Why Kenny may have got this one right

This is not a sentence I expected to write but- I agree with Kenny MacAskill. Not on much, it has to be said, but certainly on his comment that we have a "a huge national problem" with binge-drinking. He also said that it was "impossible" to walk down a street at night without seeing people who had drunk too much".

Now that may be a slight exaggeration for effect but it has a truth in it. the “go on, have a drink” mentality is still dominant in Scotland and infects both genders and across the classes.

That's why I think the research announced recently on booze and blades is vital and why I will be supporting the use of the hotline to report drink and drug abuse when children are seen to be at risk. I do so both because it will save children's lives but also because it beings to put the responsibility for challenging irresponsible drinking in our own hands.

We have managed to make drink driving less socially acceptable, though admittedly not completely, yet). Have we the nerve as a nation to make irresponsible drinking similarly so. I believe we do but it will take nerve