Punch writers on beer, booze and society

Food producers love a good study, particularly one that finds that some ingredient or trace element in their product has some miraculous property found to cure cancer in rats.

Such studies are guaranteed to make headlines around the world and lead to an aura being cast over their product. The wine industry in particular is the master of the self-serving study, with red wine being attributed all sorts of miraculous properties that should see it treated like the waters at Lourdes.

The chocolate industry has also discovered the value of good publicity and the media has recently reported chocolate manufacturing giants Mars and Barry Callebaut AG have announced a cross-industry partnership to promote the health benefits of cocoa flavanols.

Continue reading "Beer and red wine can cure everything, except cirrhosis" »

Dear Mr Rudd, can I just say this that while there are no silver bullets to the problem could you take some decisive action, when it comes to your use of cliché; as working families would prefer you take whatever action is necessary to end your use of the phrase “course of action”? 

Phew – the top seven Rudd clichés all in one sentence. I think I might just need a drink, in due season…

As parliament resumes today, The Punch decided it might be worthwhile to use the Parliamentary Hansard take a look at Prime Minister’s favourite parliamentary clichés of 2009.

Continue reading "Introducing the Kevin Rudd cliché drinking game" »

It was around 11 in the morning and Aunty Mavis came to the door. It had been raining: her wig was askew and her badly drawn on eyebrows were running down into her eyes. As usual, she had a bottle of Stone’s Green Ginger wine in a string bag.

It was just before lunchtime and my sisters and I were sitting around the Formica table in my grandparents’ kitchen shelling peas onto newspaper, preparing for a baked dinner. She came in and was drinking with Nanna who was peeling potatoes in the sink. Grandad was out the back, drunk, listening to the races.

Continue reading "If alcohol is no big deal, go without it for a month" »

It’s the kind of thing that would get you pelted with stones in the town square in less civilised countries. So as a celebration of our freedoms I’ll say it. Australia Day is a load of rubbish.

And it is increasingly celebrating the worst aspects of our national character, where rather than being a day for thoughtful reflection on our history and our values, it’s starting to look more a half-witted contest to see how much meat you can eat and how much grog you can sink.

This isn’t a wowser’s warning against barbecues and beer. Far from it. I’m a keen supporter of binge-drinking, I’ve never met a meat product I didn’t adore, and I think the likes of NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon should quit their day jobs and seek formal employment as nannies, such is their enthusiasm for treating adults like babies and criminalising fun.

Continue reading "Why Australia Day is rubbish" »

That’s it. We’ve arrived at what is officially termed the Dizzy Limit.

NSW Police, warming to their recent self-appointment as a freelance social policy think tank, trustee of public morality and holy rolling temperance society, have announced that Australia Day should be as dry as the Nullarbor Plain. Starting now.

They have reasonable cause. Shockingly, some people treat such occasions as an opportunity to get on the squirt and a small minority of those consequently get stupid and some proportion of those play up and a fraction of those become violent and commit felonies.

Continue reading "Sorry officer, but I’m drinking for Australia" »

Impartiality is everything in journalism but at the risk of sounding slightly biased it’s fair to say that if the NSW Government were a dog you would take it down to the bottom of the yard and shoot it.

Discussing the innate and irreversible badness of the NSW Government is about the most banal thing you can do these days. If anything this may be its most evil legacy – the cruelling of casual political discussion.

It’s like the inspired Gary Larson cartoon featuring nerds in hell - “Hot enough for ya?” – where remarking that NSW seems to be in political strife is as profound and insightful as noting that Germany has a bit of a chequered history, the Cuban economy could probably be doing better, or that Afghanistan has historically under-invested in infrastructure.

Continue reading "Moral lectures from the ethically challenged" »

How times change. When I started working in an office a little over 20 years ago, you could still smoke at your desk. In fact, when you were shown the stationary cabinet on your first day in a new job you could kit yourself out with a stapler and sticky-tape dispenser as well as an ashtray.

In those days, ‘smoking or non-smoking?’ was an everyday question when checking in for an airline flight’, you watched the Benson & Hedges World Series Cup over summer and the Winfield Cup over winter and the back cover of almost every women’s magazine carried an ad featuring an attractive blonde, a beach, acres of cheesecloth and a packet Alpine.

