Does Anyone Fancy a Pint?!

 Many people see January as a sort of festive hangover. A month to regret the holiday season and all of its excess.
 Certainly, in the bar industry, January is the doldrums; a flaccid, empty time where the wind barely trouble's the sails of any bar, and the men slump, exhausted and lethargic, in various corners, waiting for salvation.
 So it's only natural that various charities have jumped on the bandwagon and encouraged people to get on the other wagon. The one without a bar.
 I have mixed feelings on this.
 First and foremost, I find it encouraging that people in this country treat "not drinking" as a major challenge to the average person.
 That says a lot about the national character, and more importantly makes my own drinking look like less of a problem.
 At the same time, I'm broadly against anything that involves giving up drinking, because, as science has shown, fuck that.
 Alright, maybe it wasn't science, maybe it's just people I talk to, but the point of "fucking that" still stands.
 The one thing that has caught my attention more than any other, however, is that there are two charities that are publicly endorsing a month of drinking abstinence for January.
 One of them is Cancer Research, an admirable charity who are sponsoring a "Dryathlon" for the month.
 Clever use of a portmanteau word; worthy cause; I can see no problem with this.
 The other people encouraging us to put our drinks down are the not-at-all-vested-interests over at "Alcohol Concern." They're launching - get ready for this, fans of catch slogans - "Dry January."
 These people, quite simply, are the enemy.
 They are announcing themselves from the word go as a group of busybodies - alcohol concern. They're not treating people with serious substance abuse problems, they're just worrying about alcohol as a concept, which is puritan paranoia at its finest. They're also sufficiently dull as a group off people that the best name they could come up with for a sponsored abstinence programme in January was "dry January."
 I don't want to give the dry movement any ideas - they are, after all, the enemy - but I have to say that as a general rule of thumb, they're never going to win converts from the drunk crowd until they lighten up and prove that they're having as much fun as the rest of us.
 And that's impossible, because LOOK at these fuckers:

                                                        Anyone else fail to see the threat?!

 The article on the BBC site that made me aware of the humourless, beige campaign being waged on honest drinkers by Alcohol Concern also went on to point out famous teetotalers. To whit, they listed four: Alistair Campbell, a man who has as much soul as a stainless steel autopsy table, Catherine Tate, a woman who wasn't funny when she was famous, and is now nostalgic for that time, Jessie J, who is Jessie fucking J, and Frank Skinner, someone I admire and respect, and who is only teetotal because he used to have a massive, crippling drink problem.
 To recap, the best argument for never drinking that the news can dredge up consists of three cunts and a man who used to drink to the point of serial incontinence, which is hardly a compelling argument to the rest of us functional alcoholics.
 Stop drinking for January, if you want.
 Stop drinking for you. Stop drinking for fun. Stop drinking for cancer research.
 But for Christ's sake, don't stop drinking because the non-drinkers tell you to, any more than you'd listen when the Pope tells you not to get laid.