Cameron’s right there’s a drink problem – but good luck fixing it

Burton

All alcohol licences prohibit the sale to minors. But also to anyone intoxicated.

If the police and local authorities suspended the licence of a bar, pub or shop which served anyone looking drunk, this would have a significant effect.

We already have the laws but no one bothers to enforce them.

theARE

At my local you can get a double vodka for £1.50 while a pint of lager is £2.70 - which do you think sell better?

Who do you think is most likely to be slaughtered by the end of the night, people having a few pints or people who are knocking back the vodka?

Price of lager at the same place has gone up from £2.50 to £2.70 in the past few month, the Vodka is exactly the same price.

Anyone else think there's something wrong with that?

They are punishing people who are out for a couple of quiet pints rather than people who are binge drinking!

Verity

Burton - because the laws aren't the problem. Once again, a British politicians have a microscope up to the wrong area.

There's feeling of powerlessness and emptiness in Britain because there's nothing to be proud of. And people hav no control over their own lives because Broon and the harpic harpies are now in the house with the family. There's no self-reliance. People aren't allowed to voice an opinion because of the prevailing thought fascism that has been hammered onto our civil society.

That's why they're drunk on the streets. No self-pride and no pride in their communities because the management of communities, by which I mean adult disapproval or the adult ability to cuff a recalcitrant child around the ears, has been removed. No one is responsible for themselves or their community any more.

And the rights of hordes of primitive foreigners are elevated above the rights of the indigenous people whose ancestors fashioned this country. Why the hell not get drunk?

Austin Barry

Relax, this problem will be solved with the coming of the Caliphate.

Tom Bates

More unintended consequences.

A few years ago, once a boy looked as if he could just pass for 18, he'd start going down the pub with his dad/elder brother/mates and learn to drink and behave sensibly. Any trouble and the landlord would kick you out.

Nowadays, if you appear to be under 40 and can't provide ID you won't get into a pub. So the kids get alcohol elsewhere, drink in public unsupervised and misbehave.

Does anyone really believe passing more laws or raising the legal drinking age would make the slightest difference ?

I'd relax licensing laws to allow 14-18 year olds to drink in pubs under adult supervision.

Burton

Verity, ok so why not let our communities enforce their rules?

I live in SW London and would love it if my council could suspend licences from all the chain-bars that attract in the yobs to drink, fight and vomit. If we could actually be bothered to apply the law, it would be a good start to reducing the mess. Like I say, it's illegal for bars to serve drunken people but no one does anything.

Besides those "primitive foreigners" tend to behave a lot better than the indigenous Brits. I'd take a peaceful Muslim or Hindu neighbour, or a hardworking Pole, anyday above a British Chav.

TGF UKIP

Members of the Bullingdon Club shouldn't throw stones.

Verity

Burton, as the descendants of a 5,000 year civilisation, Hindus are not "primitive foreigners" and I was startled at your ignorance in so describing them. Neither are Poles. Neither Poles nor Hindus expect to be elevated above the local population in "rights".

I don't know what your point is. If you want your council to suspend licenses for chain bars that attract yobs, tell them to do so. Don't whine at me. Your post is a vivid illustration of how British civilisation has lost the will to live.

Verity

In addition, Burton, your society is destructively being slipped out from under you to satisfy the supposed "needs" of people from a vastly different background. As in that Margaret Hodge thing opining that the Proms "are not yet inclusive enough". In other words, dismantle your Western culture in order to satisfy OUR IGNORANT OPINIONS of what immigrants want. Or, put another way, we'll use your culture and foreigners as weapon against you.

And there are Harriet Harpic, Jack, Gordon, Yvette, So-What Balls all sitting there in the living room with you, making sure you are thinking the right thoughts.

Verity

TGI UKIP - Correct. They should throw furniture. Through windows.

I'd like to return to my point about the left destroying British culture in order to cater to foreigners from a very alien culture. More correctly put, the left uses a particular tranche of foreigners as a tool for changing Britain.

Those are the Muslims who look to the hideous Muslim Council for guidance, and those 33% who think Britain should incorporate shariah into the body of our constitution. It is in the left's interest to keep these people feeling aggrieved. In this task, the Muslim Council is an all too willing ally.

I would agree that probably the other 60% or so are living their lives harmlessly. Some of the more suggestible are a tool of the Muslim Council.

