Yes, I've had a great Christmas, thanks very much. I was just starting on the final batch Yuletide beers earlier when a terrible thing happened: I was reminded of the existence of Hazel Blears.

Blears, of course, was the minister put in charge of challenging the UK's culture of binge-drinking and turning us on to the so-called delights of continental café culture. She's in today's Sunday Times, trying to explain her failure to make even the remotest difference: 'I don't know whether we'll ever get to be in a European drinking culture, where you go out and have a single glass of wine,' she bleats. 'Maybe it's our Anglo-Saxon mentality. We actually enjoy getting drunk'.

Well, that's true enough, but there are other reasons too. For a start, we don't like governments telling us how to live our lives. As a nation we have - I would argue - a rather more developed sense of personal liberty than some of our continental cousins. That includes the liberty not to be nannied by mediocre ministers and to drink exactly how much we like.

Besides, can you imagine anything more boring than sitting around in some caff sipping Chardonnay and mouthing off about existentialism and Kafka's short stories? Ugh. It might suit effete New Labourites, but they were never proper Brits in the first place.