Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.

Alcohol related lobby groups such as Alcohol Concern, seems to have garnered quite a lot of media coverage recently. Consider the following:

Call to stop children's drinking and Call to raise drinking age to 21

The first is utterly unenforceable and the second is abhorrent. Rather than copying the highly regulatory approach favoured by MADD, I - along with many others - have always been in favour of the more sophisticated approach to alcohol demonstrated by our neighbours across the channel. So what would be the sole result of the proposed laws? They'd successfully fill the middle classes with angst as they wondered whether they'd be shopped for offering little Penelope a sip of wine or letting Rufus indulge in a glass of West Country cider to accompany his Sunday roast. Come to think of it middle-class consternation - tremendous.