For example, whose idea was it that British sniffer dogs, in their own country, should have to wear special little booties to enter Muslim households? That, I would say, came from a vicious moonbat like Jack Straw, or the Muslim Council - or both in tandem. Not from a Muslim householder.

Michael McGowan

I seem to remember that when David Davies complained about the non-enforcement of licensing laws in 2005 and the grant of 24-hour licences, the Cameroons denounced him for not empathising with Modern Britain and stigmatising all young people as binge drinkers. So are they going to do anything given the chance or are they just going to wring their hands?

Jean Monnet *hearts* Dave

Is this the same Dave Cameron who had shares (or was it a directorship?) in the company that owned Tiger Tiger, a nightclub - almost destroyed by the suicide bombing community last year - that retailed "Pink Nipples" (a fact that comes to you courtesy of Paxman's researcher)?

Is Dave being a hypocrite? I look at him, trying hard to find something to vote for, and just see an increasingly jowly aristo with a burgeoning bald spot and not an ideal or scruple to call his own. Perhaps I am unfair, perhaps he regrets supporting outlets such as Tiger Tiger.

Burton

Verity, the subject is bringe drinking and alcohol laws and you've somehow got onto canine booties and "moonbats"!

You can rant about "the left" but binge drinking isn't categorised on the political spectrum. Labour's social authoritarianism is far to the right of some liberal Tory instincts.

Austin Barry

Verity's concerns are real and future generations of these islands will reside in the Dar-al Islam. Perhaps we shouldn't really care. Perhaps we should simply subscribe to the unstated optimism of our political elite for the past forty years and concur that we have nothing to lose but our foreskins.

Cogito Bibulo Ergosum

I was told that in East London before 1914 a riot outside the cop shop was a regular Saturday night entertainment. Then during the Great War all that faded away.

So modern Britain has not deteriorated, it has simply returned to historic normalcy.
Calm down, folks, and get a bit of historical perspective.

What is disgraceful, though, is labelling the intake of five units as binge drinking. In my young days, that was only just getting started.

Verity

Burton - Let me guide you with arrows: Labour is authoritarian to a degree that the USSR could only dream about.

One of their aims is the destruction of Britain, which they loathe.

An ideal tool is one they've imported: millions of immigrants from a backward society who have a belief system very different in many respects from the Christianity on which Western civilisation and democracies are founded.

Many of these individuals accepted that they were lucky to be admitted, settled in, put their heads down and worked hard. These people are integrated. Saira Kahn is an absolutely outstanding example.

It is the malcontents that Labour uses as a weapon against the indigenes. These include malcontents whose hatred of Britain is fuelled by the vile Muslim Council (unaccountably, paid for by their intended victims - the British taxpayers).

Now they are demonising the animals that have been woven into our lives and lived by our sides as helpers and companions for 1500 years or more: dogs.

So in pretended concern for delicate Muslim sensibilities, they are making these dogs wear special little shoes when working in the homes of Muslim terrorist suspects.

I suspect that most normal Muslims are more mentally robust and would accept the dogs going about their work - just as they do after earthquakes in Pakistan, when British dogs come over to sniff out living humans and help rescue them.

I also suspect that most Muslims in Britain accept that they walk on pavements on which many dogs - sans booties - have walked earlier. All except the trouble-makers, the ones encouraged by the socialists and, indeed, employed as weapons of social destruction by the socialists, will shrug and accept that that's life.

I hope my point is clearer now that I have used shorter words.

Verity

Burton again: "Labour's social authoritarianism is far to the right of some liberal Tory instincts."

As in the introduction of 24-hour a day drinking? As in giant 24-hour a day, 365 days a year gambling casinos?

TGF UKIP

Cogito, good to hear that I share a common background with at least one other Coffee Houser. And no doubt your "young days" lasted until at least your forties as well.

Burton

Verity, I'm sure you'll know Labour is not a consistent on policies, so it's possible to have moments of social authoritarianism with 24 hour drinking. But didn't Brown scrap all those supercasinos?

I didn't need the guidance on dog boots, I knew what you meant but was simply pointing out that you were straying from the subject of binge drinking.

I do find the urge to get blind drunk bizarre. I see it where I live, people fighting on Friday and Saturday nights but colleagues (bond traders) do exactly the same, swapping WKD for Pol Roger.

The Koran famously says "there is a devil inside every grape". An appropriate message for those binge drinkers, no? ;-)

Wilfred

Verity, I think it's more like 15 thousand years!

