barrycurtis

Yesterday Home Secretary Alan Johnson announced plans to ban all-you-can-drink and speed-drinking promotions in pubs. It seems the days of the happy hour which many of us enjoyed in our youth will not exist for the next generation. But are these plans a good idea, and are they supported by an analysis of the evidence about binge drinking?

Should there be a minimum charge of 50p per unit of alcohol?

What would be achieved by this charge?

How much is it safe to drink?

Would minimum pricing reduce the amount we drink?

Would minimum pricing reduce the number of deaths from alcoholism?

Should health be our main consideration or are there other principles such as liberty that should inform the discussion?

These issues are dealt with in an article I've had published here. I argue forcefully that minimum pricing and the whole crackdown on "alcohol abuse" is based on dubious evidence and is seriously misguided. It will not help genuine problem drinkers and it will mess up life for the rest of us. Enjoy responsibly!

Individuals who blow things up or are planning to should be locked up, no question. However a 2006 amendment to the Terrorism Act of 2000 is being used to cross the terrain between terrorist actions and free speech. The amendment makes it an offence to "unlawfully glorify the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism". This stick has been wielded by Home Secretary Alan Johnson to ban the group Islam4UK who had planned to march through the Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett carrying coffins to symbolise the thousands of Afghan civilians killed by NATO in their war on terror. Yesterday three members of Islam4UK were found guilty of causing distress and offence by their claims that returning British troops were "murderers" and "baby-killers". The outright ban on Islam4UK comes into force on Thursday and makes it an offence to belong to Islam4UK with members being jailed for up to 10 years.

It is not only Islam4UK which is proscribed, it applies to its other name - Al Muhajiroun and anything else its members might call themselves. It is already proscribed under two other names - Al Ghurabaa and The Saved Sect. A total of 45 'international terrorism' groups are banned under the Act and since 2001, 31 people have been charged with criminal offences relating to being members of banned groups.

It is a pretty loose definition of "glorifying terrorism" that is being used by Alan Johnson and with cross-party support. The definition seems to be people that want to see NATO fail in Afghanistan. This could include not just angry Muslims who call for Sharia law, but also elements of the anti-war left who, whilst opposed to events like 9/11 and 7/7, think that NATO is only making matters worse as is evidenced by the spread of conflict from Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq to places like Pakistan and the newly-demonised Yemen. What is needed today is a critical rethink of the war on terror - it isn't working in its current form - and for such a rethink, we need full freedom of speech in order to be creative.

Alan Johnson and the rest of the political class would argue that stifling free speech (or "terrorism" as they call it) is necessary to prevent the radicalisation of the youth that has led to examples such as the Christmas day underpants bomber. But it is ludicrous to believe that controlling the free exchange of ideas would have had any effect on this. "Pantsman" Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab was driven by extreme alienation - he was a friendless masturbator who became loathsome of Western society. His reasons for wanting to be a suicide bomber were no different to those of American high school shootists who wear T-shirts proclaiming "Humanity is overrated", or the motivations of right-wing UK nailbombers. That his ideas apparently took the form of political Islam is missing the point - his desire to meet Allah was really a quasi-psychotic delusion driven by a prior contempt for modern life. To curtail the free expression of Muslim clerics or anyone else will do nothing to tackle the causes of modern day terrorism - in fact it might even increase it as people will be driven underground into potentially greater spheres of irrationality.

Furthermore the assault on free expression that will occur on campuses assumes a low opinion of the student body. Students are perceived as being unable to tell the difference between a good idea and a radical-Islamic one. But students' rational faculties are best cultivated through free and open debate - stifling discussion will merely cripple their minds. And all this at a time when political Islam needs to be refuted intellectually, not hidden beneath the surface of society like a hardcore porn mag. The relative merits and bigger demerits of statements produced by groups like Islam4UK need to be openly discussed rather than simply have a gagging order slapped on them. But people like Alan Johnson are incapable of having such a debate since it seems they don't much believe in democracy themselves.

To conclude, protecting civil liberties is more important than Faustian pacts in the name of saving us from terror. Terrorism loses its purchase on the imagination if we are courageous and rational. Conversely it appears to grow in strength if we nervously hide behind the bans.

