Regular readers may remember that a week-and-a-bit ago, they ran the actual statistics through the Righteous Random Number Generator and reckoned that there were - an amazingly precise - 2,882 alcohol-related deaths in Scotland in 2003, or about 5% of all deaths.
This week, the RRNG applied a different multiple, and the number of UK-wide alcohol-related deaths is now given as - again, amazingly precisely - as 7,341 in 2008, which is about 1.5% of the 509,090 registered deaths in the UK in 2008.
OK, maybe the rate in Scotland is slightly higher than in the UK in general, but it's hardly going to be five times as much*, is it?
* If you deduct Scottish deaths from all deaths and Scottish alcohol-related deaths from all alcohol-related deaths, for the rest of the UK slightly fewer than one per cent of all deaths would be alcohol-related.
Thursday, 9 July 2009
More alcohol-related death statistics tomfoolery
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12 comments:
And in my village the mortality rate from alcohol is around 50%.....great place to live!!!
The very expression "alcohol-related" sings out "Here be liars".
Alcohol related, smoking related...I can see a trend here...oh and obesity related next, surely? It's all bollox.
I hate all the computational nonsense (and the "amounts of money" such deaths and accidents "cost" the economy, justifying more and more intervention in everyday life, choice, eating, driving, and all the rest). But I am sure alcohol is the cause of many more deaths than anyone ever dares to admit. It causes more damage to my property than all others things combined, including tax, and destroys the quality of life of everyone. Last week in the middle of the night I was awakened by smashing - a drunk was going down the road smashing hundreds of bottles put out for collection the next day. By the time he was done the pavement was deep in glass. Many people's pets were badly injured on the glass the next day.
If someone is sloshed and falls down the stairs and breaks their neck, is that not alcohol caused? (forget alcohol related). A stupid drunk staggers under a car - is that accident not alcohol-cuased (rather than alcohol related)?
CB, I'm sorry to hear that, but surely that's why we have taxes on alcohol, to pay for e.g. coppers to whizz out in the middle of the night and arrest idiots like this, and also for people to sweep up the glass in the morning.
The fact that they don't spend the alcohol duties primarily on the external costs of alcohol is a different topic.
Mark - I do broadly agree with you. I have no interest in nannying people or pretending things with statistics to justify pre-emptive interference. But it is infeasibile to police all the alcohol cuased meyhem across the country (and it would cost a lot more than the duty on the booze consumed in public bars). And once the damage is done it is done. It would help to have some VERY VERY severe exemplary sentencing for public drunkenness, alcohol-caused vandalism, assault, threatening behaviour, menace, theft, criminal damage - some good stretched inside for first offences would be a good start (though there's some hope of that from our judiciary with their roots in alcohol-sodden cultures from student days onwards) plus an intensification (ie much more money and police time) to stop and breath-test anyone whose driving suggets they could be affected by alcohol (surely there is no comparable cause of death at the hands of others than to be felled by a drunked driver - I'd say that was an alcohol-caused, not alcohol-related death). In case you haven't guessed, I think people can be very selfish and self-deluding about this topic.
I think the family pets all got their feet shredded during the night - too late to sweep it up. The family dogs and cats were already ripped up by the time (a few days later) when the council sent some brushes down.
Charlie: If they were producing figures for alcohol-caused, we would be able to wholeheartedly agree with you. But they don't.
The stats are generally created by charities with vested interests who completely overlook such figures as they can't scare enough people with them.
If you die of bowel-cancer, for example, you will be claimed as a statistic for smoking-related, alcohol-related, and obesity-related, all at the same time.
And every stat is designed to push further infringements on the liberty of those who do no wrong whatsoever (normally on the back of saving the NHS).
If I seem unsympathetic, you're wrong. Just over 10 years ago, I lived above a shop in a town centre and every night some drunk shit would piss in my doorway. There was a movable CCTV camera just over the road (I know this as it followed me around a few times when doing nothing wrong), and it contained evidence of such acts. No-one at the police ever did a thing about it. I ended up chasing one up the road with a wooden bannister, zipping himself up as he went, once.
The laws are already there to be enforced. The problem is not drink itself, but the tossers who drink and misbehave, and those who don't take action with the legislation available. Why should we all suffer for their rudeness?
CB: "it is infeasibile to police all the alcohol caused meyhem across the country (and it would cost a lot more than the duty on the booze consumed in public bars)"
I can't pin down the statistics right now, but the magic fag packet says that total tax revenues generated from alcohol (duties + VAT + corporation tax + PAYE on brewers, distillers, bar staff etc) on alcohol consumption generally are £15 billion-plus.
We also have 300,000 coppers on this country, call them £50,000 a year each (salary + pension + kit + overheads) = £15 billion.
Given that only a fraction of crime (a tenth? a quarter? a half?) is caused by alcohol, I don't think that your contention is valid.
Fair comment. I know that the aim of those who use the stats is always to attack the choices people make about their consumption, and rely on pseudo (social) science claims about appropriate length of life, so-called "costs" to society of ill-health, need to exercise, change diet, be green etc etc. Indeed, they are never worried about the chaos alcohol causes, or how it undermines the reasonable expectation of public peace. Of course the vast majority of the crimes caused directly by drunkenness are never reported (I have never reported all the times drunks have vandalised my car, garden or home, had shouting matched in the street at 3.00am, upturned rubbish bins all over the street, and so on ad nauseam - what would be the point?) But I feel some guilt at introducing this perspective as this is one of my favourite blogs and I don't want to get on people's nerves.
Seems to me that it shouldn't be the taxpayer stumping up for the drunk smashing bottles (or windows, or shops, or cars) anyway; it should be the drunk. Clean it up, send him the bill. If unpaid, attach his earnings (or benefits).
Deaths from alcohol are trivial in number. Misery, cost and inconvenience suffered by third parties caused by people who've overconsumed is vast. So I'd agree with MW and CB here; politicians and special interest groups are lying through their teeth about the significance of alcohol as a cause of death, and no one's doing anything to sort out the real issue which is the idea that being drunk excuses one from personal responsibility or liability.
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