UK girls top binge drinking league

A new report found half of 15-year-olds have been drunk at least twice, almost double the rate in other developed countries.

They are also drinking more alcohol than boys of the same age, of whom a smaller percentage, 44 per cent, admit to getting drunk twice or more.

The figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, were published in a report commissioned by think tank Demos, and came as a separate survey shows nearly a third of the population believe getting drunk abroad is a British characteristic.

It will ring true for the inhabitants of Salou, a small Spanish town 70 miles south of Barcelona, which hosted the recent Saloufest, an annual display of British young people behaving badly abroad, summed up in Spanish newspaper El Mundo as a “whirlwind that would shame any parent”.

The annual sports festival, which earlier this month attracted around 5,000 students, aged 18 to 23, is a magnet for hedonistic students and regularly leads to tales of heavy drinking and pictures of intoxicated students in various states of undress.

The new figures show that between 1998 and 2008, the proportion of girls involved in binge-drinking – defined as consuming more than six drinks per session – increased from 17 per cent to 27 per cent.

As part of the report, which sets out recommendations for a youth policy to empower young women, Demos conducted its own poll of 500 British females aged 16 to 19. One of the questions asked them to rate their level of happiness. While 64 per cent were “quite happy most of the time” and 17 per cent “very happy”, 16 per cent were “not very happy”.

Teenage girls from lower socio-economic groups were less happy than those from higher socio-economic groups, 13 per cent reporting being “very happy” most of the time, against 19 per cent in the higher groups, and 21 per cent reporting being “not very happy” most of the time against 15 per cent.

Almost one in five (18 per cent) said they have “often” thought of themselves as a worthless person, with four per cent saying they felt worthless all the time.

When girls were asked what would make them happiest, having more cash to spend was ranked as the top answer (27 per cent), while in second place was a good or better relationship with their boyfriend, girlfriend or partner (26 per cent).

Meanwhile a survey into Britishness found it was a difficult issue to nail down. Twenty-eight per cent of people think getting drunk abroad is a British attribute, while fewer than one in three people think working hard makes people British.

Opinium Research surveyed 2,012 UK adults and found that 60 per cent thought drinking tea was a British trait, closely followed by talking about the weather.

Forty per cent of people associate a “stiff upper lip” with being British.

But fewer than half of people living in England knew it was Saint George’s Day today, according to the survey. Only 48 per cent of people know the date which celebrates England’s patron saint, yet 57 per cent know the date of St Patrick’s Day.