At about the same time blokes would go to the beach in the middle of the day, shirtless and hatless, while women would lay for hours baking themselves to a golden brown while occasionally basting themselves with coconut oil. Sun protection was not standard work issue for workers out of doors and sunshirts and sensible hats had the same sartorial appeal as sandals with long socks.

Continue reading "Sip, slop, slap: let’s stop drinking like it’s 1969" »

If you read the headlines, late-night violence in Melbourne is out of control.

To a degree this is true, but we have little chance of curbing the problem with illogical solutions.

Take some of the measures proposed in the past fortnight, for example. Firstly, there was the party promoter who banned “metrosexuals” from the Ding Dong Lounge.

Continue reading "Idiots are the problem, not alcohol" »

We live in an environment where alcohol is under siege.

Every day we are assailed with stories of glassings, drunken and rampaging footballers, binge drinking and all manner of other incidents pointing to an alcohol-fuelled end of civilisation.

Every day our politicians are making new suggestions about how to solve the problem, including today’s suggestion from the Prime Minister: confronting advertising campaigns to warn young Australians about the dangers of excessive drinking.

Continue reading "Drinking less will let you drink better for longer" »

Shane Scott almost made it. He was just 700m from his home when the motorbike he was riding - after drinking six or seven cans of Jack Daniels and cola at the pub - left the road. He died.

Before getting on his bike he had argued with the publican and convinced him to let him make the 7km ride home. Shortly before giving him the keys, the publican had asked for his wife’s phone number so he could give her a call and get her to come pick Scott up. Scott’s response, according to the publican, was: “If I want you to ring my f**kin’ wife, I’d f**kin’ ask ya.”

But crucially, according to people who were there that night, Scott didn’t seem drunk. He told the publican he was fine to ride home. Now the High Court has decided the publican shouldn’t be held responsible for what happened in a ruling that backs what any bartender working under responsible service laws will tell you - it’s often impossible to tell when someone is on their ear.

Continue reading "Court calls last drinks on drunken excuses" »

Well another day and yet another useless decision on alcohol.

Victoria Police will today continue their blitz on drunks at races with the running of the Oaks at Flemington.

Now it’s great that police are targeting these people to stop alcohol fuelled violence, but I personally don’t believe it’s the right course of action.

Continue reading "Targeting drivers is one thing, what about drinkers?" »

You would think a drug that causes more than one in ten suicides, thousands of child abuse cases, and one in three road accidents would be outlawed.

Not chance, of course, because that’s alcohol. Cannabis, on the other hand, mostly causes feelings of wellbeing.

Debate over the relative harms of drugs has been raging this week. Most of the debate has been in the UK, where government drug advisor Professor David Nutt has been sacked for, in essence, arguing that drugs should be categorised according to the harm they cause. Crazy, huh?

Continue reading "Only a dope would say cannabis is worse than grog" »

Did I read the story correctly? Now police can’t even fine a person for drunken behaviour in public places? Time to get serious with the idiots who drink to excess, befoul public spaces, wreck the ‘quiet enjoyment’ of others, and divert our accident and emergency teams…

Here’s the basic principle – if your drunkenness results in police officers, or ambulance officers, or hospital teams, having to deal with you, you pay the full cost of this intervention – call it the ‘abuser pays’ principle.

Now I’d be in favour of bringing back the charge of public drunkenness, but I suspect that the paperwork involved these days for police officers in processing someone charged with an offence deters them from doing so, and we probably don’t have the cell space available.

Continue reading "Abuser pays – make drunken idiots pay for their mayhem" »

If blokes are honest, most of us would admit to behaving differently when there are no women around. While the extent of the change varies from guy to guy, most of us do things and say things we wouldn’t dream of doing or saying in female company.

Usually it’s low-level yobbo stuff - drunken anecdotes, sexual innuendo, a sneaky wee on the lemon tree – but for a minority of screwed-up blokes it involves a complete personality transformation where they drift into a shocking moral orbit, their macho posturing cheered on by their equally boorish buddies.

