{"id":35133,"date":"2018-01-26T01:00:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T06:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35133"},"modified":"2018-01-06T08:49:11","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T13:49:11","slug":"qotd-britains-boozy-parliamentarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/01\/26\/qotd-britains-boozy-parliamentarians\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Britain’s boozy parliamentarians"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is Wright\u2019s contention [in his book Order! Order!<\/em>] that alcohol has as many benefits as it does drawbacks. Not only does it help loosen ties and tongues it also boosts confidence and dilutes stress. Most prime ministers drank, many to excess. Herbert Asquith went by the nickname \u201cSquiffy Asquith\u201d and regularly appeared in the Commons three sheets to the wind. Margaret Thatcher did her best to promote the whisky industry, the uncapping of a bottle of Bell\u2019s marking the end of the working day. She believed that whisky rather than gin was good for you because \u201cit will give you energy\u201d, which I fear could be a hard fact to prove scientifically.<\/p>\n

Tony Blair, whose reign ushered in an era of 24-hour drinking, thought his relatively modest drinking was getting out of control because he calculated it exceeded the government\u2019s weekly recommended limit. This did not impress Dr John Reid, Bellshill\u2019s finest, who once drank like a navvy. \u201cWhere I come from,\u201d Reid told GMTV, \u201ca gin and tonic, two glasses of wine, you wouldn\u2019t give that to a budgie.\u201d Blair, of course, did not have to look further than next door to find an explanation why his consumption increased over the years. Gordon Brown, his nemesis, was fond of Champagne \u2013 M\u00f6et & Chandon no less \u2013 which he did not nurse but washed down in a gulp. \u201cHe was like the cookie monster,\u201d recalled one aide. \u201cDown in one, whoosh!\u201d Drinking is of course one of those areas in which we Scots have long punched above our weight and Wright\u2019s pages are replete with examples of intoxicated Jocks carousing nights away and causing mayhem. Former Labour leader John Smith was one such. Occasionally I encountered him on the overnight train that carried Scottish MPs home from Westminster on a Thursday night. Known as \u201cthe sleeper of death\u201d, it was a mobile pub that never closed until it reached Waverley, whereupon politicians were disgorged red-eyed and pie-eyed among bemused early morning commuters. <\/p>\n

Alan Taylor, “Lush tales of our political classes\u2019 drinking exploits”, The National<\/em><\/a>, 2016-06-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is Wright\u2019s contention [in his book Order! Order!] that alcohol has as many benefits as it does drawbacks. Not only does it help loosen ties and tongues it also boosts confidence and dilutes stress. Most prime ministers drank, many to excess. Herbert Asquith went by the nickname \u201cSquiffy Asquith\u201d and regularly appeared in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,53,41],"tags":[104,390,458,338,78],"class_list":["post-35133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-booze","tag-margaretthatcher","tag-parliament","tag-scotland","tag-tonyblair"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-98F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35134,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35133\/revisions\/35134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}