Thursday 17 November 2011

The Bar Where Everyone Knows Your Name…

…especially if they are the town’s custody sergeants:
Chief Insp Peter Lawson said: “Cheers bar is an isolated badly-run premises and shouldn't detract from the very effective partnership approach with very good licensees reducing crime and disorder in Blackburn town centre.”
Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.

Yes, well, if you say so, but I think I'll pass, if it's all the same...
Police have compiled the shocking report of 65 incidents linked to Cheers in King William Street, which have never been made public, to show the extent of the problem in the last nine months.

Amongst the incidents are attacks with baseball bats, knuckledusters and bottles, mass brawls, sexual assault, exploitation of children, open use of drugs and running street battles.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

It sounds lovely, doesn't it?
Experienced town centre officers and landlords said they were ‘amazed’ that no-one had been killed outside the bar in King William Street, with one bar owner angry that nothing was done despite police being aware of the problem for months.
Wouldn't you like to get away?

Well, they were too busy 'compiling'...
Town centre Sgt Dave Clarke said he hoped the closure of Cheers could be a clean slate for the town centre.
He said: “Year-on-year crime figures show violence in the town centre is down.
"This is one bar that doesn’t reflect the rest of the town centre."
Sometimes you want to go, where everybody knows your name

You know what? I'm not all that convinced...
“Most towns have got a bit of a reputation on a Friday and Saturday night that there will be violence and disorder, but people need to come out and experience it for themselves.”
and they're always glad you came

Errrr, do you want to rephrase that, mate?
"The more decent, law-abiding people about means the fewer idiots there are to spoil it others.”
Or, more likely, the bigger the potential victim pool.

You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

3 comments:

Bucko said...

"They compiled"

So very true. They had a lovely opportunity to come down hard on a bunch of drunken, underage yobs for all kinds of offences.

They managed to get a closure order on the pub but they arrested no one. Useless.

Bobo said...

This from the 'Dossier of Shame' bullet points in the article:-

"Girls cutting numbers out of The Bible to make fake ID. "

What, like ".....and the Number of the Beast is Six Hundred and Sixty-Six"?

What sort of ID cards do they have up there?

JuliaM said...

"They managed to get a closure order on the pub but they arrested no one. Useless."

Well, quite! No doubt the police will claim there's no point due to the magistrates letting them off, but hey, lots of parts of my job are rendered pointless by other people's actions too.

So what?

"What sort of ID cards do they have up there?"

It is a little bizarre, isn't it? I can only assume that the Bible typeface matches the card...