In the context of sport, particularly in light of Brendan Fevola’s unravelling and the car crash quality of Wayne Carey’s memoir, it’s clear that for many of our sporting heroes, life has been one extended boy’s night.

Continue reading "The boys’ clubs protecting our sporting yobbos" »

There are plenty of normal Australians – normal being defined as prone to uncharacteristic lapses of judgment – who have a dark tale involving an incident of drink-driving where they could easily have killed themselves, a friend, an unsuspecting stranger.

Whenever I see former British Prime Minister Tony Blair I’m reminded of mine. Unlike most of my mates I got through my teens and most of my 20s without ever drink-driving, in large part because I didn’t bother getting my licence until I was 22 and escaped the road-related rattiness that comes with youth.

All except for the day of the 1997 British election, when with friends I’d attended a dawn breakfast at the National Press Club in Canberra to watch the BBC coverage, where we ate a hearty English breakfast laid on by the British High Commission, washed down with English beer. Lots of English beer.

Continue reading "Let’s stop taking the piss over drink-driving" »

Remember the Alanis Morissette song Ironic?

It was pretty popular around the time I was introduced to alcohol and it also rang in my ears as I read that researchers at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK are advising an “alcohol allowance” to help prevent today’s teens from “falling into …the binge drinking trap”.

That’s right. They believe it’s inherently safer for teenagers to be given alcohol rations from their parents than be left to their own devices, hooking up with friends and buying from pubs or off-licences with a fake ID.

Continue reading "One bad idea to tackle teen drinking: give them beer" »

A good bit of campaign journalism was launched in Melbourne yesterday by the Sunday Herald Sun in throwing open the debate on whether the drink driving limit should be dropped to .02.

.

The Sunday reported that 39 people had been killed in Victoria alone in accidents involving drivers under the .005 mark in just the last five years.

Victoria’s Deputy Police Commissioner has tentatively backed the debate, if not quite advocating an actual change to .02

Continue reading "Should we cut the drink driving limit to 0.02?" »

I did something pretty unusual on Saturday night.  Well, unusual for me. I had a quiet one.

I declined various invitations to meet up with mates at a gig, a house party and a pub.  Instead I grabbed a likeminded friend whose liver also needed a night off. We headed to the cinema, donned some 3D goggles, sat through a pretty enjoyable movie and then headed home.

Why did I ‘waste’ a perfectly good weekend party-night? Truthfully I was tired and completely happy to just throw on my comfy jeans.

Continue reading "I saw myself plastered and it wasn’t pretty" »

In an effort to be seen doing something about alcohol-related violence in Melbourne, the Victorian Government is toughening up its enforcement of laws around security staff for venues.

Music venues around Melbourne are getting hounded by a group of almost 50 inspectors to enforce a 10-year-old law that says any live music venue needs at least two security guards for anything under 100 people.

While, superficially, this is the private venue equivalent for demands of “more cops on the beat”, the problem with private security is that they’re not cops and often they can cause more problems than they solve.

Continue reading "Can you call off security? Clubs’ bouncer problem" »

Kung-Fu master, movie star and all-round whoop ass machine Bruce Lee found it hard to walk down the street in Hong Kong without being challenged to a fight by some bloke who’d watched too many of his films.

Lee would receive letters daily from other Kung Fu academies putting forward their best students for a chance to fight the master. Unsurprisingly Lee was not amused: “I find this sort of thing really annoying, I’m not going to fight with anybody.”

The bashing of AFL superstar Lance “Buddy” Franklin in a Perth nightclub (at least on the facts available) is further evidence of a less sophisticated Australian version of this ego driven phenomena.

Continue reading "You wanna fight? Why footballers get targeted" »

First, I’d like to know how much taxpayers’ money was spent on a research report that concludes many Australian workers enjoy a drink with their colleagues and occasionally push the boat out too far.

But the report, commissioned by the federal Department of Health and Ageing, also suggests bosses could start pushing Australians to cut back on their drinking. Let’s translate one of the key parts:

“Workplace interventions (bosses, workmates or HR pulling up staff on drinking habits) are likely to be cost effective (cheap) and efficacious (fancy word for effective). Occupational health and safety and industrial relations frameworks exist (there are existing laws and regulations) that can incorporate alcohol-related issues (under which you could just slip in a new anti-booze regime).”

