Happy hours and things like that

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

We have a serious drinking problem in the UK. Many of us drink too much and that includes me but then I don't go around thumping people or staggering into cars. The really big problem is the number of young people who, pissed out of their minds, fight, vandalise and make our cities and towns unsafe at night.

So in steps the British Government with measures aimed to stop all that. They have wizard ideas like banning happy hours seemingly oblivious to the fact that there are still 3 or 4 hours or more afterwards in which to get stoned. Cans, bottles of beer and wine will have to contain health warnings and so will adverts for the same much like we put on cigarette packets. If you are a smoker you don't read them and if you are not a smoker you don't either. The same will go for drinkers.

One of the daftest ideas of all is the suggestion that the number of calories in drink be linked to everyday food like sausage rolls and that the comparison be put on the label. The clown who came up with this one needs to be put down.

I don't know the answer but I am sure it does not lie in the dumb-arsed ideas outlined above. Maybe it's time we raised the drinking age to 21 as in the USA. Draconian, I know but I have never seen the downtown drunkenness in America that we see nightly in the UK. At the least, we could take up one lady's suggestion and impose a zero drink drive limit on drivers under 21. We could also rigidly enforce the old 'drunk and disorderly' crime. Problem there is we'd have half of Cardiff's downtown youth under lock and key by midnight.