Nanny Knows

The nanny state is increasingly pervasive. Recently, the advertising industry warned against the new code on children’s advertising due to come into force in July. The industry has particular concerns about restrictions on celebrities or sports stars advertising food and soft drinks to children, describing this as ‘an unfair restriction on industry’s ability to raise product awareness’. They also have implications for domestic broadcasters – any campaign with personalities will go to outside channels.

Some of the restrictions in the code relate to the growing obsession with obesity. But this pales into nothing alongside the recurrent preoccupation with alcohol. Truly, this is to 2004 what sex was to 1954.
Take the coverage in the Official Press of the recent Eurostat report on alcohol consumption in Europe. This claims to show that ‘regular consumption’ is highest in Ireland, where 52% of the population drink regularly. In the UK and Denmark the figure is 44%. It is 43% in the Netherlands. The lowest rates of ‘regular drinking’ are in Italy (12%) and Spain (19%).
This beggars belief and indeed, no definition of ‘regular drinking’ is given. That means it has no scientific validity.
Other inaccuracies relate to expenditure on alcohol. It claims that we spend 10 times what the Greeks spend. But how is this calculated? When the Economist published a similar allegation it had to withdraw it because the figures were calculated in completely different ways for the various countries. And indeed, economist Danny McCoy from the Economic and Social Research Institute described the Economist figures as ‘ludicrous’.
But just as Catholic Ireland was preoccupied with ‘indecent images’ in magazines and films so too is post-Catholic Ireland preoccupied with alcohol advertising. So, when the Eurostat report said that countries with the lowest proportions tended to have greater restrictions on advertising, Official Ireland harrumphed triumphantly.
For example, Eithne Donnellan, Irish Times Health Correspondent wrote in an analysis piece that it was time to ban alcohol advertising. She quoted the Strategic Task Force on Alcohol in 2002 which stated that alcohol consumption had risen ‘by a staggering 41% between 1989 and 1999’.
Well, the figures on which Eurostat based its analysis, and on which in turn all the commentators based their fulminations were from 1999. It’s a pity they didn’t wait, because actually alcohol sales have started to fall, according to the Revenue Commissioners, and quite significantly at that.
It’s also a pity Eithne Donnellan didn’t read (or chose to ignore) a piece written a mere two weeks earlier by her colleague Kitty Holland which gave the up-to-date figures. Overall sales fell by 6% between 2002 and 2003 with beer and spirits falling most – almost 20% in the latter case. The only drink we are consuming more of is wine and even that’s only by a bit.
PC Ireland prefers to argue that heavier and more aggressive laws and regulation are having an effect. This is despite the fact that the Eurostat report – which they’re only too happy to quote when it’s supporting their position – says that ‘There seems to be no association between the proportions of young people drinking and legislation governing the sale of alcohol’.
The messy conclusion to the St. Patrick’s day parades in a number of places fuelled the ire of the disapproving. There were headlines like ‘our drink shame’ and ‘advertising fuels our pathological relationship with alcohol’.
As could have been expected from previous form, one result of the hysteria is that the projected concert in O’Connell Street to celebrate the expansion of the EU on May 1st has been cancelled.
Official Ireland secretly believes that we aren’t mature enough to carry off the event, that we’ll only get drunk and make a show of ourselves. So, nanny decides for the best.