Binge drinking voters get 2-for-1 booze ban

Following the “success” of the implementation of the smoking ban in the UK, the Government has now shifted its focus to the next vice du jour: alcohol. It was only a matter of time.

In a determined move to nanny the state ever more, Home Secretary Alan Johnson today announced that drinks promotions will be banned by his Government in April. Presuming they’re in power, of course.

“Alcohol-related crime costs the UK billions of pounds every year and while the vast majority of retailers are responsible, a minority continue to run irresponsible promotions which fuel the excessive drinking that leads to alcohol-related crime and disorder”

So we need a blanket ban applied to all licensed premises because of this minority, then Johnno? Wouldn’t be the first time Labour punished the majority because of the minority.

“These practices have a real impact on society, not to mention the lives of those who just want to enjoy a good night out.”

Would that be the majority of people that want a good night out and go to the majority of bars/clubs/supermarkets to buy drinks? For fuck’s sake Alan.

In a bizarre U-turn, Gordon Brown agrees;

“we will give local authorities the power to ban 24-hour drinking throughout a community”

The Conservatives want to play this game too and have tossed their two penneth into the ring. In fact, resident slap-head and shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling went one step further in pledging to allow councils power to apply arbitrary taxes on drink sold after a certain time. Call yourself a fucking Conservative you nannying twat. What next, a rule saying you can’t drink alcohol between certain hours?

Dave Daly will be jumping for joy at this news as it takes one step closer to his holy grail of pub profits: the minimum price for alcohol. But as we saw in the days of Al Capone, once you start making alcohol prohibitively expensive people simply start making their own which is usually a lot stronger than alcohol purchased in shops. Drive alcohol into the black market and I think it’s fair to say the Government and police will have a far more serious problem with gang culture than they do with easily controllable drunks on a weekend.

It won’t go that far, though. I’m sure Sir Terry Leahy is sat in his boardroom at Tesco HQ pissing himself laughing at this latest bout of sparring between the leading mainstream parties, because the result of destroying bars and clubs with knee-jerk tax hikes and drinking bans implemented by idiots like Peter Callow mean people will be more likely to purchase booze in the supermarket and stay at home. That’s a sure fire way to create an antisocial society.

Who hasn’t taken advantage of a happy hour or two-for-one promotion? I know I have, and if I were on a night out and saw a promotion I’d probably go and enjoy it. But does that mean we all go round falling over in the street, urinating, attacking police officers and committing vandalism? Well, no.

Is that really the issue they’re trying to address, though? If it is, then it’s easily solved by imposing draconian solutions upon landlords that continue to serve drunk people. How about permanent license revocation? It’s not a new law but it’s rarely enforced: it seems the authorities are more interested in sending teenagers into supermarkets.

Or is it that the Government Knows Best™ and is doing this because it deems that we’re all incapable of deciding for ourselves whether we want to put our bodies through the impact of 12 pints of Stella?

Chris McSlaphead is correct in that Labour has created a binge drinking culture; he blames the 24 hour licensing laws but I disagree. The problem is people, not drinks promotions or licensing hours.

Does Grayling really think that because pubs open for another hour on quiz night we’re showered in an unending oblivion of violence? Is he suggesting that the majority of antisocial behaviour due to drinking occurs because someone bought a drink outside what Dave Daly deems to be traditional drinking hours? Does he not realise that almost nowhere has a 24 hour alcohol license because it’s simply not worth it?

Regardless of the time at which a drink is bought, excess alcohol makes bad people do bad things. It does not make everyone do bad things.

City professionals often go on drinks benders that dwarf those partaken by visitors to Blackpool on a Saturday night, but how many of them are out there committing offences afterwards?

Labour are determined to blame the antisocial society that they have parented on drinks promotions but it’s all down to their neglectful policy. Labour created the ASBO culture by neglecting schools and making it impossible to meaningfully discipline a child: the spawn of Labour’s education system is the origin of the increase in antisocial behaviour in the UK.

They pulverised the education system into a target-driven publicity vehicle at the expense of actual education. People are leaving schools with very little social responsibility, few aspirations and few qualifications of any value.

Labour’s failures have created financial pressure upon a lot of people, too. Under Labour, the cost of basic supplies has skyrocketed. People have lost their investments in places like Bradford and Bingley after Labour did a Railtrack and relieved it of its assets. People have lost their life savings as stock markets collapsed. People have lost their homes. There are about a million more people unemployed since Labour came to power. And now people are signed up to an eternity of tax hikes due to Gordon Brown.

Bloody hell, after all that, I fancy a drink.