Britain has a long and worthy history of consuming alcholic beverages at a young age. I can understand England’s lower drinking age; if I lived in England I’d have to drink buckets to keep myself in high spirits. Otherwise I’d remember that I was in England. But this is too much (From the BBC).
Fewer children are drinking but those who do are consuming more than ever before, a charity has warned. Alcohol Concern said the number of under-18s admitted to hospital has risen, and more have liver disease.The UK has some of the highest rates of alcohol consumption among young people in Europe, with only Ireland and Finland having more…More teenagers are getting help for drug and alcohol problems than ever before, according to the National Treatment Agency… Tina Hobbs from Plymouth’s alcohol and drug treatment centre Hamoaze House said: “I think for some of my young people it is massive because they binge drink as well.
“You know, over a weekend some young people can buy up to six bottles of vodka as well as cider and drink it.”
Fifteen-year-old Kaylee, who has been treated there for alcohol problems for the last four months, told the BBC she started drinking at 11 and had quit school altogether by 12.
She said: “I’d drink until I’d pass out. I’d just drink and drink practically every day, pretty much from Monday to Sunday.”
Binge drinking? What’s next? Babies smoking crack? So by this point I’d be a little unsure as to exactly how smart a country to raise your children England is. Until I read this strangely unrelated BBC article, which makes it very clear.
Children as young as 12 are being wrongly imprisoned in England and Wales, breaking government guidelines, says the charity Barnardo’s. Its report says that confusion over the criteria for youth courts led to more than 160 under-15s being wrongly given custodial sentences in 2007…
More than a third of 12 to 14-year-olds locked up did not meet the conditions. Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey: “I’ve been shocked at the number of very young children we lock up. Barnardo’s surveyed around half of all children who were put in young offender institutions in 2007. More than a fifth were locked up for breaching an Anti-social Behaviour Order or similar punishment, half were victims of abuse and more than a third were living with an adult criminal. Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey said that until 1998 it would have been illegal to imprison these young people unless they had committed one of the so-called “grave offences”. “Now we do this, every year, to more than 400 children aged 12, 13 and 14.
First off, the BBC must have just been royally screwed by someone in the English government, because seem to have decided to kill tourism to England once and for all by publishing two simultaneous articles crapping all over Old Blighty’s PR. Seriously, the overall impression I’m getting of England isn’t pretty. Who’d want to live in a country full of drunk 12 year olds who periodically get thrown in jail just for being abused? England sucks.
