A year ago statistics were published about child substance abuse, or more realistically put...drinking habits. This February just gone Jacqui Smith attempted to use those statistics to justify hounding kids off of the street and further taking away the rights of youths that were (previously) acting completely lawfully, cementing the idea of Labour as a nanny-state with Smith as it's queen.

Some things however didn't make sense, as I uncovered in the statistics. Painting children as alcoholics for having simply ever tried alcohol even if they only did it once was the order of the day, and indeed it seemed a large emphasis was going on to kids drinking in the streets when a large percentage of them actually also drank in their parents home.

Now it is the time of the Telegraph to completely and utterly butcher the actual message of this years statistics, causing potentially one of the most idiotic statements I've ever heard courtesy of Norman Lamb

These are shocking figures, reflecting a culture where binge-drinking is truly out of control.

I call bullshit on this statement, read on to find out why.

Scotland must have thought they were so smart when announcing a raft of measures to cut down alcohol abuse and protect our poor children from the sins of the drink. Pretty disappointed then they must be that ASDA have given them a very simple and very obvious wake up call. At it's most immediate it just goes to show how pointless "tough talking" is when politicians attempt to engage in it, and shows that a lack of courage nationally to stand up to the free market where it is causing a problem will mean you don't get anywhere. Cynically it more tenuously shows that independence and devolution isn't the solution to all of the devolved counties problems.

Rob Chester, head of licensing at Asda, said: "There is nothing to stop companies looking at expanding their home shopping network or opening up depots just south of the border and delivering to homes in Scotland.

An obvious statement that makes it pretty clear that governance on the issue of alcohol is going nowhere, fast. Meanwhile governments, of course mainly the one in over all power, continue to make it harder and harder to operate more sociable and reputable business around this supposedly evil substance pushing more and more in to the hands of the cheaper supermarkets that they clearly don't have the intellect or the balls to properly address.

Fighting alcohol abuse without first of all dealing with the issue of cheap and far too readily available alcohol at supermarkets (by comparison to other licensed venues) is like fighting a heavy weight prize fighter with one arm tied behind your back. Why are politicians so readily lining up to get their arses kicked on this subject?

I wonder how ludicrous this article would sound if about something other than alcohol...

Buying ice-cream at the supermarket could involve a walk of shame to an "ice-cream-only” checkout counter under new plans to help Scotland curb its obesity culture.

So I was talking with a friend tonight and started to brainstorm about how I would deal with the issues of smoking, drinking and over-eating and the burden the pose to the NHS. It's not old news that some are attempting to weasel out of treating the sick and so I wondered in this climate how you could perhaps work a fair system.

Yes, it's true! The Tories are ignoring the statistical evidence in front of them and state they will tax dwindling sales of alcopops as well as strong beer and cider, you know the stuff that generally only find in your traditional local pub, and are going to use that barely existent amount of money to try and drop the price on alcohol that kids really drink. Lager.

I found this consultation on the Bristol City Council website. If you're from Bristol then I would really suggest filling it out with your views as I already have done. But what struck me about a lot of this survey was that it was inherently negative about alcohol. I'm not necessarily suggesting all the questions should have asked people to praise alcohol to high heaven but I believe this to be a poor survey worded in such a way that simple positive answers are being sought from complex questions. Read on for some of the questions and what I feel about them.

Let me get this out of the way straight away, I think the stats that the Lib Dems have uncovered using the Freedom of Information act are never going to be positive. Any rise in the amount of kids being admitted to A&E because of alcohol related problems is a negative. The question for me is are they as much of a negative as pure percentages would suggest, and what are the realities of such data. Unfortunately no matter how much scouring I can do will uncover qualitative data.

The overall numbers mask alarming regional differences. We need to find out why the number of children drinking so much that they end up in hospital is so much higher in some parts of the country. - Norman Lamb MP

Probably not safe for work, here is our third effort. As always we welcome comments on the style and content in an effort to improve! Transcript below...

If you were to believe everything you read in today's news about Jacqui Smith's railing against families and youths that don't do enough to curb under-age drinking then you'd think that families are to blame for mass under-age drinking and that under-age drinkers are all yobs causing chaos and destruction. My first instinct was that the nature of the statements she's making show a lot of ambiguity and potential here for some kind of spin. So let's look in to this report and what she's said, from the Times...

A "tipping point" has been reached where more 13-year-olds in Britain have drunk alcohol than those who have not, the Home Secretary said yesterday.

CCTV, the bane of the libertarian and the tool of the authoritarian. It is a misunderstood beast, with many claiming it to be "surveillance" in to our lives that is unnecessary, and others (mainly the government) trying to point out the benefit to society that they bring. All in all it's a classic case of at least feeling as if our rights are being infringed on even if necessarily they aren't.