No Ordinary Fool

I have to admit that this one caught me unawares. However, this business of not being able to buy alcohol after 10pm in supermarkets or off-licenses is frankly ridiculous. The idea is to curb excessive drinking by us booze-hound Paddies. Apparently.

However, let us call a keg a keg here. Anyone mad to get their hands on drink will modify their shopping habits accordingly. Have no fear of that. This is an inconvenience, nothing more, for them. Life, as they know it, will go on as before.

Moreover, pubs still remain open. In truth, they ought to do even more business now, which is good news for vintners who have suffered the consequences in recent years (the poor lambs) of excessively raising their prices. Instead, more and more punters opt to enjoy themselves at home and buy their drink for less from off licensed premises. How fortunate, indeed, for one of the lobbying groups that Fianna Fail pays serious attention to.

Indeed, I just do not understand how one form of alcohol distribution can have their right to make a livelihood curbed when another does not.

Moreover, once this legislation “beds down”, who knows, the grasping publicans may get even better news when the closing time is then brought back to 9pm! For the good of our health. Of course.

Accordingly, the ordinary joe like me, who frequently works long days, thanks to having to meet deadlines, and who then thinks that it might be nice to have a beer and some music with the feet up at home before retiring for the evening gets penalised. I am not making this up. Twice in the past couple of weeks I have been hit by this - mostly because I had better things to be thinking of beforehand. On Tuesday evening, a guy clearly coming back from an evening’s healthy sporting activity was equally left frustrated.

Now, the obvious remark is probably why do I not modify my habits accordingly. However, why should I? If I want to throw a house party, I will plan accordingly. On the other hand, if I feel like a random beer or two of an evening, I tend not to call a meeting of my council of advisors to assess strategies on how I should go about purchasing them.

Yes, there are bigger problems in the world and I can cope without those occassional couple of beverages. However, all I want to know is why are my rights to carry out a responsible purchase being constrained when I completely fail to see how this leads to genuine positive changes in our society?

Unless you are a somewhat richer publican on the back of it, of course. Or, better still, a re-elected Fianna Fail deputy with that dirty big pay cheque, which my tax euros pays for, to look forward to.

Besides, who are the political party of GV Wright, Jim McDaid, and Christy O’Sullivan to tell any of us what constitutes the mature consumption of alcohol?