I've got nothing against dolphins. They are cute, amiable creatures and people generally should be nice to them. However I take issue with some scientists who, quoted in the Times, are arguing that dolphins should be ranked as 'non-human persons'. These scientists are saying that dolphins are individuals with similar minds to humans, and therefore they are morally equivalent to human people.

However the supposedly new evidence that leads them to this conclusion does not justify it. The dolphinologists have revealed that the dolphin brain is very large, second only to the human brain (relative to body size). And it contains structures that are similar to structures found in the human brain. Dolphins can be taught rudimentary symbolic language by human keepers. And dolphins have imitated a rescued dolphin that was trained to tail-walk.

But that dolphins are not people should be clear from the fact that the way dolphins live has not changed since they first evolved. All they do is swim around, eat fish, and play with each other. Where are their books, their art, their music? Why haven't they had an agricultural revolution, let alone an industrial one? Why can't they build anything, or even use and improve tools? And given the diminished ways in which they live, what does this say about their 'language'? It cannot be constantly evolving like human language, and therefore it is not indicative of person-like thought.

The dolphinologists are on slippery ground when they cross the line between science and ethics. As it happens, moral pronouncements can rarely be based on studies of the brain. They emerge instead from debates between consciousnesses and imaginations of the plight of the other (who has to be, in key ways, similar). As such, morality is a purely human endeavour - animals cannot be moral. If dolphins, through their rudimentary symbolic language, were suddenly able to communicate moral ideas, then I might think again. But at the moment, they cannot.

As it happens, the evidence quoted in the Times article is really nothing new. For over a century, we have known that dolphins are relatively smart and sociable. In World War Two, dolphins were trained to detect underwater mines. But pigeons also had military roles and no-one's suggesting they should be classed as 'persons'. If there was real evidence that dolphins should be treated as primitive persons, it would be something like this: Scientists discover that dolphins worship a dolphin Creator.

This takes us into the territory of the soul. Real persons, i.e. humans, have personhood by virtue they have a soul. However you justify this, whether it's religiously or through humanism is besides the point. People are not just clever consumers of food who play with each other - we have a spiritual life that is evidenced through art, music, morality, and the capacity to regard oneself as special and unique. Proof of the soul is NOT influenced by the ability to balance a ball on one's bottle nose.

The view of dolphins as people can only take off in a society in which the human subject is diminished and degraded. T-shirts proclaiming "Humanity is overrated" speak to the misanthropic temper of the times where environmentalism, which portrays humanity as a plague on the planet and says we will be unable to adapt to or solve climate change, runs riot. Humanity has a lowered self-image - therefore relatively smart animals can appear to be on an equal rung.

The dolphinologists are due to gather in San Diego, California for a conference that hopes to enshrine their view that dolphins should be treated as people. No surprise that such wacky blurring of fact and fiction should take place in a state who's Governor only got in by virtue of the fact he is a movie star. If the conference is successful, groups will then lobby for legal recognition of dolphins' supposed personhood. But this will spell hell for humanity.

Any legal change will enshrine for a long time humanity's lowered self-image and make it difficult for collectivity to solve anything. Dolphins won't be allowed to be kept in amusement parks, depriving us of the entertainment they provide. And trawlermen could be locked up for accidentally killing a dolphin. These draconian consequences would all be the fault of a wonky philosophy spread by misanthropic hippy marine biologists.

It really is a case of dol-phin de siecle.

Work permits, points-based citizenship tests, deportation, destitution, detention centres, the academy spying on its students for the UK Border Agency. The Tories threatening to introduce a physical cap on numbers. On the fringes the BNP have argued in the European Parliament that we should sink boats suspected of carrying migrants to these fair isles. Evidently state-sanctioned murder is acceptable if it stops a few foreigners overstaying their welcome.

This is the reality of immigration controls today - we do not have 'open borders' as some people naively claim.

