24 hours of beer

[sobrique]

24 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.

Comments

[tenuous.livejournal.com]

There is (unless they've pulled it) a very amusing piece on the BBC news website where they've garned reports from all over the country on the first night of 24 hour drinking.

Nearly one of them starts with the words 'it's been a slow night', and one of them begins 'it was dead'. Calamity averted it would seem. :-)

[queex.livejournal.com]

To read some newspapers, you would think it was carnage. This is at odds with what actual reports say. I was expecting it to help quieten things down in the long-term, possibly after a spike while it was still novel, but it looks like there won't even be much of a spike. The doom-mongers (yet again) were suffering from verbo-anal diarrhoea.

[mcnazgul.livejournal.com]

Strangely when they extended the hours from 10.30 to the dizzy heights of 11pm the press said it would presage a new age of drunken idiocy, rampant yobbism and bad for businesses. You'll get your dickheads drinking all-hours and then they lose the taste for it - I worked behind a bar back then and that's what happened. Looks like it's happening again. Funny that.

Speaking as one of those who gets thrown out at closing (because it's warm in there, the music is good and the company is pleasing compared with the cold, rainy outdoors where there are dickheads looking to blow off some steam caused by working dead-end jobs, swilling overpriced alcopops and being forcefed media bull...) it's not a bad thing unless it begins to rule your thinking.

I don't think it's the beer that's the problem.

Maybe we should discourage this 'yob culcha' where coke taking is glorified on post-watershed TV, where urban gang members are heroic videogame icons to be emulated down to their designer labels and objectification of women and where fame and soundbites means more than ability and hard work.

Perhaps if we weren't quite so desperately trying to be hardcore, we'd be able to focus on just how ridiculous the whole thing is and find something less boring and more worthwhile to do instead...

[jorune.livejournal.com]

I agree wholeheartedly with your paragraph on discouraging the yob culture.
In order for this to happen some people have to develop a moral backbone, rather than being selectively moral on some topics and wholly amoral on others.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Surely selective morality/amorality is the norm though?
It's just a question of where you place the dividing lines.
There's a huge number of 'issues' where standard of morality vary by demographics. OK, there's certain extremes where the 'majority consensus' is clear one way or the other, but there's a _lot_ of gray area inbetween.
Things like sexual promiscuity or use of intoxicants (both legal and illegal).
Or maybe the question of whether 'means testing' things like student loans or pensions is moral because it supports the 'less able to pay' or whether it's immoral because it's a disincentive for people to actually plan for the future.

"Yob Culture" can be seen as a problem with the 'root' in a society that's too liberal - too much sex and drugs on TV, no absolute need to work for a living if you can benefits scrounge and sell drugs, and people prepared to avoid confrontation with intimidating yobs, because they've not really done anything wrong in a legal sense. (OK, if you can pin carrying weapons or dealing drugs, but what if they're just hanging around in the streets in hoodies and looking shifty)

What's the cure though? Mass, large scale censorship?, Work gangs/boot camps? Vigilantes with baseball bats? Tougher laws? Or maybe the moral minority standing up and speaking their mind. (And probably getting assaulted as a result)

[jorune.livejournal.com]

It is the norm when it inculdes the notion that there remains areas of grey in a person's area of amorality, e.g. a driver may drive over the speed limit but do so with reasonable care as opposed to LA gang culture. Their amorality was an initiation ceremony into a gang. The prospective ganger must drive a car with the rest of the gang, he/she must drive with no headlights at night, the first person to signal that the driver has no lights must be chased down and shot by the recruit/

I was thinking about what I could call the 'Warlord' aspect of Yob culture. Where the person is moral across most areas but wholly amoral in one area i.e. El Presidente is a family man, he doesn't like Alcohol, he is a hard worker who wants to help the people better themselves, he's the biggest drug dealer in the country.

There is a danger in modern media markets that people can remain in one niche market where there are no grey areas. Where the depth and breadth of the culture is shallow and limited to a few simple messages. If those messages are fight, hate, steal then society at large will suffer from them.

Any cure must come from people choosing to avoid yob culture. Thus the people who 'sponsor' that culture will move on. Alternatively we may grow pockets of society who begin to believe that Grand Theft Auto is not a game but the way life should be.

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

I do find the media's avid interest in the first night of 24 hour licensing quite funny. Given its the middle of November and a thursday night then it won't be too busy really. Now tonight and tomorrow night will be the test. As the hardened nightlifers head out to party till they poop.

I know that the new hours won't stop pissheads from drinking till their legless but it will mean that hopefully they won't all get dumped on teh street at the same time, allowing police, ambulances and casualty units breathing room.

[jorune.livejournal.com]

An interesting longer term test will be the effect on residents who live close to late night licences. Previously they could expect quiet and calm from about midnight onwards but if there's going to be different times when people leave what will be the effect on the neighbourhood?

One area to look at is Earlsdon. It has expensive housing and a pub filled high street. If local house prices drift down relative to the rest of the city then this is a sign that as far as the community is concerned the experiment has had a negative side effect on the area. I heard/misheard on the news that 2 places have 24 hour licenses and two more have extended opening hours.

I welcome the new laws as they extend personal freedoms in an area that is likely to have more benefit than harm.