitudes.
While we're at it, ban the internet, or at least filter it to buggery. Enough of this foolishness.
Phew, now pardon me while I sneak off for a furtive drink. Somehow once my partner banned me from daytime drinking, it took on a whole new meaning. Screw him and the horse he road in on. I'll show him wines of protest.
Think they can slap a ban on me. Whassat? Yeah I'll have another one. And screw you too. Ya wanna fight? What do you mean, I'm too old to fight? Think you can ban me from fighting? Because I'm too old? Give that glass here.
Aah, never mind. Suddenly feeling a little dizzy, sleepy.
Glug. Snooze.
Memo to self: campaign to ban things now shifted to start on Friday ... or perhaps better just to plot to take over world with Pinkie and the brain?
(Below: Wake in Fright, and it's your shout, mate, digger, cobber).
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