TTT - // St Tony's government, with the best of intentions, bought in the change with the intention of trying to make us more continental in our drinking habits. I agreed with that at the time because I always thought problems were caused by drinkers forcing it down due to looming chuck out times. Sadly that doesn't seem to have happened and there now seems to be a sort one-upmanship, among the young especially, about how late they go out, and, as ummmm, says, they are getting bombed on vino collapso before they even go out. //
I have worked all my life in the entertainment business, in various lines, and I was not alone in seeing the fundamental flaw in the Labour government's 'café society' garbage reason for extending licensing laws.
It made the ludicrous assumption that giving us European drinking times, would give us European attitudes to drinking, which was nonsense, as time and bitter experience have proved.
It's the simple - Europeans drink to be social, so a café society works for them. They enjoy wine with meals, and to be social, they educate their children to drink in moderation, for pleasure.
The British drink to be drunk. They shield alcohol from their children so they find it illegally, and without control, and they develop the British attitude to alcohol which is to get drunk as quickly as possible, bragging that alcohol poisoning - being hammered, trolleyed, smashed, mullered, the list goes on - is the badge of a good night out.
The British embraced 'café society' like Europeans would embrace jellied eels and cow heel - it's foreign, so they ignored it.
, and a café society is something they didn't understand then, and don't understand now.
Like so many things Labour did, Tony et al simply tefloned away and left the mess behind - again.