Best Of

Scanned this article about the new drink driving laws without properly paying attention, and thought this was strange advice from Alcoholics Anonymous

He said: “The new rules will send a strong message that it is simply not worth taking the risk. Our message at the AA for everyone is clear: if you are going to drink, don’t drive and if you are going to drive, don’t drink.”

https://www.thetimes.com/article/798fa10d-2603-4ea2-bffd-007829a8f868?shareToken=610faef91aaa50324618f516a70a5c6d

Thank-you for the full article link. It's good to see the aspiration to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 2/3 over a decade.

The measures mentioned - 6 month minimum learning period, 20mg/ml drink drive limit for young driver and 50mg/ml limit for others - are evidence based but timid; we really miss Louise Haigh. Blood alcohol of 50mg/ml causes significant impairment of driving ability; it's a bad idea to institutionalise "you can drink and drive after a probationary period".

The headline claim that we will become one of the strictest countries in Europe for DUI is complete baloney (in the article this is modified to "for young drivers"). There ae four tiers in Europe of DUI limit - 80mg/ml, 50, 20 and 0.

The UK is that last one on 80, and this will move us to 50, which is the typical Western European figure, whilst in Eastern Europe it is 20 mg/ml.

It's a great picture of Heidi Alexander with something of the "Grandma from Giles" about her:

I hope you haven't been driving in Scotland: joke, but with a serious point, as the limit has been 50mg for years.

[deleted - my error]

I don't think I have been to Scotland since it was changed in 2014, tbh.

I think we should be doing it properly and going for 20 mg/ml.

In which case even a pint or a glass of wine would put you over the limit and only 1 half might be allowed.

It would also devastate a pub and bar trade already hit by tax rises and a higher minimum wage, it would also do next to nothing to save lives.

Drink driving deaths and injuries are almost entirely caused by those drinking multiple pints and glasses and well over the limit, better to enforce the law against them than just add more nanny state tokenism

Data to support that please? We know that impairment is significant from even a small volume of alcohol, so I'd be very surprised if that was the case.

Tbh a zero-tolerance approach is simpler and fairer on everyone, particularly given the consequences of being caught.

'The number of drink driving deaths has fallen by more than 75% since 1979...
2% - two-thirds of all those who were over the limit - had more than twice the legal amount of blood alcohol in their body
7% of those killed - 40% of those who were over the limit - were at least 2.5 times over the limit'
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-crackdown-on-drink-and-drug-driving'

We need greater enforcement of laws we already have not more nanny state that will destroy an already struggling pub trade, even more reason to vote Tory or Reform therefore and get rid of this useless nanny state government!

There can be no justification for defending deaths by drunk driving

In Scotland the advice is do not drink and drive, and that should be a national rule

The pub trade has wider issues with the government's policies

In rural areas most pubs survive on trade from drinkers and eaters who drive to them. Prosecute drivers for just having one drink and you would kill most of them off and yes it is bad enough with this government's hammering them with tax and an ever higher minimum wage

The practice is largely followed in Scotland and behaviour changes

You cannot be complacent about drink driving, and as medics will tell you one pint to someone may well be different from someone else who may have medication or health conditions that could well take them over the limit without them even knowing

Better safe than sorry

Tell that to the pub landlords taking suicide as you destroy their pubs and livelihoods

This is completely over the top HYUFD. Some drivers having a pint rather than a half pint is not going to save pubs. If we agree that pubs are a good thing, then we'd need the following:

1) Make supermarket alcohol much more expensive (or even remove their licenses in favour of bottle shops)
2) Quadruple bus services back to where they were in 2010
3) Build density and make it easier to walk into town rather than vast sprawling car-dependent estates
4) Reduce costs like business rates - an effective subsidy for this particular type of hospitality

But given overall trends on young people drinking they are doomed anyway.

That's a mixture of Whatabouttery and fantasy.

Not everyone lives in urban or suburban areas where that would be practical.

Have you noticed these cranks always think the solution to pubs woes is increasing the price of alcohol in supermarkets. As if making a bottle of wine more expensive in Tesco will force people to the pub.

Scotland has minimum unit pricing which the SLTA lobbied for. It has a far higher proportion of pubs closing than England. Scotland was even talking about MUP for pubs too. Faces and leopards spring to mind.

So higher pricing won’t work. It’s just another nanny state, anti alcohol measure. All that will happen will be less alcohol is consumed. People need to be honest that this is the preferred outcome,

From grok search ‘ Direct head-to-head percentage comparisons for 2025 are not prominently available in recent reports (unlike 2023–2024, when Scotland’s closure rate was approximately double England’s at ~1.7% vs. ~0.75%)’

I think there's a large constituency of people who are offended by the idea people enjoying themselves; they what them to conform with how they live their lives.