This is the final in my series questioning myths about immigration. The aim of this series has been to undermine the fears people have about the fact that people migrate. Insodoing, I have hoped to strengthen the case for the abolition of immigration controls as essential for human flourishing. Although this series is called 'Myths about Immigration', it could have easily been called 'Fears about Immigration'. The fears stem from a siege mentality that Britain is falling apart. Like many other issues in society, the instinct of the elite is to increase regulation and authoritarianism because freedom is perceived to be destructive. This distinguishes the contemporary frenzy of political parties and the media whipping up panics about the free movement of people to previous racist ideology. Rather than being based on old-fashioned racism with its arrogance regarding the superiority of white people, today's anti-immigration sentiments are based on fear of the unknown and a sense of the fragility of society and its economy. Thus even the BNP do not spout overtly racist rhetoric any more (even though some of its leading members are still Hitler admirers), they talk about 'identity' and 'social cohesion' instead in order to gain an audience. The transformation of the issue of immigration over the past 15 years from race to fear means that the BNP has had to similarly transform. It is only its inadequacies in doing so that explain why people like Jack Straw find them objectionable, it is nothing to do with their actual policies that only differ to the elite's by shades rather than principle.

Nevertheless, although the motivations for anti-immigrant sentiments are different to the past, the outcome is just as bad, if not worse. It is bad in the sense that those deemed to be 'illegal' human beings are detained, deported, or condemned to destitution - just like racism treated those considered inferior in the past. It is worse in the sense that fear is self-multiplying. Once fear is established, it grows and grows. Thus since the mid-1990s there have been very many new initiatives and legal tweakings to immigration controls whereas the pace of insulation from foreigners in the past was much slower. In 1905 the first immigration controls were introduced to restrict the entry of 'aliens', and then in 1962 there were laws to keep out black Commonwealth citizens. But in the modern era, we have the Tories' Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act of 1993, the Asylum and Immigration Act of 1996, followed by Labour's Immigration and Asylum Act of 1999 and their Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002. Yet another Act was introduced in 2004, we've had the points-based citizenship tests, and there's worse to come. For an introduction to how draconian modern immigration controls can be, see here.

According to one journalist, immigration controls cost £1.5bn a year to run, and account for a further £1bn in lost taxes (because illegal workers don't pay taxes). Clearly the politics of fear does not lead to good economic decision making.

Perhaps the biggest myth/fear is that without strict immigration controls, Britain would be 'swamped'. However immigration controls do little to stop people coming here - the numbers of people have remained fairly steady, or even risen, over the past 15 years, despite immigration controls tightening. Nevertheless we are still not 'swamped', with the migrant population only making up 8% of the total population. The biggest reason for asylum applications is obviously instability and violence in the world which people seek to flee. But Britain's role in destabilising countries like Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan should not be glossed over. If the government were more clear-headed about lowering the number of asylum seekers, perhaps they would stop intervening in other countries' affairs and stop selling arms to dodgy regimes. Tamil refugees living in Britain have said they would like to go back to Sri Lanka if peace was restored. Shame then that Britain armed the Sri Lankan government in their offensive against the Tamils, postponing peace for a generation.  Governments like Britain's could also stop trying to retard the pace of economic development of poor regions through, for example, imperialist environmental protocols.

There is also an argument that immigration controls actually increase the number of people who try to settle here. This is because with an open door, people can come and go as they please. But if that door is about to close, people think this will be their last opportunity, and so decide to settle when really they had no desire to. In the 1950s when Britain's borders were very open, many of the initial immigrants were singletons expecting to return home after a short time working here. But when the government started talking about controls in the late 50s, migrants began arriving in larger numbers to try and beat the closing door. Once the '62 Act came in, they had no choice but to settle and bring their families over because they knew if they left, they might never get back in again. Those that want to prevent permanent settlers might do better to support open borders where people can come and go according to need.

If fully open borders did lead to an increase in migration, how big might this be? Evidence from the period 1950-80 says that 0.6% of the Carribean emigrated per year, taking advantage of the absence of restrictions in former colonial powers and the United States. And this was when unemployment in the Carribean was high, and low in the countries of destination. If the Carribean experience was repeated on a global scale, there would probably be an extra 24 million migrants per year, leading to a growth of 2.4% per year in the population of industrialised countries. If there was international agreement to abolish immigration controls, this population could be evenly distributed across the industrialised countries. And it would in fact be beneficial because it would counteract the declining birth rates and the ageing populations of Europe.

Despite the fear of swamping, most people do not want to migrate. They do not want to uproot themselves, abandon their families, and suffer the hardships and risks of migration to a strange and possibly hostile place in order to do the dirty work (e.g. chicken plucking, fruit picking etc.) shunned by the natives. Even though their countries might be poor, many people like them and their cultures and do not want to be separated from them. Given the great global disparities of wealth, what is surprising about migration is that so few people do it.

