I admit it, I’m a massive hypocrite

Like most people I like to think of myself as more complicated than one particular social, philosophical or political theory can pigeonhole. I am full of contradictions and exceptions. As Chris Rock said:
“I got some shit I’m conservative about, I got some shit I’m liberal about. Crime – I’m conservative. Prostitution – I’m liberal.”
Even my attitude to Chris Rock is ambivalent – I love him when as a feminist I should be protesting outside his gigs out of principle. I can forgive a lot of misogyny for occasional nuggets of comedy gold.

Even politicians are rarely 100 per cent in agreement with everything their party stands for – and those that pretend they are 100 per cent in agreement are only doing so in the hope of advancement. No-one is ever that clear cut (and as a journalist I can tell you, there are some ministers you can’t interview without a clothes peg due to the acrid stench of desperate sycophancy).

I’m not a sycophant but I am a raging hypocrite. I’m all for civil liberties and freedoms – except when they rain on my parade. I’m all for you being able to do what you want to do, however much I disagree with it – until it impinges on my quality of life (and the quality of life of others – I’m a hypocrite but I’m not an egotist). Then I want you forcibly removed from my garden.

I bring this up because this week the government has rewritten the licensing rules and launched a new crack down on drinking games in pubs and clubs. The ruling class killjoys.

The libertarian in me says “how dare they?” The freedom of expression advocate in me is concerned. The side of me that hates the nanny state is in total recoil. However, there’s a side of me (the same side which likes tea and toast) that supports the idea, and worse, entertains the notion of mandatory minimum pricing for alcohol (which the government stopped short of this week for, one suspects, less than altruistic reasons).

It’s easy for me to not be bothered about defending these ‘liberties’ – the new rules won’t affect me. I’d rather chew off my own arm than go to the kind of gathering where someone is being forcefed WKD through a length of hose. I don’t like cheap booze and I don’t drink regularly in large quantities. But as a student I did. There’s nothing more hypocritical and sanctimonious than an ex-smoker, complaining about the smell of smoke – I am (almost) the alcohol equivalent.

So why the change of heart (other than impending middle age)? And what gives me the right to get all uppity about alcohol legislation? Well firstly, there’s the usual inconveniences: people vomiting on me on the tube, emboldened men flashing me, shrill women flashing me, all of them trying to fight me at the same time – to the extent that I avoid some parts of central London on Friday and Saturday nights if at all possible.

However, I also have another reason. The other day I had an asthma attack. Day-to-day it’s under control with medication but about once a year it needs hospital attention. Usually I go to hospital for an hour on the ventilator and some steroid tablets. But this attack happened on a Saturday night. On Saturday night you have to wait longer in the A&E department because of all the drunks. You wait, avoiding the vomit as alcohol-related accidents, assaults and self-induced comas are wheeled past you by harassed staff. I decided to take my chances and wheeze on into Sunday morning at home (I must stress that I was being monitored by my family and there was an agreed stage by which I would have no say in the matter). I don’t know a single person in the medical profession who isn’t for tougher regulation of alcohol. And they were once medical students – medical students are legendary drinkers – which makes them even more hypocritical than me.

Alcohol is a big killer in this country – not just of those who imbibe it, but of everyone around them. The changes the government introduced are a paltry act of tokenism aimed at appeasing the supermarkets and the drinks industry – and this from the party who invented the nanny state?

The fact is, most social, political and philosophical ideas are better in theory than in practice – and it’s this that makes them impossible to adhere to. Hypocrisy? Maybe, but I live in the real world and it’s not straightforward either.