I really do not know about the move to 24 hour open all day and all of the night drinking in England. The BBC has a good article this morning on the debate:
Shadow culture secretary Theresa May... said it was of "great concern" that a "significant number, if not a majority" of premises that would have 24-hour drinking were supermarkets and petrol stations, which she said were often frequented by underage drinkers. She concluded that the change "will lead to more disorder", adding that "government ministers have accepted that there will be more crime as a result of these laws".While it is very difficult to observe one culture's point of view on the drink and I am not one to race to the line up under the sign that says "prudes", there is an aspect to this which is beyond personal liberty that seems to be is entirely abandoning what I would think would be the limits of prudent management given what alcohol actually does. Do you really need drinking at supermarkets and petrol stations? And who needs a "social life" at 4 am or 9 am? Is the teen aged clerk trained to cut the guy off at the gas station at 7:45 am before he gets in the car?But Mark Hastings from the British Beer and Pub Association welcomed the changes. He said: "We've been saying for a long time that the result of this change would be a relatively modest increase in overall licensing hours, that 24-hour opening was an urban myth, and certainly 24-hour drinking would be an urban myth. What we're actually seeing is that at last in this country adults are going to be treated like grown-ups and given a little bit of choice about having a social life beyond 11 o'clock at night."
Your comments would be interesting on this one.
Comments
Knut - November 23, 2005 11:17 am
I think the Beeb, for once, got it slighly wrong here. The supermarkets and petrol stations will not have "drinking", but they will sell alcohol for consumption off the premises. Some of the petrol stations in questions are in fact quite big supermarkets, but they are registered as petrol stations, which allows them to circumvent local regulations about opening hours.
Peronally, I do not feel offended by a law saying the shops should not sell alcohol in the small hours of the morning. (Over here the shops stop selling beer at 8 in the evening, which is taking it a bit too far) I think the current legislation in Britain allow shops to sell alcohol until midnight. They could have kept that.
As for pubs and clubs staying open at all hours as long as they don't bother the local residents, I tend to have a very relaxed view. As we can see, most of the pubs will just stay open an hour or two longer than previously. It is quite unlikely that this will bring down British civilization.
Rick Davies - November 24, 2005 2:44 am
It is currently 1:41 - and I have just gotten off work. Why shouldn't shift workers be able to enjoy a pint after work with their co-workers? (Even if the shift ends at 7 am...) Those of us who work through the night deserve to stop for a pint as much as (maybe more than) 9 to 5ers.
Brian - November 25, 2005 7:16 pm
Mr. Davies has a point. We have several bars here that open at the earliest hour allowed by local law (6AM, Tucson, AZ), and while they have their share of hard-core drunks, most of their business in the morning comes from shift workers.
I spent some time in Ireland a few years back, where the pubs also closed at 11 (I don't know whether they still do or not). All the pubs emptying out onto the streets at once actually made my neighborhood extremely noisy between 11 and 12, and pretty much every night. Much of that noise came from young people drinking beer in the streets, presumably because they had nowhere else to do it.
Seems to me spreading the opening hours out could also cut back on binging before last call.
Ken - December 6, 2005 5:18 pm
I live in Colorado. Here liquor stores can stay open until midnight, bars until 2. Liquor stores have to close on Sunday.
For a while I used to work late at night and it was pretty stupid that I couldn't have a beer at a pub at the end of the day. There are places (New Orleans, New York, Las Vegas) in the United States where liquor stores never close and a lot of the bars are open 24/7. Locals' behavior in places like that isn't all *that* different -- most of the all-night drinking comes from tourism.
If we all got rid of our Blue Laws and post-prohibition over-regulations, there wouldn't be a problem.
annon - January 3, 2006 9:53 am
24 hour drinking leads to more medical issues street crime binge drinking after all 24 hour drinking = 24 hour drunks
Ben - January 3, 2006 1:06 pm
I live in Rhode Island, blue laws have always been bad here but slowly improving. Only recently I was able to buy beer on a Sunday. Its time we stop blaming all the social problems on drinking. Less blue laws would mean less drunk people on the roads at one time.
http://www.writingup.com/blog/ben7378
Baz - July 29, 2006 3:47 am
The United States sucks. I've lived all over the world and this has got to be the worst place. No freedoms. I can't even find a beer without driving 8 hours to Canada.
Alan - July 29, 2006 10:31 am
I think you need to read more carefully through this blog as there is way more good beer in the US than Canada.
Johnny - November 15, 2006 7:17 pm
I agree; the United States has far more/better microbrews than Canada.
Having said that, I'll take Blue to Bud any day.
And are 24 hour drunks that much better than 20 hour drunks? I think not. It's just stupid.