To conclude Britain is not at risk of getting swamped if she had open borders. The worst case scenario is that there would be 1.44m extra people a year, but this would not be detrimental and few would settle permanently (unless the open door suddenly became closed again). They would work for a period of a few years, sending home remittances (which is more efficient than foreign aid), returning once their situation had become more favourable. The stakes of open borders in terms of its benefit to the cause of human freedom and equality are high enough to try it again. Let's consign the past 15 years of anti-human immigration controls to history as a dark chapter and make 2010 the year we see light at the end of a fearful tunnel.

Further reading: "Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls" - Pluto Press - by Teresa Hayter, 2004.

There is a review of this book here.

Spiked's campaign to open the borders here - responds very well to stories as they crop up in the news and you can cast a vote on whether you'd like to see open borders.

"Myths about Immigration" on Bazza Online: #1 "Britain is a soft touch" here, #2 "British jobs for British workers" here, #3 "Immigrants are a burden to the economy" here, #4 "Britain is overpopulated" here, and #5 "Immigrants depress native's wages" here.


Bazza Online would like to wish all readers a Happy New Year! 

The reason we don't have free movement of people in the UK is that immigration controls are supported by a powerful superstructure of myths about immigration. This is the fifth in a series of six questioning these myths. Here I am concerned with the forceful idea that migrants lower wages for the native population. This is an important topic because the logic goes that any increase in immigration that might follow the abolition of immigration controls would depress wages further, leading to a massive decline in our standard of living. I will attempt to show that in fact the opposite is true: there is no evidence that immigration has a negative impact of the wages of natives, and in fact unfettered movement would lead to an increase in people's incomes.

The effect of immigration on wages has been a hot topic for many years. But the most important studies on the reality of the situation - as opposed to simplistic prejudices - demonstrate there is no negative effect caused by immigration on the wages of natives. In 2003, the Home Office commissioned an independent report looking at this issue. The study examined numerous international surveys and conducted its own study in Britain. It found "The perception that immigrants depress the wages of existing workers does not find confirmation in the analysis of the data laid out in this report." (quoted here)

This conclusion is echoed by studies reported on the website of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):

"In June 2007, the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) issued a report on "Immigration's Economic Impact."...the Council concluded that "immigrants have an overall positive effect of the income of native-born American workers."...immigrants tend to complement natives, not substitute for them...

"Immigrants allow higher-skilled native workers to increase productivity and thus increase their incomes...young immigrant workers fill gaps in the low-skilled labor markets.

"...in a 1997 study, the National Research Council estimated the annual wage gain due to immigration to be $10 billion each year. In 2007 the CEA estimated the gain at over $30 billion per year."

However it's not all rosy since "the CEA acknowledges that an increase in immigrant workers is likely to have some negative impact on the wages of low-skilled native workers". This is because some immigrants might be able to do the job of a native low-skilled worker better and cheaper, thereby undermining his salary. But as a low-skilled native will already be on a low salary, and as there are limits as to how low the pay can go, the impact of immigration on this sector is small. Furthermore the positive impact of immigration on other sectors means that tax relief could be given to the low-skilled workers which would offset the small negative impact on the wage. The CEA concluded that reducing immigration "would be a poorly-targeted and inefficient way to assist low-wage Americans."

The ACLU finishes its report by observing that "California saw an increase in wages of natives by about four percent from 1990 to 2004 - a period of large influx of immigrants to the state - due to the complimentary skills of immigrant workers and an increase in the demand for tasks performed by native workers."

Meanwhile studies for the Institute of Public Policy Research have also found a lack of evidence that immigration negatively affects native's wages. And in a 1993 OECD publication, George B. Borjas wrote, "modern econometrics cannot find a single shred of evidence that immigrants have a major adverse impact on earnings". In fact it can be argued that an influx of refugees and migrants can cause boom conditions as the Cuban exiles have in Miami and the former Algerian white settlers have in the south of France.

So it seems that the widely-held view of immigrants depressing wages is untrue. This view was based on the idea that an increase in labour supply would necessarily lead to a cheapening of the commodity that is labour-power in the same way that the "iron law" of supply and demand affects the prices of all commodities. However, that this is not borne out by the evidence itself stands in need of some explanation. There are three influencing factors which I think account for why labour-power is not cheapened by immigration. These three influences are summarised by saying the free migration of labour increases the productivity of labour, which in turn, allows for wage rises, not decreases.

