Don't Listen To The Voice!

Well, it's official: since our last little chat, the youth of our great little nation has been busy. Regarding our ranking as the second-biggest drinkers in the world as a challenge to their virility, they have gone the last mile and moved us decisively into first place. Congratulations all round. The Celtic Tiger may be stuffed and mounted over the fireplace, the people of Northern Ireland may be back kneecapping and heaving paving stones at each other, and our politicians may be sinking deeper daily into the slurry of their own mendacity, yet the spirit of Óglaigh na hÉireann shines forth like a beacon in these dark days!

There are many, however, who fail to appreciate the efforts of the Irish teenager on our behalf, our Goverment included. By now, those of you who still listen to the "wireless" on occasion will have heard the latest example of institutional stupidity to have come lurching out of Government Buildings, gibbering and frightening the tourists. Faced with the grim statistics on the amount of teenage drinking going on in the country at present, our Glorious Leaders have decided To Act! They have produced a set of radio advertisements to tell us what a Bad Thing it is for teenagers to drink! The advertisements employ a Voice, an oozing, unctuous Voice, of the kind normally used to sell chocolate or haemorrhoid preparation. The Voice instructs any children who may be listening to Just Say No to teenage drinking. To any adults, The Voice informs us to Just Say No if teenagers loitering around the off-licence prevail upon you to pick up a six-pack for themselves while you're inside sussing out the Cabernets Sauvignons. You can almost see the smugness leaking out the bottom of the radio and pooling on the kitchen window sill. Presumably, the correct response to this sanctimonious rawmaysh is for child and adult alike to collectively slap themselves on the foreheads as we realise what we've been doing wrong all these years, before dropping to our knees and offering up a Rosary for those saintly, well-meaning politicians so concerned for our well being.

Me.

Bollix.

These ads have done nothing except inform every teenage bowsie what they knew already: that the best way to give one's parents and the authorities the finger is still to go and get scuttered in a field. Nice one.

Another theme touched upon in the ads is the damage one is doing to one's health if one starts drinking at a tender age. I'm sorry, but no teenager hearing these advertisements is going to give two tugs of a dead dog's mickey about possible damage to their health. You are fighting an impossible battle with this stuff; you simply cannot convince a teenager that they aren't immortal.

These ads do nothing to tackle the irresponsible and hypocritical attitude to drink in this country, nor do they do anything to dispel the codology built up around the act of drinking.

The weird Irish attitude to drink is at the heart of this: drinking is at once a key element of our culture, but thanks to the hearty injection of Catholic guilt that accompanies every pleasurable activity in this country, it's also a shameful practice that can only be carried out furtively in dark, smoky buildings-- special buildings designated for this purpose, whose operations are governed by a set of grotesquely archaic and puritanical laws. Now when people are sent messages that a key social and cultural activity is simultaneously a depraved and degrading affair, is it any wonder that every city and town in Ireland is the stage for spectacle and outrage every night of the weekend? After all, if one's already shown oneself to be an irresponsible gurrier for having a few scoops, it's out of one's hands, really, isn't it? One may as well be hung as a sheep as for a lamb and get a good row going in the chipper afterwards. And sure, won't everyone be nice and understanding in the morning? It was the evil drink, Your Honour. Never again, Your Honour.

In the face of this national gibberish and cultural doublethink, will this advertising campaign achieve anything?

Will it shite.

Will one single teenager eschew knacker-drinking in a field for the sake of his^* liver or the tears of his sainted parents?

Ask me arse.

The greatest irony of all is that the same gobshite politicos that sanctioned the use of public money to pay for this dated Mr. Chomondley-Warner nonsense will be seen every evening pouring pints into their coarse, grog-ravaged faces in Buswell's Hotel Bar... one is left wondering if this ineffectual pap was deliberately defanged to prevent any real debate on the licencing laws in Ireland. After all, so many of our elected representatives have vested interests in this area...

^* We say his, but if the latest statistics are to be believed, the current Daughters of Erin are more than making up for the generations of females before them confined to drinking lager 'n' limes in the lounge.