Continue reading "Revealed: Going for a beer after work is bad for everyone" »

It was the incident that gave flaming sambuca a whole new meaning, turned a young Greek woman into a national heroine and shone an embarrassing spotlight on Britain’s yob culture.

Stuart Feltham, a 20-year-old from outside London, had his genitals set on fire after allegedly dropping his trousers during a boozy night out at a bar in Crete.

Marina Fanouraki, a 26-year-old Greek tourist, admits having soaked Feltham with sambuca in retaliation for having her legs and breasts “forcefully fondled” by him, but denies that she purposely set him alight.

Continue reading "Eurotrashed Aussies almost as bad as plastered Poms" »

Those of us who enjoy the occasional night on the razz often have a special outfit that we like to wear when hitting the town. Some years ago I worked in a newsroom which had a communal purple silk tie which was shared around like the yellow jacket in the Tour de France. When worn it became code for: I am leaving the office, and may be some time.

Carlton’s Brendan Fevola is in a league of his own when it comes to his fashion regimen. This elite A-grade sorting superstar seems reluctant to leave the house unless he’s frocked up, literally, in a pink petticoat, felt bowler hat with flowers in it, and a foot-long sex toy which he either hangs out the front of his pants or waves above his head.

He did it at the end of last year’s season, snapped by a casual punter who recognised him as he stood looking like something out of A Clockwork Orange on a Melbourne CBD street corner in broad daylight.

Continue reading "These nobs are going to cost us all a drink" »

It was recently revealed that the Victorian Labor Government employs “a small army” of media minders and spin-meisters. But Brumby’s battalions of PR hacks cannot deny the undeniable fact that crime rages out of control.

The evidence is right there in front of us. Our TV screens and newspapers are filled with stories of the street violence that is seemingly an everyday occurrence in Victoria.

It has gotten so bad that even the police are intimidated by the marauding thugs who have come to rule our streets.

Continue reading "Mandatory minimums the answer to drunken thuggery" »

Australia’s binge drinking culture sure is a divisive issue. But to put it simply we have two options. Stand by and do nothing and risk the $16bn alcohol toll escalating further out of control, or do something to break the cycle and make us a safer country.

Last week, when I asked the readers of The Punch for a solution, there were some comments which suggested that I wanted to turn Australia into a nanny state.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. And just so we’re crystal clear I don’t want to or ever plan to introduce prohibition.

Continue reading "No silver bullet in the binge drinking debate" »

BEN Cousins still drinks. I discovered this in Fred Pawle’s excellent piece on the AFL’s favourite recreational drug user in this month’s GQ magazine. I also learned that the Louis Vuitton drawstring (tracksuit) pants he wore in the photo shoot cost $1460, but I won’t get into that except to say footballers have changed.

It would not be such a revelation that Cousins still enjoys the odd beer had he not spent the slabs of his career heading out for a quiet drink after the game, only to emerge four days later on the front of The West Australian in the same jeans, white thongs and Elwood t-shirt. In his final season at West Coast, he was spending more time with bikies than at training.

We’ve been led to believe Cousins’ transformation from druggie to role model is complete, but Pawle’s article proves he has a long way to go. When asked if he still has a drink, Cousins’ reply was sheepish. “Yeah…I have to be careful with that sort of stuff,” he said.

Continue reading "Ben Cousins needs a friend" »

Newsflash: smoking is bad for you.  So, apparently, is drinking to excess.  And, wait for it, regularly gouging on fatty foods is no good either.  It’s shocking, I know.  Better go get a coffee to help get over it all; but do make it one of those low fat, caffeine free types so as to look after yourself.

Maybe, however, you happen to be one of the 99 per cent of people who knew these things to be the facts of life already.  You may still engage in one or some of them, but you do so knowing that there are risks.

This informed consent that you grant yourself is under threat.  A new buzz-phrase is sweeping the bureaucracy and is being visited upon us all.  It’s called “preventative health”.

