Old Tom does not come to the pub any more. For seventy five years his one great treat was to sit quietly in the corner and enjoy a harmless pipe of tobacco and a pint of ale in the inscribed silver tankard that the regulars gave him to mark his ninetieth birthday. Now the zealots have banned his pipe and taxed his pint out of reach. He does not understand why. When there is a cheap wine or spirits offer in the local co-op, it is the old-age pensioners who form the queue, striving to restore a little colour in their bleak existence. Yet the zealots urge the raising alcohol taxes further and the banning of special offers.

The excuse is the existence of bands of drunken youths in town centres. The bans are called for by those who are often the very people who were responsible for creating the problem of alienated feral youth in the first place, by such policies as the destruction of discipline in schools and undermining the institution of marriage.
Alcohol is not the cause: it is just one means by which the disaffected young express their defiance. There are a few more fat people around, so the whole population has to be harangued into an anorexic conformity.

Imagine telling somebody twenty years ago that by 2007, it would be illegal to smoke in a pub or bus shelter or your own vehicle or that there would be £80 fines for dropping cigarette butts, or that the words "tequila slammer" would be illegal or the government would mandate what angle a drinker's head in an advertisement may be tipped at, or that it would be illegal to criticise religions or homosexuality, or rewire your own house, or that having sex after a few drinks would be classed as rape or that the State would be confiscating children for being overweight. Imagine telling them the government would be contemplating ration cards for fuel and even foods, that every citizen would be required to carry an ID card filled with private information which could be withdrawn at the state's whim. They'd have thought you a paranoid loon.