Another day, another binge drinking tragedy

Gavin Britton, 18, downed a cocktail known as a Jackson Five - containing up to 12 shots of alcohol - during an evening of pub golf, where drinks are sunk in a 'par' number of swigs.

As sad as I feel from Britton and his family, a Jackson Five sounds less like cocktail and more like a stomach pump in a glass. You can’t drink that sort of thing and hope to be OK afterwards. Britton’s reaction just seems to be more extreme than what you might normally expect from an idiot drinking game.

But, of course, as with any death in this country, there is an immediate clamour to ban something. This time from Professor Roger Williams. Who, you might well ask , is Prof Williams? Well, he’s the fella…

…who oversaw the George Best's liver transplant during his long-running battle with alcoholism

Fantastic, then. He’s the Doctor who saw Best lose his battle with alcohol. His advice must be sage and mind-opening, because Best certainly paid attention to it.

I know I’m being harsh on Professor Williams, and you could argue that he did his very best to help Best. But then he opens his mouth and comes out with moronic crap like this:

"They (the students) can't possibly understand the risks they are taking, and therefore these initiation ceremonies should be banned because of the danger to young people.”

What, students at Exeter University aren’t going to be capable of understanding the risks of heavy drinking? Really? Why not? If you explained why people shouldn’t binge drink, why wouldn’t they understand it? I think what Williams means is that these people don’t entirely agree with him, rather than they don’t understand him.

And Williams has no idea how the world of university works if he thinks you can ban initiation ceremonies. How on earth is that going to be enforceable? Even if you find a way of effectively banning them from uni bars, they will simply move to the corridors of colleges and halls of residence. And how are you going to stop that? Have lecturers stood in every room, in every hallway of student accommodation? Even if the resources were available to do that, it wouldn’t work. Can you imagine any university official volunteering for such a *joyous* job?

You often hear of people talking about politicians living in ivory towers, detached from reality. Well, Professor Williams is in exactly the same boat if he thinks that students just *don’t understand* that booze can be bad, or that initiation ceremonies could actually be banned.

There may be a problem with the binge-drinking culture in this country. It may be worth having a debate about it. However Williams’s comment shows he has nothing to add to that debate.