A minimum price on alcohol???

[Gordon Booth]

Well,Samf,it wasn't actually a serious suggestion, but it got a reaction from someone of that age group, which is what we need.We 'older ones' will never come up with a solution,a fair comparison cannot be made,as you say, particularly as our culture at that age was so different.So you're a part of that age and culture,and sound like a sensible person, what do You suggest?

[Margaret Pilkington]

Sam you are right about the drugs being cheaper than booze....you are also right about not being able to make comparisons about what went on in the past.
What went on in the past was the pubs were open for less hours. and sons went out for a drink with their fathers, their grandfthers, their uncles......it was a sort of rite of passage. These male relatives instilled some kind of responsibility.......that you looked after one another, and if you did overdo the drink on odd occasions then you made sure that the one who was worse for wear got home safely......drinking was more about being sociable and less about getting 'bladdered', in fact my recollection was that for someone to regularly get 'bladdered' was a sign that they could not hold their drink and were something of a liability.

I don't think 24 hour drinking will ever work.....our culture is wrong....and I can't really explain what I mean by that.
Anyway, it is a problem for your generation......it is going to be your generation that suffers the health problems because of irresponsible attitudes to alcohol.
That sounds like I don't really care about what happens to your generation, but nothing could be further from the truth.......what i really mean is that your generation are going to have to solve this problem and the problem of recreational drugs before it kills you all off.
I don't know how it will be done, but I do know it needs to be high on the social agenda.

[Barrie Yates]

As a lad - long time ago, I could manage to get enough pints down my neck during the old fashioned evening opening hours to get totally bladdered on rare occasions - could not afford to do it too often on my apprentice wage.
When of age, I would go out with my Dad one night a week and learnt acceptable behaviour from those evenings. I respected him and the majority of my elders - not all as there were prats in my day too.
IMHO, more Police, sensible drinking hours - say 1100 to 2359, stiffer penalties for transgressors of the law, borstal or prison sentences for repeat/serious offenders.
Hard time when inside - forget human rights, transgressors surrender those, no TV, mobile phones or any other luxury - and physical work for the general community - sewing mail bags perhaps, making car number plates (as they do in the US), and give them say 10% of the UK minimum wage to buy necessities - toothpaste, etc. Incarceration establishments should also be non-smoking. When we had capital/corporal punishment there did not seem to be as many social problems as we have now - hooliganism was virtually unknown in the Isle of Man when birching was still in practice.
We have had too many Liberal do-gooders in all political parties - I might have been a hooligan in my younger days but never got into serious trouble (well, never got caught).

[Eric]

Originally Posted by Gordon Booth

How about building, at great expense,pairs of 'holding cells',beautifully lined with tiles,drains in the floors,benches at the sides.Fully airconditioned and lit, of course. One for the young ladies, one for the young gentlemen.Drunk on the streets? You're put in there and released at 12 oclock the next day to make your own way home. You get free accomodation and a chance to vomit all over your friends instead of the pavements.
Ah, you say, but what about their 'HUMAN RIGHTS'? Well surely they have a human right to get drunk,vomit, relieve themselves on street corners and knife each other, it's their free choice?Fair enough, then lets leave them to it and stop worrying about them
I'd even volunteer for the job of jet-spraying the cells out each afternoon if it would help.

We've had those things forever ... we call them drunk tanks

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by cashman

that's exactly where i stand margaret, there isn't enough enforcement, nor are the sentences severe enough these days to make em consider behaving, also it is not reasonable to penalise the vast majority, but its the easy way out fer any government.

The Thing is cashy its not the government that has muted the 50p a unit malarkey its a Labour run council

[Ken Moss]

Originally Posted by jaysay

The Thing is cashy its not the government that has muted the 50p a unit malarkey its a Labour run council

Oh John, you know that's rubbish. The coalition has been spouting about a minimum unit price since it was formed and it is a terrible idea.

I don't smoke and have no interest in drugs so a bottle of wine is my little vice. Three bottles for £12 isn't too bad but that's a steep hike from three bottles for £10 two months ago. The minimum alcohol price would push a bottle of wine into the £5 bracket and I would think twice every time I went shopping, thus curtailing my only source of relaxation.

I'm not saying that there aren't alcohol-related problems but the media has a lot to answer for in the respect of blowing it out of proportion and the politicians are no better for their knee-jerk reactions. 24 hour licensing has made sod all difference to small villages around Hyndburn or anywhere else for that matter, no pubs can afford to do it!

This will be a bad decision if it is pushed through, there's precious little left to enjoy at a reasonable price and all this will do is encourage more home brewing, a far more lethal source of booze.

[wadey]

Most of the kids get pxxxxx before they even go out to save money but why would putting up the price of alcohol work? They backed down over cheap cider which the loonies love, why not put a 4% limit on drinks sold in pints to stop the Stella idiots.
No doubt the next idea will be to double the price of food to reduce the number of fatties

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by Ken Moss

Oh John, you know that's rubbish. The coalition has been spouting about a minimum unit price since it was formed and it is a terrible idea.

I don't smoke and have no interest in drugs so a bottle of wine is my little vice. Three bottles for £12 isn't too bad but that's a steep hike from three bottles for £10 two months ago. The minimum alcohol price would push a bottle of wine into the £5 bracket and I would think twice every time I went shopping, thus curtailing my only source of relaxation.

I'm not saying that there aren't alcohol-related problems but the media has a lot to answer for in the respect of blowing it out of proportion and the politicians are no better for their knee-jerk reactions. 24 hour licensing has made sod all difference to small villages around Hyndburn or anywhere else for that matter, no pubs can afford to do it!

This will be a bad decision if it is pushed through, there's precious little left to enjoy at a reasonable price and all this will do is encourage more home brewing, a far more lethal source of booze.

