Carol Vorderman getting pissed up and going completely fucking apeshit, making our town centres no go areas for normal people, earlier today. At least, that’s what she would be doing if the story she is promoting was actually true.
The above headline, created by an online Daily Mail random headline generator, has finally been trumped by the real thing. Today’s Mail carries a story headlined ‘Average Briton drinks 84 times their bodyweight in alcohol‘.
But that’s not the best bit. The best bit is:
Soaring levels of binge drinking mean that many Britons drink an average of 3.7 pints of beer, or 8.5 large glasses of wine, each week.
That’s right. Half a pint of beer a day is now binge drinking on Planet Hate.
In the real world, this equates to 12.5% of the government’s approved definition of binge drinking.
The article goes on to say that if we’re not careful, we might consume a shocking 1000 calories a week through drink. If we do no exercise at all, this somehow means that this amount (which in the real world equates to 5.7% of an average adult male’s weekly calorific intake) will make us put on an extra pound every 3.5 weeks. No idea how that gets worked out with no reference whatsoever to the other 94.3% of the recommended calorific intake. Or what point they’re trying to make.
The article also repeats the lies about soaring alcohol consumption and ‘soaring levels of binge drinking’ in the UK, which the government’s own figures – along with those of every body that studies this area using proper research techniques – explicitly contradict.
The headline is factually incorrect too – it refers to 11,800 pints over 60 years – which are on average between 3.5 and 5% alcohol. Yet states – or implies – it’s referring to pure alcohol. Apart from being wrong, it’s meaningless. Any liquid the consistency of water weighs pretty much the same. By point of comparison, it’s worth noting that a glass of orange juice every day would weigh exactly the same, but would contain an additional 438,000 calories over the 60 year period.
This horse poo is part of the launch of something called the ALculator by Lloyds Pharmacy, launched by Carol Bloody Vorderman. It’s just wrong, wrong, wrong. But people read it and believe it – just see the comments at the end of the piece. Please join in giving it the ridicule it deserves.
Next week: how real ale drinking homosexual asylum seekers are turning house prices gay.
The official definition of a binge is double the recommended daily unit limit – which is 3-4 for men. Half a pint of beer is one unit. The recommended calorific intake for an adult male is 2500 a day, or 17,500 a week. Half a pint of average beer contains 105 calories, whereas the same volume of orange juice contains 124.
UPDATE:
I posted some comments (which were not published) to the Mail’s website this afternoon, and posted this blog around 8ish. At 9.56pm the Mail story was amended. References to ‘soaring binge drinking’ have been removed. The link between 3.7 pints a week and binge drinking has been removed. The reference to increasing alcohol consumption has been removed. The statement that 1000 calories a week can lead to a weight gain has been removed. Basically, there’s no substance at all left to the story. It may not be my efforts or all those who retweeted links to this post that are responsible. It may be some of the comments that were printed below the story. But somebody, somewhere, has had an effect and these lies and distortions have been taken down. We CAN stop this nonsense being perpetrated.
Depressing thing: in the comments, more than one person has read this piece of Daily Mail scaremongering, disagreed with it, then blamed the distortion not on the Mail, but on New Labour – who had nothing whatsoever to do with the story! Brainwashing still works long term 🙁
That title should get more internet traffic to your site!
Isn't it great when drinking 3 pints of Abbot in a session (8.5 units) qualifies as a binge? 🙁
My brain aches.
The Daily Mail despises NuLabour nanny-statism yet perpetuates neo-prohibitionist scaremongering.
Great blog, Pete!
Nice one Pete, it's good to see a way in which this perpetration of untruths can be countered.
Keep fighting the good fight Pete – The Mail's desperate fight to destroy an industry really does know no limits!
Ha, well, they wouldn't publish my comments either. And all I was doing was suggesting they may be having an adverse effect upon an industry that is largely healthy, completely legitmate and absolutely necessary to our economy.
She may be an old bird, Carol, but you still would. Nice to see Carol working again after the loan shark business dried up.
In the Dutch edition of Metro this morning there was an article about teenagers and their problems. Guess what photograph they chose to illustrate it? Someone drinking a pint of lager. That's right, a pint of lager. They couldn't even be arsed to get a picture of someone in Holland.
Well, humans have a natural tendency to forget, and it's easy enough to encourage that by rewriting history to fit the present line (Orwell, anyone ?)
So people are easily led to believe a change of government is going to alter things radically, because they just don't remember that the last one and the one before that and the one before etc. did not make much of a difference on such issues as alcohol policies.
WTF? Where are the lesbians?
This is depressing, though hardly surprising. I've seen my home town portrayed on TV as a binge drinking, hell-on-Earth no-go area at weekends… the same weekends when I've been out and seen no trouble. hang around ANYWHERE long enough and you'll see girls staggering, bloke fighting etc… but it's not the norm.
Anyway, looking forward to a binge tomorrow. Might even do 4 pints, yob that I am.