According to the BBC,
Scots ‘drink 46 bottles of vodka’.
Adults in Scotland are drinking the equivalent of 46 bottles of vodka each in a year, a study has suggested.
Which is ridiculous. Whoever heard of a Scot who drank an equivalent of vodka?
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A Bad Guide 
“The new figures come as the Scottish government pushes for a minimum price for alcohol to tackle the country’s drink-related problems.”
Not likely. Alcohol consumption is inelastic, same as tobacco. That’s why it’s such a favorite for taxation, politicians know people won’t stop smoking as the the taxes go up, as they would cut back on other types of consumer purchases. On the other hand, if they were to tax hard liquor but not beer…
The Scots already drink beer. They’d have to tax McEwan’s but not Heineken. They could try it, they already know they’re going to lose the next election.
Perhaps they said “vodka” to imply that the boozers aren’t drinking for the pleasure of the taste, but just for the pharmacological effect.
Then they should have chosen Welshpersons. Scotspersons obviously care about the taste.
Twenty marlborough red and an equivalent of vodka. Not a bad way to spend an evening, if you don’t plan on having commitments in a couple of decades’ time.
I’m looking forward to taking up smoking when I’m 100.
BBC: The new figures come as the Scottish government pushes for a minimum price for alcohol to tackle the country’s drink-related problems.
So is Scotland a country now, a real one? When for instance a British politician says “In this country…”, what is he referring to exactly?
I think they have a local parliament that was designed by a huge international firm of architects, based in Scotland, known as “Ram Jam”, or RMJM. You may have heard of them.
The Scottish people still elect MPs to Westminster & pay taxes, so they aren’t exactly a foreign country. In effect they have three bureaucracies: Edinburgh, Westminster & Brussels. I call that overkill, but I hate all bureaucracy.
When for instance a British politician says “In this country…”, what is he referring to exactly?
Nobody seems to know. You would imagine that the UK still had only one foreign policy, but no. It was the Scots who released the so-called Pan Am Lockerbie bomber who was in prison in Scotland until last year. He had cancer & wanted to return to Libya to die. Obama protested the release on behalf of US citizens killed in the crash, but Gordon Brown just blamed Scotland & said there was nothing he could do to overturn a decision by a Scottish court. (A lot of people think the Libyan guy didn’t do it).
Excuse me for taking this thread into a boring side-issue, but I was wondering about the basis for equating 12.2 liters of alcohol with 46 bottles of vodka, since bottles come in various sizes and vodka in various strengths. Most vodka found in the US is either 40% or (less frequently) 50% alcohol, I believe. It turns out that the minimum allowed in Europe is 37.5%. Combine that figure with 0.7 liters per bottle (one of the standard sizes), and you get 46 bottles to the nearest integer, so I suppose that was the calculation.
They could have gone with 40% and one-liter bottles and arrived at less than 31 bottles.
The Lockerbie bomber: see an enlightening posting by our friend The Old Hack about him a little while ago.
That’s a very good point, Ø. Please take any thread in any direction you like. They could have gone with 100% and ten-litre bottles, and come to the much more interesting conclusion that the Scots hardly drink at all.
If they put “vodka” in the title of a piece about drinking problems, it probably won’t alarm the whiskey industry too much.
No one gives a hoot about the whiskey industry. It’s the whisky industry they care about.
Siganus: If you really want to spend an evening reading up on the (unwritten) British Constitution, try this on the West Lothian Question (sometimes called the Midlothian Question). In brief, Scottish MPs in the national (Westminster) parliament – e.g. from the Scottish district of West Lothian – can vote on all English issues, but English MPs can’t vote on many Scottish issues which have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. However, when a Westminster politician says “this country” they normally mean the whole UK.
The Scots, Welsh, and (just about) the Northern Irish have separate parliaments or assemblies with varying local powers. The majority English have no equivalent. (Grump).
It may not be a coincidence that Scottish (Westminster) Labour MPs have a disprorportionate influence in votes and as members of the government (and last two prime ministers).
End of political essay.
BTW AJP, I thought the architect of the Parliament building in Edinburgh was a Spaniard, now deceased, and the cost something like ten times the budget was because of his mad detailing ?
I’m really depressed today. Last night when I went to work I found a business card on my car that says “we buy junk cars”.
They put that on all cars that aren’t new, Nij. They don’t care about our feelings. Google junk cars on images. Does yours look like one of those? If not, don’t worry.
I liked this one: Our drivers are courteous, patient, professional and take pride in being damage free. Over 50% of our business comes from returning customers, and we’d like to keep it that way.
I thought the architect of the Parliament building in Edinburgh was a Spaniard, now deceased, and the cost something like ten times the budget was because of his mad detailing ?
It was designed by the Catalan Enric Miralles, but Ram Jam will have done the boring nuts & bolts stuff: the working drawings, specs , budget negotiations & so on. This is a quite common procedure: for example Cesar Pelli, who designed Canary Wharf, the World Financial Center in NY and that hideous World’s Tallest BUILDING in Kuala Lumpur, runs a tiny (9-person) office in New Haven, CT.
As for cost overruns, this is hardly ever the architect’s fault; normally it’s you, the client, who just remembered that you won’t be able to live without a second chamber and a gold parking garage. Notice that they never hold a competition to design the cheapest parliament building.
Ah, mine isn’t that bad, it’s just missing the front license plate, but I retraced my steps and found where it had fallen off and put it in the front window.
Ach, no, you’ve got the West Lothian Question wrong!! Scottish MPs in the Westminster Parliament can vote on English issues, but cannot vote on those Scottish issues that have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. So, Scottish MPs can vote on English schools but not on Scottish schools. (Nor can English MPs.)
This is evidently so preposterous that only a bloody fool of a PM could introduce it. T Blair, of course.
As I said, it’s just an additional layer of bureaucracy.
I’m beginning to think that Norway is the only sensibly governed country in the world.