day, and if one is to beleive the tory party, booze is todays big
issue.
Still its not any old alcohol, its alcoho -pops, whatever that may be,
thats upsetting conservatives.
Now i can understand the concerns some might have re teenagers,
drinking but i reckon most of us drank more than was good for us as
teenagers.
Trust the tories to make low income drinkers suffer by upping the
price on alco pops .
I noticed a couple of local tory councilors in the local media
objecting to some shop getting a booze licence, frankly i feel there
are bigger fish to fry like above inflation increases in the council
tax.
At the age of 15 i used drink barley wine for around 15P a bottle or
maybe rum or whisky if availabie, i dont think it ever did me any
harm.
The thing is drunk or sober noxious kids are noxious kids.
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Rather more to this story than that, Tony. When we get teams dopwn to the area to test for under age drinking, do you think they select their visits at random? Or do you think some local intelligence suggests places they should try, sending in under age testers with witnesses watching.
ReplyDeleteLets say on one such raid a clear breach of the law was observed. Lets say this went to court and resulted in a conviction and a £2500 fine. Lets say the licencing laws allow the local licensing committee to impose a consequential penalty, such as loss of licence.
Then there is a right of appeal, to the same court that imposed the fine and found the guilt in the first place, and they return the licence to the original offender.
Wonder why we sometimes get p****d off, between the public and government demanding action? And when we take the legally allowable action, another part of the enforcement agencies backs off?
And next month Harpers appeal is due, what do you think they believe their chances are now?
Under age drinking is no longer the old image of a few staggering youths under the trees in the park. More addicts blame drink for their circumstances than the hard drugs that followed. More childrens lives are damaged by drink than drugs. It is the legal drug of alcohol that promises more damage to our society than most others - slow, insidious, and self denying, it wends its way into our lives, empties our bank accounts and undermines our moral fibre.
And thats a minor rant to what this subject deserves!
Sorry for not coming back on this one, my feeling is that closing outlets will do nothing to stop underage drinking, since in my day you just went to the next off licence or pub till you got served.
ReplyDeleteAs to individual cases it seems remarkable that some of the larger traders in booze have no problems of their smaller competitors, but I suppose they have better management or lawyers or both.