The Drunk Girl
Feb 3rd 2010, 08:06 PM
Since I am The Drunk Girl (and I obviously like booze) this article jumped out at me. :cheers:
COATBRIDGE, Scotland — What is it about Buckfast Tonic Wine (http://www.thedrinkshop.com/products/nlpdetail.php?prodid=1646) that makes it so alluring to consumers and yet so repulsive to politicians?
Perhaps it is its special caffeine-and-sweet wine recipe, which theoretically allows overly enthusiastic consumers to be tipsy and bouncy at the same time. Perhaps it is its array of snappy nicknames, including “Wreck the Hoose Juice” — hoose being a Scottish pronunciation of house — or its exotic provenance as the product of wine-brewing Benedictine monks at an abbey in England.
Whatever the cause, Buckfast has emerged as a symbol of Scotland’s entrenched drinking problems at a time when it is urgently debating how to address them. “For a large section of the Scottish population, their relationship with alcohol is damaging and harmful — to individuals, families, communities and to Scotland as a nation,” the Scottish government said in a recent report.
Buckfast does not seem to help.
In a survey last year of 172 prisoners at a young offenders’ institution, 43 percent of the 117 people who drank alcohol before committing their crime said they had drunk Buckfast. In a study of litter in a typical housing project, 35 percent of the items identified were Buckfast bottles. And the police in the depressed industrial district of Strathclyde (http://www.strathclyde.police.uk/) recently told a BBC (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/british_broadcasting_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org) program that the drink had been mentioned in 5,638 crime reports between 2006 and 2009 (the bottle was used as a weapon in 114 of them).
Source (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/world/europe/04scotland.html?hp)
I suppose I find this amusing mainly for the stereotypes that go along with the Scottish. However, I find it hard to believe that one brand of alcohol could cause this many problems or let alone be the poster child to take all the blame. Just because I typically see rednecks drink Natty Light and I prefer Coors Light doesn't mean they're any worse or rowdier than me (well other than being a redneck :D) because we're still drinking beer---or booze at that.
COATBRIDGE, Scotland — What is it about Buckfast Tonic Wine (http://www.thedrinkshop.com/products/nlpdetail.php?prodid=1646) that makes it so alluring to consumers and yet so repulsive to politicians?
Perhaps it is its special caffeine-and-sweet wine recipe, which theoretically allows overly enthusiastic consumers to be tipsy and bouncy at the same time. Perhaps it is its array of snappy nicknames, including “Wreck the Hoose Juice” — hoose being a Scottish pronunciation of house — or its exotic provenance as the product of wine-brewing Benedictine monks at an abbey in England.
Whatever the cause, Buckfast has emerged as a symbol of Scotland’s entrenched drinking problems at a time when it is urgently debating how to address them. “For a large section of the Scottish population, their relationship with alcohol is damaging and harmful — to individuals, families, communities and to Scotland as a nation,” the Scottish government said in a recent report.
Buckfast does not seem to help.
In a survey last year of 172 prisoners at a young offenders’ institution, 43 percent of the 117 people who drank alcohol before committing their crime said they had drunk Buckfast. In a study of litter in a typical housing project, 35 percent of the items identified were Buckfast bottles. And the police in the depressed industrial district of Strathclyde (http://www.strathclyde.police.uk/) recently told a BBC (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/british_broadcasting_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org) program that the drink had been mentioned in 5,638 crime reports between 2006 and 2009 (the bottle was used as a weapon in 114 of them).
Source (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/world/europe/04scotland.html?hp)
I suppose I find this amusing mainly for the stereotypes that go along with the Scottish. However, I find it hard to believe that one brand of alcohol could cause this many problems or let alone be the poster child to take all the blame. Just because I typically see rednecks drink Natty Light and I prefer Coors Light doesn't mean they're any worse or rowdier than me (well other than being a redneck :D) because we're still drinking beer---or booze at that.