Firstly free migration allows jobs to be matched to those best suited to them in terms of the skills they have acquired. This means greater efficiency which in turn leads to greater productivity of labour.

Secondly free migration prevents closures in vital sections of the economy. For example, if an economy is growing and the population are becoming more skilled and talented, then lower-skilled areas of the economy are going to suffer from a labour shortage. Thus either these areas shut down in a country - their function subsequently becoming imported (and therefore more costly), or an influx of lower-skilled labour fills its shoes. Thus immigration prevents closure and outsourcing of vital sectors of the economy.

Thirdly when immigration is legal, the working population's bargaining power - which is more of an influence on wages than the mere number of people - is stronger (because everyone has the right to join unions and have legal protection from unscrupulousness/hyper-exploitation). This means the workers are more satisfied, and therefore they are more productive rather than being like a Homer Simpson "do it in a half-assed way" type.

Bearing in mind these points, it seems that those who would like to see higher wages for everyone ought to support open borders. As Hamilton and Whalley estimated in 1984 in the Journal of Development Economics, because migration of labour is potentially a means of increasing the productivity of labour, an international free market in labour and the abolition of all immigration controls would cause a doubling in world incomes (cited in Hayter, T. "Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls", p.160).

Bring it on!

Bazza Online would like to wish all readers a Happy Xmas.

This is the second in my series questioning 'myths about immigration'. Today I am concerned with the notion that immigrants take jobs which deservedly belong to native Britons.

Follow Bazza Online on Twitter.

Saw VI is a great film that has reinvigorated the franchise after a shaky period. The plot sees justice wreaked out against a healthcare insurance boss who put profit before people's needs, coinciding with Barack Obama's healthcare reforms. Now Jigsaw is a crusader for social justice, I expect the seventh installment to focus around people who have been polluting the environment. There could be some inventive traps using poisonous gas and toxic waste as justice is meted out against an ubercapitalist.

This sixth installment is a slight change of direction since previous sequels have all dealt with Jigsaw's peculiar style of justice being exacted on drug-addicted or criminal individuals. Now it is members of an unethical corporation that get the horror treatment.

For those that don't know, Jigsaw's brand of justice involves capturing someone and putting them in a life or death trap. They have to do something horrible to themselves to avoid dying, such as sawing off a limb or cutting out their eye to find a key. Insodoing, Jigsaw argues they will be reborn with a new appreciation for life (which they had previously squandered). And so Jigsaw sees himself as a redeeming figure rather than as a serial killer that you normally get with horror films. This twist - that Jigsaw is ideologically driven - undoubtedly has contributed to why the Saw series is now the highest earning horror franchise ever. It's a kind of thinking man's gorefest unlike traditional horror films, involving twists in the plot that you don't see coming and lots of tension as the timers on the games tick down.

Saw shares with other recent horror films a high level of gore, but the excitement of seeing which new traps will be devised, and the fact that Jigsaw is a thinking man's psychopath keep people coming back for more. But the series is widely acknowledged to have suffered when it has overcomplicated the plot and explained away gaping holes in future installments with implausible flashbacks.

Given that Jigsaw sees himself as a redeemer for people whom the audience agree are bad, the audience doesn't really know whose side it is on. Do you actually want the individual to escape the trap, and do you want to see Jigsaw and his aides get their comeuppance? I feel that the producers of the series are on the side of Jigsaw given that he always seems to win and his victims are portrayed as stupid or immoral. Although Jigsaw himself dies at the end of Saw 3, his legacy and philosophy live on through his accomplice Detective Hoffman.

I think the audience's mixed sympathies touches on confusions about justice in society. The police and the courts are largely perceived as weak and inept, so a Jigsaw figure can appear as a crusader for justice, a kind of postmodern twisted Superman. But we should also realise that the man is a psycho who pursues his peculiar form of justice arbitrarily and cruelly. His form of redemption is based on the idea that if someone has a close-to-death experience, they will emerge as a better person more appreciative of life. But this logic doesn't follow as one of the victims in Saw VI exclaims after having to amputate her arm - "What am I supposed to have learnt from losing my arm?" the female loan shark shouts.

