Wednesday 15 August 2007
UK drinking in public places [Lurks]
Oop Norf a bloke was recently murdered for accosting a bunch of drinking teenagers who were vandalising his property. It's brought certain concepts to the limelight which is no bad thing and has lead to one police chief urging action on alcohol. For what it's worth, I think this stuff does need looking at.
I grew up in Australia and you've never been allowed to drink alcohol in public places. I found it just plain weird when I got to the UK that people were sat on busses and tubes with tinnies of the strong stuff. I fail to understand why this hasn't been addressed. Sure drink in your own home, drink in your own premesis or even drink at a public event which is licensed too - but random drinking on the street is generally a bad thing, particularly when, as said rozzer points out, alcohol is cheap and freely available from all sorts of late hours premesis such as small shops and petrol stations.
Raising the drinking age to 21 is also being discussed. I'm not sure about that really. That needlessly criminalises plenty of younsters who are going to drink anyway. The only reason to do it that has been cited is to send a message concerning the seriousness of drinking. I agree with the sentiment but not with the process. Instead I think places where alcohol is sold needs examining.
Right now the governments cop out on drinking in public places is that they've invested this power in local authorities that decide where you can drink and where you can't. In practice local authorities have done absolutely nothing, I mean surely for a start you'd ban drinking on public transport right?!
No, I think that should be sorted out nationally and also perhaps it should be made some sort of punishable offense of parents if their children are found on the street drinking. Something needs to be done lest there be more like Gary Newglove and more worryingly, the whole thing continues to foster this idea that adults feel like they have not the power to accost errant teenagers for bad behavior. It's absolutely vital they DO feel safe in doing so for the good of our society.
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ReplyDeleteOnce again Scotland leads the way. Glasgow banned public drinking a good few years ago now, no more cans of beer in the park on a warm summers day. As with every initiative thats passed, sounds great but policing is a bitch.
Our local community police patroled our estate for underage drinkers for a year. Confiscating their drink stashes and moving them on. But they couldn't stop them, I've no idea why but they wouldn't just shove them in a van and hold em overnight.
Kids drink nowadays, parks busses whatever. Even tho they're underage, making it doubly bad makes no difference. Drunks / homeless will drink anyway. On my bus to work this morning two guys were happily smoking hash, whatchagonnado?
Scotland is also talking about barcoding drink, so when they get it off kids they can find out who sold them it. Enough booze collected from an outlet will doubtless lead to action.
It's a terrible problem and the long term price will doubtless be high. Booze is frankly too cheap compared to disposable income, rich from me but I'm drinking too much at home and need to knock it on the head. 50p for a bottle of beer, if you buy a box, doesn't help when I'm dragged round a supermarket though.
ReplyDeleteNew police powers are only to disperse crowds. This is no use at all, the problem is not communities in fear of crowds of yobs roaming the streets. The problem is failing to punish drunk teenagers, and failing to punish their parents.
Teens need to be punished with community service. Teens who carry out violent crime need to be locked up - and that doesn't mean they need 30 days in an open prison, or 30 days being hugged by a healthcare worker. They did wrong. They know they did wrong. Ergo, lock them up.
It's also very important to get ourselves back to a position where parents take responsibility for bringing up their kids. It would be good if the (chav?) parents could be fined or given community service.
ReplyDeleteLocking up teens. Great idea, unless you actually think about would happen. What could such an action result in? Lets see, they are in an age where they get influenced easily. And before getting locked up they might just been in a fight. So, you send off a quite normal kid into a an enviroment that is nothing but a school how to be a career criminal. Its a great idea! Absolutely brilliant!
Punishment is the most useless deterrent evah. Just doesnt work, its been proven over and over. Of course you could go after the parents, but then you would just add more shit and make it actually harder for say a single one with two jobs to look after the kid. Now actually doing something for those parents so they can stay home more and spend more time with their kid (or get a job and set a good example) could actually solve some issues. But that wouldnt involve revenge, oh sorry, punishment, and provides no pleasure in feeling that you control those peasants lifes, so that is kinda off.
ReplyDeleteAlright, so what's your solution to the problem other than just saying everyone wont work?
