Yes, drinking culture in the UK is stupid and everyone knows it's a problem. The cost to the health service means that it's not really something that should be tolerated in the long term.

See for example: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/10/alcohol...

If a national health service is an excuse to tell people how to live, I've pretty happy Obama fucked it all up here and just institutionalized health insurers.

The people drinking themselves to shit aren't honorably refusing healthcare for their self inflicted injuries

How about the people who engage in that big killer - sedentary lifestyles? If you want to sit in front of a computer all, day, why should everyone else pay for your lifestyle choice? /s

Well, then make them pay for themselves then insead of limiting the range of activities they are allowed to do.

Obama and his advisor Cass Sunstein are ostensibly pursuing "libertarian paternalism", as is Cameron in the UK. I'm guessing you like the sound of "libertarian".

Alcohol consumption is one clear case of people harming themselves. There are a lot of other areas in which the government in fact doesn't know what's best, so I don't think you can generalize about liberties either way.

Seems like you're using libertarian as a marketing buzzword that has no meaning

It's not me, it's Thaler and Sunstein.

I'm left libertarian myself and I'd like to drink less alcohol, personally.

No it's not !!! I don't drink much! Because I don't drink during the week. I start drinking really late on Fridays (about 7pm) and finish early (about 3am), and only repeat that again Saturday nights, so really 5 whole days without alcohol is like really good. Kebab is meat and meat is healthy. Anyway what would we do if not drink?

(Much /s)