In fact this idea that an encounter with death leads one to a more authentic life goes back to Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger. In his Being and Time, Heidegger argued that it is only once someone has fully understood that their time on earth is finite that they can go on to live an authentic meaningful life. But the idea is flawed. Recognising that one day you will die does nothing to improve or authenticate life. That depends on the struggles you make, the attachments you form, the freedom you enjoy and the level of material wealth you acquire. Someone who is wasting their life is not doing so because they don't realise that one day they will die, but because of complex social or psychological factors that are thwarting the development of their potential. Heidegger and Jigsaw are mistaken in thinking that any redemption can come from the contemplation of death - in fact only suffering comes from this which is actually what their twisted minds want.

Sorry if this appears to have strayed off topic - I am simply trying to explain the popularity of the Saw series by relating it to the ideological context in which the audience is viewing it. Whilst it is OK to view Jigsaw's legacy as cool in the cinemas, when similar ideas appear in reality they ought to be criticised.

Should fireworks be banned on the basis they distress pets?

If not banned, then should a compromise be reached whereby fireworks become less noisy and ground-based?

What regulations should cover public and private displays?

What does it mean to say that an animal is 'distressed'?

What is more important: lowering animal distress, or human freedom?

And should the responsibility for mitigating animal distress lie with individual pet owners or wider society?

These issues and more are discussed in my article published in a popular internet magazine on November 5th. Although I wasn't paid for this article, the prestige is good. You can read it here. Enjoy!

The threat of jail should only be used for serious offences where harm has been done to a person or his property and are a threat to society. It should not be used to terrify students into conformity.

The fact that the media have run with this story, and the judge's harsh treatment, shows that Laing isn't just suffering for what he has done, he is being made an example of. And that means this case is really about sending a message to the wider public about what is and what is not acceptable. The message is that you have to at all times mind your manners, follow the script laid down from on high, to conform at all times. There is no let off, no time such as studentdom when you can live comparatively freely. This case is all about laying down a code of behaviour we all must follow, it has nothing to do with any damage done to a war memorial. After all, it's not as if he graffitied "Fascist" or "Hands off Iran" on the memorial under conditions of cold sobriety. No, it was simply a drunken mistake, now taken as a morality tale, for which Laing may pay the price of the loss of his liberty.

It's the courts and the media that ought to sober up, and offer a public apology for the way they've handled this case.

Patient: If I give up alcohol will I live longer?

Doctor: No, it will just seem that way.

We are confronted with a seeming paradox. On the one hand the government and medical authorities have been vociferously promoting "sensible" and "responsible" drinking for the past ten years. Meanwhile cases of diseases associated with heavy drinking such as liver cirrhosis have gone up in the same period. There was a 41% increase in the number of deaths from alcoholic liver disease between 1999 and 2005 whilst deaths from other diseases are falling year on year.

This paradox can be explained by two factors: 1) in this period, disillusionment with the political system and the total collapse in the perception of alternatives have rocketed. This gives rise to a sense of despair leading some people to turn to the bottle. 2) The more the government says don't do something, the more a fraction of the population will do it. This is the spirit of rebellion common to all generations.

If these two factors are correct, it seems that the more the authorities try to tackle 'binge drinking', the more adverse effect it will have. The way the problem ought to be dealt with is through the resocialisation of alcohol, i.e. bringing it back into ordinary life and discussing it sensibly. Alcohol is not a problem for the majority of people but the way the government approach it creates new problems.

According to statistics, over a quarter of the population regularly "binge drink". However scratch the surface and a different picture emerges. Binge drinking is defined as consuming more than 4 units of alcohol in a day (for a man, 3 for a woman). But given this definition, if you drink two pints of beer, you are a binge drinker. Clearly something is wrong with the calculation. It also seems to depend on where you do the drinking. In the UK, a "unit" of alcohol equates to 8 grams of ethanol whilst in Ireland, Austria, Poland and Spain, one unit is 10g. In Denmark, France, Italy or South Africa it is 12g, in Portugal and the US it is 14g, and a Japanese unit contains 19.75g. So whilst many countries advise the same upper limit of 21 units per week for men and 14 for women, this can mean different amounts of drink.

