Can being banned from drinking alcohol hinder not help your chances of recovery from the effects of alcoholism? It's just one of the questions we're tackling on Newsbeat this week.

Radio 1 will be looking at the issues surrounding drinking - our week investigating this kicked off on Sunday night on The Surgery. Newsbeat reporter Jim Reed talked about the stories he'll be covering.

 

All week, our listeners will have the chance to click on our Booze Calculator. You put in the number and type of drinks you had last night and it works out the number of units against your weekly recommended amount, number of calories, time the alcohol stays in your system, amount you spent in a typical bar, how much you spend a year on booze if you have one night like that every week. It's all set in a bar with the results displayed on the blackboard.

You can automatically post your results to Facebook and Twitter. Radio 1 DJs will have a go at this and talk about it on their shows. Why not try it yourself?

The first person to be stopped from buying alcohol in every pub and bar in England and Wales has told Newsbeat the ban has made her drinking problem worse. Laura Hall, 21-year-old, has had to go back into rehab after a period off booze. She was arrested after drinking again last week. You can see a documentary about her struggle with alcohol on BBC Three.

Clearly, it's an important subject which connects with our core 18-24 audience. We will also explore liver disease - something we usually associate with older people - but new statistics show a record number of under 30s were admitted to hospitals in England with liver problems linked to booze last year.

The figure has gone up 53% in the last 10 years from 230 to 351. The numbers are small but rising significantly: some experts we have spoken to believe it is the tip of a very large iceberg waiting to hole NHS budgets.

Separate figures show there are now 71 under 30s on the waiting list for a liver transplant in the UK, up from 28 in 2000. We have spoken to a 19-year-old admitted to hospital with a liver problem and a 25-year-old with serious health problems linked to booze that she kept hidden from the NHS.

In Dundee we're out with police as they pilot a new scheme to prevent underage drinking in the city. Supermarkets and off licenses are selling bottles and cans with a special code. If they get confiscated from someone under 18, then police know where and when it has been bought. They can go back to the shop, study CCTV and find out if shop broke the law or if someone over 18 bought the alcohol on their behalf - which is obviously also illegal.

The coalition government has announced it was bringing in minimum pricing on alcohol in England and Wales. In Oldham that's already happening after the town was labelled the "binge capital" of the UK two years ago. Then the council cracked down - more policing, strict conditions on bars and so on. They say it's been a success and crime and anti-social behaviour is down. We'll be back there to test those claims.

Of course, there are the tricks of the bar trade, too: for example: evidence shows the louder the music in the bar, the more people drink, if they take away chairs leaving customers standing, you are likely to buy more booze. We'll be talking to some insiders from the world of bar work about the tricks and the techniques they use to get us to get another round in.

Our audience will be giving us their feedback and I would love your ideas and thoughts too.

Rod McKenzie is editor of Newsbeat and 1Xtra News.

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Andrew Lansley Week. I think even the health secretary himself would agree that it's not the most obvious crowd-pleaser, but that's what we on PM are about to embark on.

 

We've invited the health secretary for England to join us live every day this week on PM to discuss his proposed changes to the NHS in England. The scale of the changes being proposed is disputed - the government stresses evolution, others see revolution - but let's take our cue from the prime minister, who told the Today programme that it was "quite a fundamental change". 80% of the NHS budget will be controlled by GPs. Every hospital to become a foundation trust. No more Primary Care Trusts or Strategic Health Authorities. All patients to have the choice of "any willing provider". And those are just the headlines.

The more I thought about all this, the more it became apparent to me that this subject couldn't be covered in any depth with a typical six-minute interview, or even a 10-minute one. And so I came up with the idea of a series of interviews, stripped across the week, each one tackling a different aspect of the reform, and Mr Lansley agreed.

On Monday, it was the role of GPs. Tuesday, it's patient experience. Wednesday, cost and the role of competition. Thursday, holding the NHS to account. Each one will be preceded by a short explainer piece from our health correspondent, Jane Dreaper. And on Friday, we'll put questions raised by the PM audience to Mr Lansley.

Some might say it's too much time to give to one politician of one party. But this interview series will mark the publication of the bill. Doubtless the debate will evolve, and we will return to it in other ways later in its Parliamentary passage.

We will represent other perspectives during the interview series, but I make no apologies for keeping the focus on Eddie's interviews with the man responsible for the reforms. And judging from the size of the postbag already, there's plenty of substance for 5 serious interviews.

Perhaps this could launch a whole new genre of interview... Ed Balls Month? Sarah Teather Summer? The Year of Oliver Letwin?

Joanna Carr is editor, PM, iPM and Broadcasting House.

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On the BBC's Business website we've devoted quite a bit of coverage over recent months to the electric motor industry.

There's no doubt it's growing in importance as evidenced by an increasing number of makes and models and changing consumer attitudes. That was the reason behind our idea to set our correspondent Brian Milligan a challenge this week - to drive an electric car from London to Scotland using only public charging points.

I'm delighted to say it's already drawing quite a following on our website as well as on our Facebook page and Twitter feed and a lot of you are engaging with our little adventure. We've even had a class from Preston School in Eaglescliffe, Stockton-on-Tees, coming along to see the car and find out about the environmental issues of electric motoring.

Of course, as Brian acknowledged in his opening piece, the challenge could be a seen as a little unfair. Many electric cars are designed more for short commuter runs than a journey of the sort we're attempting but we're not making any great scientific claims for this, rather we're hoping to bring the issues about electric cars and their infrastructure to the widest possible audience and we seem to be doing that.

However, I hear that our project has a challenger and a rival electric sports car has now set off from London in pursuit! For those of who haven't yet seen the coverage please do feel free to follow our progress here.

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