I’m not sure that this is entirely fair…I just spent a week in Playa del Carma Mexico…and it wasn’t the Brits who were off the charts drunk and obnoxious all the time…it was the Germans…I went for a walk on the beach one morning around 8 a.m…and there was a GANG of HAMMERED Germans singing and drinking (it was an all inclusive resort…you could eat/drink anytime you liked) I was thinking, damn…they are certainly getting an early start…but then it occured to me, they probably hadn’t finished from the night priors boozer. :laugh:
Britain’s booze culture goes back a long way mate, check out Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’ (1751) below;
Gin Lane depicts the squalor and despair of a community raised on gin. Desperation, death and decay pervade the scene.The gin crisis was genuinely severe. “Tis a growing fad among the common people and may in time prevail as much as opium with the Turks” When it became apparent that copious gin consumption was causing social problems, efforts were made to control the production of the spirit. The Gin Act 1736 imposed high taxes on sales of gin, forbade the sale of the spirit in quantities of less than two gallons, and required an annual payment of £50 for a retail licence. It had little effect beyond increasing smuggling and driving the distilling trade underground.[(wikipedia).