Macro-societal arguments are used as an excuse.

The legacy of Reeves and Rayner:

UK housebuilding in deepest slump since 2020

Newsflash: Britain’s construction sector continued to shrink in December, as housing, commercial and civil engineering activity suffered sharp falls again.

Data provider S&P Global has reported that activity across the UK construction sector, and new orders, both fell again last month.

Housebuilding and commercial construction work both decreased at the fastest rate since May 2020, when the Covid-19 lockdown forced building sites to close, S&P Global’s survey of purchasing managers at UK construction firms shows.

That highlights the government’s struggle to hit its housebuilding targets.

Civil engineering was the weakest-performing category of construction activity in December; it also shrank, but not by as much as in November.

This lifted the UK’s construction PMI index slightly to 40.1 in December, up from 39.4 in November, but still showing a contraction – for the 12th month running (50 = stagnation).

The drop extended the sector’s downturn to 12 months, its longest unbroken run of contractions since the global financial crisis of 2007-09, Reuters reports.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2026/jan/07/oil-price-falls-trump-venezuela-supply-stock-markets-dollar-uk-construction-business-live-news-updates#maincontent

This really is remarkable. I know a lot is going on at the moment, but it ought to be receiving more attention in Britain. Far from having turned a corner or fixed the foundations, or whatever the latest vapid slogan is from Number Ten, they're actually going in the wrong direction.

"Struggle to hit its housebuilding targets" is masterful understatement.

How have they managed to make things worse, when they were awful to start with?

How many people are killed annually by people between 50 and 80 mg every year ?

It's not just that - it's whether having a lower limit prevents some drinkers who would normally end up over 50 from drinking at all. I think that's why it's been so effective in Scotland - drink drive deaths have fallen by 50%, collisions by 40%, while they are at the same level in England and Wales. All else held equal you'd expect drink drive casualties to increase with a lowering of the limit.

YouTube is full of videos of people who "just had one drink" who are well over 50. A zero tolerance approach helps prevent that.

Start prosecuting people who have only had one glass of wine or 1 pint of beer for drink driving and you may as well sign the final death warrant for most pubs left in the UK, especially rural ones.

Enforce better the drink driving laws we already have rather than hammer law abiding motorists and publicans who serve them

That is a spurious argument HY.

As a teenager I still went to the pub and NEVER had a drink and drove. I drank soft drinks, and at the time a vile concoction called Kaliber was available.

Pubs have been on their arse for two decades because young people don't see them as venues they want to go to. I'd drop the drink driving limit to zero like some Scandi nations.

Zero-alcohol booze is now quite high quality. It occupies many feet of shelf space at my local supermarket, both wine and beer.

The beers have got massively better. I enjoy a Heineken zero with a curry every bit as much as a "normal" beer and there are an increasing number of decent ales.

I have yet to find a drinkable alcohol free wine. If anyone has any recommendations I would love to see them, not least because 1 week into dry January I am really missing a glass of wine with my meals.

White House: Trump and his team discussing options to acquire Greenland

Donald Trump and his team are discussing a range of methods for acquiring Greenland.

The US president has repeatedly made clear getting ahold of the territory is a "national security priority".

In a statement, the White House adds that "utilising the US military is always an option".

In response to queries from Reuters, it says:

"President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland ‌is a national security priority ‌of the United States, and it's vital ​to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The ‍president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important ‌foreign policy goal, ⁠and of course, utilising the ‌US military is ‍always an option at the commander-in-chief's disposal."

Efforts to take control of it include buying the territory or forming a compact of free association with the island, Reuters reports, citing a senior US official.

They add that Trump wants the US to get ahold of Greenland during this current term in office and the issue is "not going away", despite objections from other NATO leaders.

https://news.sky.com/story/venezuela-live-trump-maduro-court-capture-strikes-colombia-greenland-latest-13489831

The bloke is fucking mad.

And that's our problem. We all know it, but those in power don't have the luxury of being able to say it. Because telling Trump that he's mad is likely to end badly.

I've got lots of sympathy for any Western leader trying to navigate their way round this. I've even got a bit (but only a bit) of sympathy for members of the US administration. Yes, it's obvious that they should call this out and/or leave. But anyone who has had a really sociopathic boss knows that, for all the right thing is obvious, it's never quite as easy as that.