Continue reading "Motherhood health report tells us what we already know" »

With the current kerfuffle about binge drinking, you might be inclined to think that drinking copious amounts of alcohol is a fairly recent phenomenon. The truth is that the history of Western civilisation is soaked in alcohol. 

In the spirit of informing the current debate — and helping policy makers and public health officials to see what they’re up against — The Punch presents the following comprehensive* history, spanning over 2500 years of drunkeness.

360 BC — Plato. The history of binge drinking in the West begins in Ancient Greece with the philosopher Plato who compared drinking parties to going to the gym. Just as going to the gym temporarily weakens you but makes you stronger in the long-run, drinking parties, he argued, can make you stronger.

Continue reading "The complete* world history of binge-drinking" »

Look into the faces of those dozens of people glassed in violent incidents in our pubs and clubs in recent years and you’ll know that we have a problem. Those faces are worth more than any of the words I’m writing on this topic at the invitation of The Punch.

The images of our young people fighting on our streets with total strangers whose paths have they have crossed by chance, makes you wonder if we’ve got it right as a society. We shouldn’t live in a wowser state. I am clear on that.

Equally, we shouldn’t live in a state where our very human pursuit of enjoyment takes us down a darker path where alcohol becomes the end in itself.

Continue reading "We should not accept drunken violence as normal" »

Tougher penalties for alcohol-related offences were the most popular response to a call from Family First Senator Steve Fielding for new ideas on tackling binge drinking in Australia.

But that was from those who agreed it was a problem in the first place. Many were also of the view Australia’s relationship with alcohol is just fine, and there was some mirth at Senator’s shock at a staff member who confessed to drinking 12 “jagerbomb” cocktails the night before playing cricket.

“12… 12… IS THAT ALL HOW SOFT ARE YOU!” was the response of one proud binger.

Continue reading "10 of your ideas for dealing with binge drinking" »

I’m going to do something here that most pollies wouldn’t do and ask for help. Help in trying to address Australia’s $16bn alcohol toll. I want the readers of The Punch to leave a comment and share their ideas on how governments can address Australia’s binge drinking culture and the violence which stems from it.

Three years ago I took a 10 point plan to both John Howard and Kevin Rudd. It included advertising restrictions and health warning labels.

But with that plan shot down its now time for fresh ideas as this a real issue which this country as a whole needs to take responsibility for.

Continue reading "Our drunk nation" »

REMEMBER this name - or if you’re drunk, get a friend to write it on the back of a beer coaster and stick it to your forehead for future reference. It’s going to be important later on.

Not next week. Not in a month’s time. But in a few years, when shouts are banned, shots are illegal, when you are limited, by law, to a maximum of four purchases of spirits, liqueurs and/or fortified beverages within a 24-hour period at any licensed establishment.

When it’s illegal to drink in the presence of minors. Illegal to drink at any sporting event. Illegal to drink at a picnic.

Continue reading "The right of consenting adults to really tie one on" »

I used to be a cop. I’ve seen firsthand the damage that alcohol can cause when mis-used. Along the way I became a dad and, like most parents, worry about my kid’s safety. Now, I find myself as Managing Director of Brown-Forman Australia, proud makers of Jack Daniels. 

I’m not sure which role has given me the sharper insight into life as most of us know it but if you think that this country recently had a ‘debate’ about alcohol policy, you’re dead wrong. 

What was supposed to pass for a war on binge-drinking has turned out to be a well meaning, but badly aimed, paint-ball skirmish – messy, misdirected and ultimately without lasting impact.

Continue reading "Ban being drunk in public if you want to stop violence" »

Things we should consign to the non-recyclable rubbish bin of a lost Australia.

Female tennis players winning Grand Slams. Babies christened Keith or Shirley. Bank branches in small country towns. Australian wine under ten bucks a bottle.

While you’re just as likely to bump into the Beaumont children as encounter any of the first three, there’s still an ocean of palate-numbing, environment-raping, image-trashing plonk out there and everything that is great and good about the Australian wine industry is drowning in it.

