The moral case for alcohol
Another day, another warning about the perils of alcohol from a body that should know better. The World Health Organisation, which just a few years ago was prescribing solitary confinement as the cure for our ills, has recently announced the preferred level we should be drinking every day: zero, zip, nada – not a drop. Last week a Professor Nutt – nominative determinism in action if ever I saw it – was a little more generous. He suggested we would be safe with 'one glass a year'. He was joined last weekend by a dreary columnist in the Financial Times, who said he took up drinking at 30 but wishes he hadn't; it would be better for his health.
What madness is this? As the Italians say: 'la madre degli imbecili è sempre incinta', or the mother of imbeciles is always pregnant.
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