I'm up for anything that keeps Mancie off the booze

[SPUGGIE J]

Originally Posted by jaysay

The Thing is cashy its not the government that has muted the 50p a unit malarkey its a Labour run council

Up here red n blue have bloked it despite the fact they wanted it as a trial run. Put up booze prices and rake in more tax.

[cashman]

yeh put it up n all the drunken scum will revert to robbing etc, to pay fer the increase, n all the decent folk will pay through the nose, both ways.

[Barrie Yates]

Very little aggro, if any, outside the major industrial areas/cities, although I am told that Morlaix has a serious drugs problem, but never go down there much in the evenings so I don't really know.
Opening hours are totally flexible - draught beer, Stella, 1664 Kronenbourg about 1.75euro per 25 cl (roughly half pint). Spirits expensive and in night clubs a bottle of standard will cost 80 euros - cheaper than buying it by the shot.
German beer at Lidl, Aldi & Netto is 39 cents for 4.2% 500 ml or 49 cents for stupido - 7.9% 500ml.
Wine is also very cheap, decent reds, whites and roses at around 2.00 euros a bottle - in the above mentioned supermarkets - there is an even cheaper chain of end of line, bankrupt stock etc.
So with cheap booze here we don't have the same social problems - we do have a police or gendarmerie presence and they are prepared to use their powers.
IMHO you can have cheap booze and no social problems - perhaps we should look at ourselves first - we set the standards for the younger generation, we elected the politicians, we produced the liberal human rights do-gooders - don't chastise children that is bad for their development, don't send law breakers to borstal or prison, that will only result in them becoming worse offenders.
Where do we go now? - there can only be further chaos before someone removes the velvet glove from the iron hand, so who will do that for the good of the country as a whole - this is not a political statement, they are all as bad as each other.

[SamF]

Originally Posted by wadey

Most of the kids get pxxxxx before they even go out to save money but why would putting up the price of alcohol work? They backed down over cheap cider which the loonies love, why not put a 4% limit on drinks sold in pints to stop the Stella idiots.
No doubt the next idea will be to double the price of food to reduce the number of fatties

Because not everyone drinks tasteless corporate **** water like fosters, carlsberg etc a good lager tends to be >5% and I'd say roughly half cask ales are over >4%

It comes back to the same issue punishing the majority for the sake of the minority wont work .

Upping the prices wont work.

It's the culture that needs to change, that 24 hour drinking will allow to change, but it will take decades. The current situation is those who were brought up to cram as much down as possible in a short period of time have been given longer to do so in. They are a lost cause, the change will happen not when those people stop going out, but gradually through the generations down the line when the people directly influenced/ brought up by people with that mentality stop going out.

As mentioned in the post above price does not have an effect on the social problems alcohol, its the mentality of the people.

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by SamF

Because not everyone drinks tasteless corporate **** water like fosters, carlsberg etc a good lager tends to be >5% and I'd say roughly half cask ales are over >4%

It comes back to the same issue punishing the majority for the sake of the minority wont work .

Upping the prices wont work.

It's the culture that needs to change, that 24 hour drinking will allow to change, but it will take decades. The current situation is those who were brought up to cram as much down as possible in a short period of time have been given longer to do so in. They are a lost cause, the change will happen not when those people stop going out, but gradually through the generations down the line when the people directly influenced/ brought up by people with that mentality stop going out.

As mentioned in the post above price does not have an effect on the social problems alcohol, its the mentality of the people.

I agree with some of the things you have said Sam but not about 24 hour drinking, I'm a little older than you, and the likes of cashy, Barrie and myself had not problems finding somewhere to get a drink virtually anytime of the day or night when we were your age. Young people for years have been able to drink until 2am in a morning (even in the 70s and 80s) so its never been a case of cramming it down in a short period. Was quite different in Scotland back in the 60s and 70s when pubs opened at 5pm and closed at 10pm and I mean close, 9-50 last orders, out on your ear at 10, only hotels and clubs open on Sundays.

[Gordon Booth]

Sam, you told me to get a grip and I asked you,as one of that age group, to come up with any suggestions.Your suggestion appears to be do nothing,the culture will change over generations! 1 generation is 25 years, so are you suggesting we let our young people carry on like this for 50 years,75 years? Do you want to live for another 50 years in a country which sits back and lets its young people soak themselves in drink and drugs as often as they can and doesn't try to help them?It's not fair on them and it's not fair on everyone else.We can't wait generations and neither can the young people, so come on,talk to your friends who think like you and come up with something.You have a new MP,give him something to work on.

[DaveinGermany]

We've been over this ground before & not so long back (24hr drinking reviewed) As Barrie states in his post he lives in France & doesn't see half the problems that seem to plague the UK. I myself live in Germany & spend a lot of time in Holland, both these Countries have extended opening hours in their Bars & Cafes, but don't even come close in terms of nuisance/drunkenness/anti social behaviour, I mean Holland even has legalised premises for selling pot & spliffs.

I would therefore say the problem lays squarely on the shoulders & with the attitudes of those who imbibe in the UK. There are plenty of older drinkers who go out enjoy themselves & amble off home not a problem to anyone, something to do with self discipline/control & attitude to alcohol. Then on the flip side you usually find those spewing, fighting & being obnoxious & anti social tend to be younger drinkers who have gone out half cut & with the intention of getting wasted regardless.

Price is in this case of total irrelevance, it won't stop those who are determined to get into such a state at all but penalise those who go out with a few friends to have a "Sociable" pint or two. The Pubs are struggling as it is & if more people stay away because of increased pricing, we'll have more job losses & this will in turn lead to a further degradation of society.

No, the problem needs hammering from the roots up & that is with peoples attitudes & behaviour & not punitive taxing.