There is also a problem with the quantification of units. In 1979 the Royal College of Psychiatrists first indicated that a weekly consumption of more than 56 units of alcohol was the 'absolute upper limit'. In 1984 the Health Education Council suggested that weekly levels of between 21 and 36 units for men, and 14 and 24 units for women, would be 'unlikely to cause damage'. Then in the late 1980s a new consensus emerged setting the upper limits at 21 for men and 14 for women which has been the basis of most guidelines ever since. However these figures were arrived at arbitrarily, guessed at by working out a 'safe level' that was significantly lower than what heavy drinkers with diseases said they'd had. But a couple of points need bearing in mind: 1) the heavy drinkers with diseases were drinking heavily regularly over a long period of time. This does not parallel someone who say has 4 pints in a night, twice a week, even though mathematically he's exceeding his daily ration. It is wrong to compare the two individuals - one is obviously doing significant harm to himself whereas the other is merely enjoying himself. The latter should not be treated as a 'percentage' of the former, entailing a lower percentage of risk. The two individuals are not comparable. 2) The studies were based on personal testimony of how much the heavy drinkers had. But everyone knows they were likely to lie rather than confess to stupidity, thereby skewing the statistics on what is safe downwards.

Furthermore the figures used by the authoritative Royal College of Physicians in 1987 were "plucked out of thin air". According to Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal and member of the college's working party on alcohol, "the epidemiologist on the committee's line was that 'We don't really have any decent data whatsoever. It's impossible to say what's safe and what isn't'...the feeling was that we ought to come up with something. So those limits were really plucked out of the air. They weren't really based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee." Yet this "intelligent guess" is now taken as incontrovertible fact and is used as the scientific backing for the government's multimillion pound campaign against binge drinking.

Furthermore in the years since the 1987 "study", a host of new epidemiology has seen evidence to the contrary. In 2000, the World Health Organisation's International Guide for Monitoring Alcohol Consumption and Related Harm set out drinking ranges that qualified people as being at low, medium or high-risk of alcohol-related harm. For men, less than 35 weekly units was low-risk, 36-52.5 was medium risk and above 53 was high risk. Women were roughly half these figures. Meanwhile back in 1993, a study of 12,000 middle-aged male doctors led by Sir Richard Doll (the man who discovered the smoking-lung cancer link 40 years prior) found that the lowest mortality rates - lower even than teetotallers - were among those drinking between 20 and 30 units of alcohol each week. The level of drinking that produced the same risk of death as that faced by a teetotaller was 63 units a week, or a bottle of wine each day. In 1995 another study of 13,000 men and women found that drinking 50 units a week cut the risk of premature death by half.

However whilst it's important to reveal the evidence, one's case for drinking should not depend entirely on arguments about health. There's more to life than mere existence and so the case for drinking what you want should depend on how much you enjoy it. Just because a minority drink excessive amounts that cause adverse effects should not mean the right is curtailed for the rest of us. Drinking alcohol in its wonderful diversity of forms is a highly pleasurable activity which, in general, ought to have nothing to do with health. Unfortunately the obsession with "counting the units" and "knowing your limits" rather spoils the experience. Ironically the obsession with health turns a source of pleasure into a source of anxiety. If we add to the unit-counting phenomenon other social phenomena such as calculating your carbon footprint, counting your calories, or making sure you get your 5-a-day fruit and veg, it might seem that the elite are trying to turn us all into a bunch of worry-worts. If they had their way, we wouldn't even be able to drown our sorrows.

Finally it needs to be stated that the nation's health is not really the government's number one priority. In truth, the authorities use the fear of binge drinking as a tool of social control. The police now routinely round up the drinkers in the street on a Friday night, and we let this coercion go uncriticised because we think it's good for these people's health. Meanwhile General Practicioners are converted into agents of the state by government regulations that make them "advise patients to restrict their drinking to within the recommended daily levels". What this represents is the state creeping into your home, trying to control what you do behind closed doors. And it's not good for the doctor/patient relationship either as patients lie to evade official censure, and subsequently doctors mistrust them.

To conclude, we need to stop this obsession with counting units, and get back some common sense. When the government identify a quarter of the population as a problem, it is clear they're not interested in tackling a real problem but trying to find avenues and ways to control them. A quarter of the population aren't problem drinkers - they only appear so because the methodology is flawed, deliberately. Yes, a small minority do drink too much and will die prematurely, but targetting the whole of society in a campaign to reduce everyone's drinking is not the best way to tackle the problem and it creates unnecessary trouble. It's time the health zealots knew their limits.