September 11, 2005
Drink-sodden Armageddon
In a smidgeon under 3 months time, the law in the UK regarding licences to sell alcohol, to put on various forms of entertainment, and to sell hot food/drink after 11pm (late night refreshment) will be changing. The 6 separate current licensing schemes will be brought under a single banner, and in the process the current statutory limits on when a licence to sell alcohol can apply will be relaxed. This isn't to say a licence won't be needed (it certainly will), or that licences will all be 24-hour (they most certainly won't!), but there will be the potential for 24-hour drinking across the UK. Which for some reason has upset people.
Admirable as upsetting the Daily Mail editors might be, it's slightly scary to think that we might be plunging towards a drink-sodden Armageddon. But are we really? Lots of other European countries trust their citizens with the right1 to drink alcohol at just about any time of day they choose, after all, and we're told they don't suffer from our "yob culture" — I suppose the question is, do we need a shift in our culture before we can have late night drinking, or do we need late night drinking before we can have a shift in our culture? And if it's the former, how else do we go about causing this change?
I personally don't think people in general will drink more at a time, more frequently, or more in general, under the new licensing regime. What they will do is get just as insanely drunk as now at a bigger variety of times to normal (making them easier to deal with?), and perhaps start their nights out later. People also won't feel rushed to squeeze as many pints in as possible between the end of Eastenders and last orders, so we should see fewer people getting drunker than they planned, and fewer people throwing up outside pubs/takeaways. Bonus!
The "late night" part of the new licensing rules is just one aspect of the act, anyway. More significant to me is the reduction in bureaucracy for places that currently need multiple licences, and the introduction of distinct "personal" and "premises" licences, which makes sense in a whole bunch of ways, and ought to save licensees a whole bunch of court appearances in the future. For one thing, anyone working for a pub chain as a "relief manager" will simply be able to have a personal licence, and be the Designated Supervisor for any premises in the chain whenever they need to be. At present, I understand every relief manager would need to make a court appearance to be made the temporary licensee at the new premises every time they went to a new pub, although I'm willing to stand corrected on this one.
Some new licensees will face significant problems of course, since currently kebab shops and burger vans don't need a licence to operate at night, and will soon need one to sell anything hot after 11pm. The reasons for introducing these requirements (as explained in that article) are pretty sound, though.
Something else those complaining about the new laws don't seem to realise is that people can already drink until silly hours of the morning if they so decide — pubs I've worked in have had "lock-ins" previously which extend well beyond the hours they've applied to extend their licence to under the new regimes. I can think of at least 2 pubs locally where drinking to 3am or so isn't unheard of, but I can't think of any that have applied for a licence beyond 2am. I suppose some nightclubs in the city centre may have applied for more hours.
So to conclude, the new licensing laws will piss off Daily Mail editors, reduce city centre violence, reduce occurences of vomiting on pavements near pubs, shut down dodgy backstreet kebab shops, regulate the surviving ones better, and allow people to drink legally later avoiding the need for things like lockins, while reducing paperwork for publicans. Sounds good to me.
1 I don't mean to imply that 5am-drinking is some kind of fundamental human right, here, just that some countries allow their citizens to do it.
Posted by James at 23:05
Tags for this entry: drinking
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politics
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Comments
Hmm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3766637.stm * I don't see how allowing more people easier access to drink way on into the night will allow easier policing (as there will simply be more people out later, taking time over their drinks), but I sort of like the idea of kebab & burger vans being regulated. Having said that, as long as they're serving me normal meat I don't really mind if it's a bit grubby, keeps my immune system ticking over :)
* Adding links in here = nightmare!
Posted by: Rob G at September 13, 2005 08:54 AM
Good post. Just passing through, I'm liking the blog by the way.
Posted by: HumanityCritic at September 13, 2005 08:26 PM
Rob, I think you answered your own question to some extent, with the phrase "taking time over their drinks". As for adding links, yeah, it sucks. Not really sure what to do on that score. Maybe I should have no HTML formatting allowed and URLs automatically turned into links, but that doesn't allow links with text other than the URL...
And HC, thanks for stopping by! :)
Posted by: James at September 14, 2005 12:46 AM
A comment on LJ pointed out that the Birmingham related article doesn't discuss the reasons for the new licences for late night refreshment at all. Brainfart on my part - they're discussed on the page linked from the first paragraph.
Posted by: James at September 21, 2005 12:12 AM
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