Editor-At-Large: Don't blame the young: we're a nation of boozers

You know there's a problem when Tesco – the retailer who sells booze cheaper than mineral water – finally puts its hands up and admits the blindingly obvious: that perhaps the price of alcohol could have something to do with binge drinking.

The retailers now say they want the Government to come up with legislation to end the price war which has seen all the major supermarkets selling alcohol at below cost in order to boost trade. In some supermarkets strong lager is just 28p and cider 34p a pint.

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Doctors have declared Britain's current drinking level a medical emergency, saying it's responsible for 60 serious medical conditions. They would like the Government to raise the tax on booze – the British Medical Association estimates that, if it increased by 10 per cent, up to 29 per cent of alcohol-related deaths could be prevented.

But there is absolutely no evidence that making drink more expensive will have any effect on the number of people getting slaughtered night after night. By the way, the biggest number of problem drinkers, according to recent surveys, aren't teenagers – who happen to be more visible and easier to pick on because they hang around with nothing to do but swig from tins – but the salaried classes, the middle aged, who sink a bottle of wine a head every night out there in suburbia.

These boozers don't choose cheap lager or cider, but sauvignon blanc or merlot. Increasing the tax would not alter the rowdy behaviour of well-paid men and women in City bars on Thursday and Friday nights who down cocktails until they puke. It's too easy to come up with knee-jerk legislation targeting the under-20s, but it doesn't get to the heart of the problem, which – as The Independent on Sunday's story today on pages 4 - 5 also suggests – is why we drink to excess nightly up and down the land.

Against a sustained campaign by some tabloid newspapers highlighting drunken behaviour among the young and linking it to anti-social behaviour, it's easy to see how last week's rowdy scenes at the Brit Awards would be seized upon as yet another example of pop stars behaving badly, setting no example whatsoever to today's wayward youth.

Stop for a moment – have the Brit Awards ever been any different? All these ceremonies are long, boring events, which generally have all the dreary bits edited out by the time the television audience at home is let into the party. Did we ever expect pop stars to be role models? Are young women so vapid they will ape Amy Winehouse or Girls Aloud? These people are entertainers. They provide the soundtrack to our lives, the ditties we dry our hair to, change the baby's nappy to – not the bloody prayer book we recite before we take a vow of sobriety.

It's a plus if they're intelligent and witty like Lily Allen or Beth Ditto, but there's every chance they'll be as dreary as Take That's Mark Owen, who managed to get so trolleyed he thought he'd lost his Brit Award before going home. We love the fact that Denise Van Outen wore a BacoFoil dress, looking like a chicken searching for an oven.

Pop stars do behave badly. And young people drink more than is good for them. But linking the two is a big mistake. To tackle why a huge number of people drink too much in Britain, we have to start looking at our own behaviour and stop picking on the young and the famous. At least our musicians are a hell of a lot more entertaining than any of tonight's sedate Oscar winners.

A return to the ration book is the answer to obesity

A whopping number of kids – around a quarter – are now officially overweight before they've even started primary school, according to new statistics released by the Department of Health. It has only taken a couple of generations for small children to morph from skinny live wires into chubby couch potatoes who sit glued to their screens, don't walk anywhere and who shun the idea of sporting activity.

When I look back at pictures of me as a child, I look skeletal by today's standards – in 2008 any mum with small children the size we were back in the 1950s would be hauled before a child protection agency and accused of starving her offspring.

The fact is, my parents went through rationing during and after the war, and were thinner because they ate much less meat and protein, exercised more and, even, though money was short, ate more fresh food and far less processed muck.

Now we've got more money and allegedly a higher standard of living, but no sense of when to stop eating. And don't tell me it's about poverty – if a third of the nation's 11-year olds are overweight before they start secondary school, it's a disease that affects all classes and income levels.

The Government is waffling about inspecting lunch boxes – an idea that will never work. What we need is dead simple. Bring back rationing. Don't talk to me about human rights – at this rate one third of the younger generation aren't going to make it past 50 before they peg out from heart failure.

Evil fatty processed foods should be strictly rationed with government stamps and ration books. We should be limited to strict quotas of meat per person per week, allowed unlimited fresh fruit and vegetables. Sugar, chocolate, fats salt should only be available with coupons. Yes, it's drastic – but look where free choice has got us.

The masters of reality kitchen nightmares

Watching the BBC's MasterChef semi-finals last week was an ordeal. Are John Torode and Gregg Wallace the most uncharismatic self-satisfied pair of twats on television?

Gregg looks like a celeriac that's learnt to shout – he really does have a face made for radio.

John used to be an intelligent chef, but now he just indulges in mindless banter with the human vegetable at equally full volume.

I felt sorry for the contestants, taken through every predictable reality show trick going, treated like pit ponies who cook. I want the phrase "So how does it feel?" banned from my screen for good after an hour of watching these four individuals constantly being asked to repeat the fact that yes, they really want to win, yes, they are really nervous and yes, they wished they'd done a bit better. Talk about re-inventing the bloody wheel.

The show is a ratings success – this episode managed to attract a 15 per cent share of the audience with about 3.4 million of you watching. I know that up and down the land people put the telly on and cook the same meals in their kitchen while Torode and the turnip shout instructions. Not in my house.

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