(Otherwise, I agree with you entirely.)

Live from the UKIP loony bin

Let me guide you with arrows: Labour is authoritarian to a degree that the USSR could only dream about.

I was thinking just the same as signed off the lost of the next 10,000 to be shot

Verity

Live from The UKIP Loony Bin - Point taken. I meant authoritarian as in thought control. But I didn't make it clear and I take your point.

Seasurfer1

Binge Drinking is a Behavioural Problem with its roots in the lack of discipline at the start of secondary schooling. Discipline and rules are vague and sadly lacking in most schools so that when the budding 18 year old can legally drink they display their real sense of indiscipline when loosened up with a bellyful of their favourite tipple.

Seasurfer1

I forgot to conclude that Cameron is wrong-- there is not a drink problem-- just an ingrained behavioural problem nurtured in our secondary schooling system!!!!

cuffleyburgers

A bit of historical perspective please - heavy drinking has been a characteristic of our ancestors for hundreds of years, it is nothing new, neither is having a scrap outside the pub. Drink fuelled aggression has been serving us well since the days of Drake, Nelson and Wellington.

What is new is marauding gangs of subteens attacking pensioners on buses, but that is a different phenomenon and one related to break up of the extended family, slum clearance and the consequent destruction of social structures, inadequate eduaction, in particular the lack of good male teachers and other good role models, lack of competitive school sports and even poor diet.

Agree that considering 5 units as binge drinking is absurd, that means I binge-drink chianti every night with my supper.

In my view Labour were right to relax licensing laws, I have long maintained that it is nothing to do with Whitehall or Westminster whether the Dog and Duck in Little-midfold-twixt-the-hill remains open until 11.30 or until 1 a.m.

However they should have insisted on enforcing the laws on not serving people who are visibly drunk, and made the granting of licenses conditional upon enforcing these laws, with the onus on the publican to ensure the good behaviour of people on his premises.

Chris M

Binge drinking comes from a total emptiness within a person - which leaves them suggestible and prey to any quick cheap sensation. It's the desert inside people which has to change if the impulse to binge drinking is to change. New laws and social directives will just shuffle the jokers in the pack - not remove them.

Venture Creature

cuffleyburgers - Good comment - someone finally addressing the dubious data we are working off.

The 'recommended alcohol limits' we know are based on no evidence at all (as said by a doctor who was there when they were made). You could drink around double this and be no worse off that a teetotaler. So some level higher than x2 would be a fair level of risk to accept if you felt like it.

"Binge drinking" amount to a romantic dinner for 2 - e.g. an aperitif and 1/2 a bottle of wine - but is portrayed as a drunken yoof flat out in the town centre. (a bloke might need to have a brandy to.)

Academic reports are manipulated in absurd ways to promote the idea that "middle class drinking" is also a problem.

I am not thrilled with town cent re drunkenness and violence but this is a specific issue law and order issue I think relating to the evolution of our town centers, and the tendency to live alone earlier.

But as others point out drunken violence is not new (and common across the north-west end of Europe - climate I suppose).

Finally, it may be connected with the bloody good soldiers and sailors we turn out - so its not all bad!

Thomas Widmann

I agree with Tom Bates: Encouraging youngsters to learn to drink in the company of responsible adults rather than with other young people without good habits would help.
Also, as other people have said, enforce the ban on serving visibly drunk customers. Perhaps also somehow encourage having food with your alcohol?
In other words, try to make people copy the behaviour of countries where binge drinking is not a problem.

Kris

Yet again it's the visible, nuisance drunks that Cameron highlights. All the evidence is that it excess drinking behind closed doors at home which is doing the most damage to people's health. Even Cameron admits to drinking too much wine every evening. But just because there's a problem, doesn't mean there's a solution which any government can impose.

johnlocke

Absolutely right it's a societal [is that a word?] and cultural problem, and has almost nothing to do with government. Look at America. Being drunk in public is a cause for shame there, not a source of pathetic pride.

Having said that, the local Sheriff's department will take a pretty dim view of public drunkenness - you'll certainly receive a sharp telling off, and probably a night in the cells.

Verity

Kris - Garbag. And it doesn't surprise me that lefty Cameron wants to be heard saying he drinks too much wine. The middle classes - don't get plastered. Or maybe Bullingdon Boys are addicted to binge drinking ...