It is late August and the Greek islands have suddenly found themselves swamped by hypocrisy. Every summer young British tourists — slappers and meatheads and imbeciles one and all — are decanted from cut-price jets into the nightclubs of Laganas, Ayia Napa and Faliraki, where they set about rescuing the local economy.

Their mode of operation doesn’t vary: drink as much as is humanly possible and then form a brief relationship with someone they met just after they were both sick and, if still possible, consummate that relationship swiftly, and preferably in a public place. This arguably altruistic act ensures that the grumpy black-clad locals are able to enjoy affluence instead of struggling by with only an emaciated goat or a small weekly catch of mercury-laden sardines for income.

And this invasion of the 18-30 British untermensch — girls called Tasha from Stoke sporting a subcutaneous necklace of lovebites, boys called Dazza from Coventry in Day-Glo shorts — probably means we are obliged to bung the Greek or Cypriot governments slightly less each year through the European Union.

You’d think the locals would be happy then, wouldn’t you? And in May and early June they seem to be. But by midsummer the resentment kicks in and by August they have begun to carp, long and loud.

Dimitrios Varvarigos, the socialist MP for Laganas, believes that Brits who have been espied enjoying sexual congress in the town square should be extradited. “Young Britons have been shown in photographs engaged in acts that are not only low life, but criminal,” he remarked this week, adding that he’d seen a pair at it on his way to work that morning. Presumably, while these young people are offering a public demonstration of the collective British libido, the black-clad Greeks are hanging around with their Canons primed and ready.

Laganas is a party town: as a former Greek minister of tourism rather shrewdly pointed out, you wouldn’t go there to wear top hat and tails and listen to, say, Mahler. You go there to get drop-dead pissed and have sex with as many people as possible and maybe enjoy the benefits of class A drugs.

The local infrastructure is geared to the pursuit of these pastimes: the clubs offer tourists the famous “dentist’s chair”, wherein strapped-down youngsters have gallons of cheap alcohol poured down their throats, and sex-oriented party games. And along the sea front the snack bars are open at 6am so that after you’ve got drunk, been sick and had some desultory sex you can recharge your batteries with a nice kebab for breakfast. (You can book online if you’re interested.) Laganas is just the latest in a whole bunch of Greek resorts that milk the cash from young British tourists and then moan about it the morning after, like some self-deluding old slapper.

It is not so long ago that the Faliraki locals were bleating; four years ago it was the turn of Ayia Napa, and a local priest held a week-long fast in protest at British licentiousness.

Earlier still, Mykonos made itself the gay holiday capital of Europe and then the locals rebelled when the island’s mascot, a friendly pelican, expired after it had been the unwelcome recipient of a sexual act from an adventurous tourist.

But it is not just the Greeks who are complaining. Back here, we have worked ourselves into a lather about the drinking. We seem to have got into our heads that this epic consumption of alcohol is unwitting; that the young people do not know what they are letting themselves in for and that their behaviour is an unforeseen consequence of having drunk too much.

But our young people do not get drunk and then commit acts that they regret; they set out with the single intention of getting drunk, knowing full well what will happen when they do so.

The desire to have sexual intercourse in public was not caused by the drink: it was there in the first place. The drink merely lubricated the licentiousness. If you want to stop young British holiday makers behaving in a sluttish manner, then it is the culture rather than alcohol consumption that needs to be addressed.

If you doubt this check out the Laganas websites, little cyberholes dedicated to British youngsters reliving their Greek island exploits with not a shred of remorse or regret.

There are tips and requests for people about to climb aboard the plane: “They’re still doing the dentist’s chair for €10 in Rescue,” and “Tania wants to know if there are any bisexual girls coming over for the week beginning August 22,” and “One of my mates did the dentist’s chair and had to have his stomach pumped . . .” etc.

Our own licensing laws are an irrelevance when it comes to curtailing this behaviour. One way or another British youngsters will find their way to alcohol and drugs. The question is why so many search single mindedly for such oblivion.

For the Greeks it is an altogether simpler matter. As that minister of tourism said: “Like it or not, it is these kids who are paying the bills and propping up the local economy.”

Times Recommends

• Bank charges hit us for being human
• Sorry, Father, thou still shalt not steal
• The shed where Santa’s failures go to die