crime of a guy who gets in an articulated lorry while drunk and kills eight people.
Exactly. A guy. It could have been a gal too. It could have been any nationality. Therefore the only crime I see in this thread is your and your cohort's latest defamation of Poles by attempting to equate being Polish with intoxicated driving and manslaughter.
No harm in debating this issue
No, there isn't any harm at all. I fully support regular awareness campaigns on this issue in order to keep Poles healthy and safe.
And when debating this issue actual facts are relevant.
Poland doesn't export the alcohol problem to the UK...The problem exports itself.
Exactly. Compared to Britain overall alcohol consumption in Poland may be somewhat higher due to harmless norms and traditions. But general moderate consumption is very different from actual alcohol abuse.
The following maps are the latest available data from the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding alcohol use disorders and equally relevant drug use disorders.
For adult males, both alcohol and drug abuse are significantly higher in Britain than in Poland.
For adult females, when it comes to alcohol abuse Britain and Poland are in the same percentile range. But for drug abuse Britain is once again significantly higher than Poland.
So as Ziemowit stated the problem exported itself. Britain already has a huge mess on its hands with its own population of heavy drug and alcohol abusers. Given Britain's large and pervasive drug and alcohol abuse culture then it should come as no surprise that a Pole like the accused Ryszard M. could have become caught-up in it or relapsed assuming he already had a problem beforehand.
Obviously everyone should be sober when working and driving. However, some may look at this one incident and then try to compare it to the number of road deaths in Poland as somehow proof that Poles are irresponsible drunkards. Not so. The fact that this man was driving a lorry demonstrates that he was at least economically active. Car ownership in Poland is also higher than in Britain and not all road deaths in Poland are alcohol related.
So although fewer vehicular related deaths due to intoxicated driving may occur in Britain, the WHO statistics show that the abuse problem still looms large. It is not only the availability of public transport but the inability of most British persons to afford a vehicle (and their aversion to work - especially jobs which require driving) which keeps road related deaths lower. But we've all seen the regularly new photos in the press of binge drinking Brits vomiting, urinating, and defecating on themselves, each other and in the streets on any given night all around the UK. Most of the British boozers in the photos are always young too and clearly already alcoholics. They face a lifetime of personal misery and place an intolerable burden on their surrounding communities in the form of spiraling high medicals costs and an endless plague of anti-social behavior. Britain is in crisis and all the Polonophobic British carpetbaggers want to do is cause a distraction by point the finger at anyone with a Polish surname.