One For The Road(Block)?

Sacré bleu!

...something truly awful has happened to the CRS (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité). Indeed, the ones we love to hate have just been denied by official decree that most cherished and antic pleasure, a single glass of wine (or cider or beer) with their meals.

Unusually for CiF, this isn't an article in favour of such NuPuritanism, either:

This latest ban (after the burqa, the rouge!) is yet another sign of a rampant righteousness taking hold in our society. It's commonly said that a moderate amount of wine, beer or cider digested with a meal, especially by people who have a physical job doesn't affect their ability to perform. Riot police are no surgeons; they are muscles in boots and helmets. Their job is to look scary and to use urban guerrilla tactics in order to protect peaceful demonstrators from the occasional troublemakers.

Oh my, Agnes, that won't win you many friends in this newspaper!

And nor will this:

What's certain is that the CRS do not do an easy job. They are the buffers of our democracy, and we need them during every spat and argument we have with the government so that things don't degenerate into chaos. And for this, I believe they deserve their daily glass of wine.

The comments immediately descend into the sort of mad scramble you'd expect, with the alcohol-haters jostling and jabbing elbows at the police-haters to see who can heap the most disgust that an article like this could be produced at all...