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24 hours of beer
Nov. 25th, 2005 10:17 am24 hours in the day, 24 beers in case.
In case you've been living under a rock, as of today, "24 hour drinking" has been legalized.
And there has been a _huge_ fuss over how terrible this is, how we have a binge drinking culture, and if they get really drunk in the few hours until 11pm, how much worse will it be if we continue indefinitely.
Except really, it's _not_ 24 hour drinking. What it is, is changing the licenseing laws so pubs, bars and clubs _can_ open at whatever time they like.
I think this is a really good move.
Landlords get the choice of their opening hours. So rather than having to sweep everyone out the door at 11:20pm, or face a fine, they can close later, the same time, or even earlier if they choose.
In an ideal world, you wouldn't have people getting horribly drunk and 'causing grief' - Becuase lets be fair here, no one cares overly if that guy walking down the street is drunk or not, but they _do_ care if they're going to be obnoxious, fighty, dangerous or rude as a result.
As it stands at the moment though, with 11pm as their 'drinking deadline' you have exactly the wrong result - the mentality exists that if there's a deadline, you need to get stuff done before the deadline. Which _does_ extend to drinking.
Pubs are often full at 11pm. That says to me that there's people either hanging on until closing, or that would continue later if they could.
To me that says that if that same pub was _allowed_ to open until, say, 3am, you'd have a gradual exodus of people from about 10pm, to go home. (And yes, I'm confident of this assessment, because I've seen it in practice.)
You _won't_ get the '11pm rush' that the police dread each weekend, where a huge number of people get in their 'one for the road' and flood the streets, compete for taxis, takeaways and club admission (and that competition leading to raised tempers and the kind of anti-social behaviour that is the real problem).
I'll probably still be going at about the same time (although if I do find somewhere that's open until until dawn, I might try it once just for the experience), but I'll be a lot happier not having to queue quite so much for a kebab, and have to hang around because there's just no taxis about.
In case you've been living under a rock, as of today, "24 hour drinking" has been legalized.
And there has been a _huge_ fuss over how terrible this is, how we have a binge drinking culture, and if they get really drunk in the few hours until 11pm, how much worse will it be if we continue indefinitely.
Except really, it's _not_ 24 hour drinking. What it is, is changing the licenseing laws so pubs, bars and clubs _can_ open at whatever time they like.
I think this is a really good move.
Landlords get the choice of their opening hours. So rather than having to sweep everyone out the door at 11:20pm, or face a fine, they can close later, the same time, or even earlier if they choose.
In an ideal world, you wouldn't have people getting horribly drunk and 'causing grief' - Becuase lets be fair here, no one cares overly if that guy walking down the street is drunk or not, but they _do_ care if they're going to be obnoxious, fighty, dangerous or rude as a result.
As it stands at the moment though, with 11pm as their 'drinking deadline' you have exactly the wrong result - the mentality exists that if there's a deadline, you need to get stuff done before the deadline. Which _does_ extend to drinking.
Pubs are often full at 11pm. That says to me that there's people either hanging on until closing, or that would continue later if they could.
To me that says that if that same pub was _allowed_ to open until, say, 3am, you'd have a gradual exodus of people from about 10pm, to go home. (And yes, I'm confident of this assessment, because I've seen it in practice.)
You _won't_ get the '11pm rush' that the police dread each weekend, where a huge number of people get in their 'one for the road' and flood the streets, compete for taxis, takeaways and club admission (and that competition leading to raised tempers and the kind of anti-social behaviour that is the real problem).
I'll probably still be going at about the same time (although if I do find somewhere that's open until until dawn, I might try it once just for the experience), but I'll be a lot happier not having to queue quite so much for a kebab, and have to hang around because there's just no taxis about.
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