A Beer for the working man, and paranoia for everyone else.

This blog was prompted by a friend's blog, who observed how beer, and also linked to that pubs, were on the decline. He mentioned how great beer tasted, and how much he liked it, but also how, as the number of pubs slumps, the number of wine bars seems to be on the increase.
Wine bars annoy me. For some people they are classy establishments for nights out, but to me, give me the pub any day - the pub is the R 'n' R area for the common working man, whereas wine bars, to me, just stink of upper-class trendiness. In pubs you will find builders and salt-of-the-earth workers - in wine bars you're more likely to find smug bankers or office workers. And who would you rather mix with? You see my point.
But what got me thinking more is how beer, like many other things, is slowly being more and more frowned upon in this nanny state.
I can't tell you where this 'do this, don't do that' attitude has come from with our current government and the Tony Blair administration before that, but I can tell you this: it is total, and absolute...bollocks.
I don't tend to swear in my blogs, but there is no other word for it.
Not a day goes by when there is not another campaign of some kind going on, some kind of insidious attempt to try and make us worry for our own well-being. First, it was smoking that was targeted. Then our eating habits. Then our habits with regards to watching TV. Then our drinking habits. And now it has come down to such an extent that we should now check the amount of salt we consume every day for fear of suffering a heart attack one day.
If you intend on leading a perfect life, you will never touch alchohol or a cigarrette, you will eat 5 fruit and vegetables a day, drink 8 glasses of water a day, have no more than 6g of salt a day, and have 1 hours exercise. Apparantly. Oh, and sitting watching TV is a big no-no.
And even if you've got that all down to a tee, thanks to bloody global warming, you now aren't even allowed to have the TV on. Not even on stand-by. Oh, and forget about going out for a nice relaxing drive in your car, you planet-murdering scumbag.
I hate the way global warming (or climate change, whatever you want to call it) is slowly becoming accepted as fact, when it is still unproven, and I am fed up with the way that it is now being used as another excuse by the government and countless watchdogs and research groups to tell us how to live our lives. These people appear to want us to constantly worry and fret about our very existance, and almost create a sense of paranoia about every single thing that we do.
I am fully aware that doing certain things to the extreme, like living solely on McDonalds Big Macs, doing nothing but play Gears of War for days on end or giving yourself ammnesia by alchohol most nights, will be very bad for your health. It's simple common sense - too much of something is of course bad. But what really, to quote Peter Griffen, grinds my gears about the whole affair, is this extreme barrage of fear and paranoia.
Let's come back to the example of me. I eat crisps because they're tasty. I drink beer to relax. I play videogames for enjoyment. I watch TV for much the same reason.
When I am old enough, I will probably end up buying a powerful V8 muscle car. And I will drive it a lot. For fun. I will also take it racing at drag strips. For fun.
And guess what? I really do not care.
I do these things because I can, and because I like to.
Basically, in the last blog I posted up, I told people - mainly women - to stop worrying about their appearance. In this one, I have modified that statement to read as thus: stop worrying altogether.
Stop worrying, and lead the life you want to. Do what you like - if you want to drink beer, then do it. If you want to smoke, then do it. If you want to eat burgers and chips, then do it. There are many more important things to worry about than how much C02 your lightbulbs are emitting, or how many units of alchohol were in that last bottle of Smirnoff.
All of us only get one life, and do you really want to get to retirement age and realise that you've spent your whole life worrying about things that, in the grand scheme of things, make absolutly no difference at all?
I don't think so.
Now, if you will excuse me, I'm off to get another beer from the fridge.