ReplyDeleteLikewise, for the entire time I was in the UK I never got over people drinking in Public. We would leave a party to get the last tube home, someone would hand me a beer for the journey and the little man on my shoulder would be screaming in my ear "you dont wanna do that". Here it’s good to spill out of a busy pub and drink by the side of the road or in the car park. But anything else is a big no-no!
I really think raising the drinking age will do nothing. If anything it will just raise the age binge drinking starts, and make kids drink all kinds of shite instead of crappy 3% beer! The problem with the UK and Ireland is that when kids start drinking they feel they have to drink 20 pints or else they are lesser people, not worthy of existence. The concept of "I am drunk and shall therefore stop drinking" or perish the thought, "I don’t feel like drinking anymore and shall stop" does exist until you’re an old git. We need education about these things. What they did over here about 7 or 8 years ago was a radical change of the licensing laws, where for one they totally banned 'happy hour', and 'free beer' parties thrown by breweries in Uni's. I’m no expert, but it does seem to have an effect. People will always get off their heads drunk, but the combination of the fact Dublin is savage expensive and the lack of '4 cocktails for a fiver' means less idiots getting sick in the gutter at 10pm as far as I can see anyway :)
I always hated the fact that because of laws of the land every pub and club ended at the same time. I wonder has the new set of laws introduced in the UK last year had any real effect on this?
ReplyDeleteLikewise, for the entire time I was in the UK I never got over people drinking in Public. We would leave a party to get the last tube home, someone would hand me a beer for the journey and the little man on my shoulder would be screaming in my ear "you dont wanna do that". Here it’s good to spill out of a busy pub and drink by the side of the road or in the car park. But anything else is a big no-no!
I really think raising the drinking age will do nothing. If anything it will just raise the age binge drinking starts, and make kids drink all kinds of shite instead of crappy 3% beer! The problem with the UK and Ireland is that when kids start drinking they feel they have to drink 20 pints or else they are lesser people, not worthy of existence. The concept of "I am drunk and shall therefore stop drinking" or perish the thought, "I don’t feel like drinking anymore and shall stop" does exist until you’re an old git. We need education about these things. What they did over here about 7 or 8 years ago was a radical change of the licensing laws, where for one they totally banned 'happy hour', and 'free beer' parties thrown by breweries in Uni's. I’m no expert, but it does seem to have an effect. People will always get off their heads drunk, but the combination of the fact Dublin is savage expensive and the lack of '4 cocktails for a fiver' means less idiots getting sick in the gutter at 10pm as far as I can see anyway :)
I always hated the fact that because of laws of the land every pub and club ended at the same time. I wonder has the new set of laws introduced in the UK last year had any real effect on this?
ReplyDeleteHere's an idea: lower the drinking age to 16. Part of the problem seems to be the clandestine, tabboo nature of underage drinking. Kids get hold of booze, drink it fast in an uncontrolled environment and shit kicks off. Take away the tabboo and let them drink in pubs, at least they can be seen and controlled to some extent. It gets the trouble off the street.
You're not tackling the issue of trouble in pubs or binge drinking amongst young adults, but this seems to me to be a different (albeit connected) problem.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the BBC, the nanny state has announced a new law whereby parents are fined £50 if their troublesome little darling is found wandering the streets causing trouble if the little darling has already been expelled from school. What the Government haven't said is that this is more or less the exact same thing as an existing truancy law.
Fifty pounds! That's a lot. Surely now there will be a real parental grip on the problem...
You're wondering how families will make ends meet with that sort of punitative fine, aren't you? Don't worry yourselves. If the brat is lower class chavscum, there's enough dole money and tax credit going around that it can come out of the cash normally used for buying booze and xbox games, or one extra mugging can take place that week. Alternatively, if the brat is from the faux middle class that pretty much everyone seems to be from these days, then I'm sure the parents will dig deep to find the money, because its about the same as... oooh, one or two parking tickets.
ReplyDeleteone is a law for truants,kids who should be in school,the other is a law to stop kids fucking around and having a ball after they've been expelled. Kids who shouldn't be in school.Seems quite straight forward to me?