Continue reading "I got my cheap wine and a pending liver transplant" »

In having a gentle dig at US beer maven, food guy and legendary brewer Garret Oliver, Paul Colgan put his finger on what is the greatest obstacle to beer becoming anything other than a weapon of mass consumption for most Australians.

While it is OK – almost expected – for the urban sophisticate to have a touch of the wine tosser these days, if you show the slightest interest in what’s in your beer glass – or even ask for one when you order a beer – you are marking yourself as a twat of the worst order.

How things have changed. As a child in middle class suburbs of Brisbane in the 70s, I recall my parents going to parties where the dads all rocked up with a half carton of XXXX tallies and the wives with a four litre cask of Coolabah Moselle or Riesling.

Continue reading "Whither the wine wanker" »

OK, so the headline’s a bit cruel - you wouldn’t use this material in the front bar unless you enjoy a public humiliation, but it’s a good potted guide to beer tasting and matching a brew with steak.

It comes from BigThink.com and springs off Obama’s beer summit, offering advice on etiquette next time you’re settling a major national issue over a drink. Enjoy.

If you’re a beer enthusiast, check out our own Matt Kirkegaard, The Punch’s resident lager-and-stout expert.

Gary Reinbach died a couple of days ago in the UK of alcoholic liver failure, aged just 22.

His life could have been saved with a liver transplant, but Gary didn’t qualify because he wasn’t well enough to leave hospital to prove he could clean himself up and deserved a second shot at growing up.

Obviously the allocation of donor organs has to comply with a set of criteria, such is the limited supply. But it seems amazing to me a 22-year-old could be told he wasn’t worth being on the list.

Continue reading "They should have given this 22-year-old alcoholic a liver" »

For those like me who’ve wondered (worried) about how many innocent brain cells they’ve wiped out at the pub over the years, the most exciting news in ages is that, just maybe, our brains are smarter than we are.

How so? The evidence is growing that the brain isn’t a fixed collection of a few billion neurones, but a living laboratory that can make its own new cells. And while that is not an excuse to wipe them out with that fourth martini, it does open up a whole new way of understanding the human mind.

It’s all part of an evolving area of science which views our brains as plastic. And no, we’re not talking that hard coloured stuff they make Lego out of. The idea is that your brain is changeable. And one way to encourage it to do make the right changes is– and here we get radical – thinking in the right way.

Continue reading "The modest drinkers’ guide to growing back brain cells" »

There are currently some 700,000 university students in Australia, which I would estimate represents 145,478 cases of Chlamydia, 49,678 one-night stands and 4,567,099 packets of instant noodles consumed in the last calender year.

We have institutions aplenty (39 at last count) which are excellent at pumping out graduates who have gained little beyond a vague understanding of post-structuralism and an impressive repertoire of drinking games involving Sambucca.

But Julia Gillard thinks we need even more university students: 300,000 more to be precise. All part of the Education Minister‘s plans to give the higher education system a bit of a face lift.

Continue reading "Tune in, drop out, get drunk, become a hairdresser" »

I enjoy a drink as much as the next person. Unless that next person happens to be Fiona O’Loughlin. Or Andrew Symonds.

But the Australian Hotels Association’s opposition to a cancer fundraiser is just plain wrong.

Three blokes who’ve lost loved ones to cancer have started Dry July to raise money for Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital.

Continue reading "Pubs’ attack on charity is a dry old argument" »

Ten years ago I had the good fortune of sitting next to Paul “The Chief” Harragon, hardman for the Newcastle Knights rugby league team

We shared a generally enjoyable conversation until discussions turned to a player who had become the media focus for – what else – excessive drinking.

Harragon was genuinely staggered that the drinking exploits of a league star would make tabloid fodder.

“If a plumber goes out and has a few to many,” he said, “no-one thinks of writing that up in a newspaper.”

Continue reading "Binge-drinking, boob-jobs and the black art of spin" »

JAKE Friend will slip on the number 9 jersey and run out to play for the Roosters tonight. It will be just under a week since he, along with teammate Sandor Earl, allegedly assaulted a 31-year-old woman in a Sydney nightclub.

