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European Style Drinking Leads to Chaos in Britain

By The Anglo American | September 5, 2008

The British Government’s experiment with European style liberal drinking hours has failed. In over two years since the law was changed there has been a 46% rise in alcohol related incidents.

But the minister responsible, Jacqui Smith, has gone into denial over the state of the nation. The Home Secretary has managed to produce a set of figures based on an eight-month Government report. The results, and her statements, contradict what anybody, who has ventured out into their town or city on a Saturday night and seen the chaos. Law and order has become a distant memory.

Flying in the face of government denial a British broadsheet newspaper has researched information under the Freedom of information act. The Daily Telegraph requested 43 British police forces to supply information relating to anti-social behavior since 2005 when present liberal drining laws were came into force. The paper reports that Manchester, a major British city, saw a 56% increase alcohol related incidents. The stockbroker county of Surrey, south of London, saw alcohol related assaults double in this period. Humberside, in north East England saw antisocial behavior incidents increase by a massive 1,543%.

Much of this increase is associated with youth who can legally, if not capably, drink from the age of eighteen.

For those of us who worked in Europe the change of law left many of us scratching our heads. When working in Madrid I would attend, an exacting 2 hour meeting at 7a.m., twice a week. Having traveled across the city I would walk into a bar to drink the strongest black coffee they had. At 6.30 a.m. the bar was already busy and full of smoke. Like me, they were workers on their way to the office and in need of fortification. For about half the bar that fortification took the form of alcohol.  

Going to work  on a stiff drink does may work in Europe. But such cultural behaviour is as alien to the British as lengthy opening hours.    

The old restrictive opening hours of bars in the UK have often bemused tourists. The savvy traveler in need of a Bourbon after 11 p.m. would go to a restaurant and eat. Or to a hotel perhaps, with a hotel guest or to a private club. The limited opening hours came about during WW1 to keep munitions workers sober. Manufacturing ordinance with a hangover is, clearly, a potentially lethal headache.

What will Gordon Brown do to prevent an equally lethal explosion?     

© The Anglo American

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One Response to “European Style Drinking Leads to Chaos in Britain”

1. endianx Says:
   March 4th, 2008 at 9:46 am

   This story emphasizes the fact that once you get people dependent on the government for their decision making, it can be hard to reverse.

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