Despite being formally charged, they are free to wear the colours of one of rugby league’s foundation entities – and even the most ardent Roosters fan must see that there is something terribly wrong with a club that allows it.
It doesn’t take Jack Welch to point out that a badly managed organisation tends to rot all the way to the bottom.

Continue reading "Blind Freddy can see league has a leadership problem" »

With Swans coach Paul Roos all but saying he’d like forward Barry Hall to retire after landing another stray punch, the question is now being asked: how many chances should Hall get before he’s just sacked?

I’d ask another question. Is Barry Hall really as big and bad as he is being made out to be, or is the controversy just an indication of how soft football and sporting culture generally has become in Australia?

In short – and at risk of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw - are Bazza and the likes of Andrew Symonds really too hard or have we just become too soft?

Continue reading "The hard men that soft modern sport has left behind" »

The outsourcing of responsibility for your own stupid behaviour to our nanny government continues apace with Kevin Rudd’s cockamamie plan to effectively pay people to stop shovelling tons of junk down their throats while sitting on their bum watching the telly.

Central to this plan is the utterly laughable claim from the 2007-2008 National Health Survey that 68 per cent of Australians are obese or overweight.

This figure says nothing about the real health of many thousands of Australians, but plenty about the ludicrously narrow definition of obesity.

Continue reading "Hey Kev, get your hands off my modestly-sized beer gut" »

1. Drug prohibition doesn’t work. During the last half century, almost every country in the world signed three United Nations drug treaties committing these countries to minimise the recreational use of specified drugs. Almost every country expanded their police drug squads, rained gold bars on drug law enforcement and kept on increasing the severity of penalties for drug offences. What was the result? Global heroin, cocaine and cannabis production and consumption continued to soar while world heroin production doubled in the last 10 years.

Continue reading "Ten things you should know about drug prohibition" »

Low-carb beers are a beer of the moment. They are the “IT girl” of the beer world with their sales growing at a remarkable 900 per cent per year and every man and his dog who owns a brewery clamouring to get one on the market.

Despite this, you won’t find too many brewers bragging about the beers in any sense other than the technical achievement in producing them. Beer marketers and brewery bean counters will sing their praises endlessly, but the actual brewers seem to stay silent on them – a little like Hunter S. Thompson might have done if he had had a sideline writing Mills and Boon novels.

When they do mention them it is usually in the pragmatic terms of giving the market what they want. The key to the beer’s success – apart from their light flavour profile – is in their name: low carb.

Continue reading "Fruit versus lager: exploding the myth of the beer belly" »

UPDATED: Trouble follows him off the field like the ball does on it. It’s a shame because it’s a waste of talent and a let-down for cricket fans. There are few players better to watch when he starts tonking. There’s video below of the brilliance we now won’t be seeing in the Twenty20 World Cup, because Andrew Symonds has been sent home for breaking team rules.

Cricket Australia is booking his flights tonight. Precisely what happened is yet to emerge but it appears, as is usually the case when Symonds gets in trouble, there’s booze involved. Bizarrely it sounds like Symonds hasn’t repeated anything like turning up for a match drunk, like he did in 2005. CA boss James Sutherland said tonight: “the breaches that I am talking about are not serious, but in the scheme of things, in the scheme of history, they are enough for it to be the final straw”.

Twitter exploded with reaction after the story broke, and I guess the widespread disappointment shows the generally high regard in which Symonds is held, and the fact that people want him to come good.

I particularly liked this, from @KristinByrne:

Andrew Symonds: the only fun thing about cricket.

Anyway, Roy, as he’s known, wasn’t in the Ashes squad but he would have been a key player in the Twenty20 side. This might be the end of his international career. But how many chances should players like Symonds get?

YOU know what I love about the Grand Canyon, other than that it is one awesome kick-arse hole in the ground?

It’s got no fences. You are free to fall into it if you feel so inclined. Sure, there’s the odd sign telling you that straying too close to the edge could bring a premature and permanent end to your holiday, but that’s the extent of the bureaucratic concern.

If the Grand Canyon was in Australia, it would have a fence around it.

Too dangerous, the nannas who govern us would cry, to let people just explore it in a manner of their choosing.

Continue reading "Wowser watch: the plastic beer glass is pure evil" »