Police officers have urged ministers to call time on 24-hour licensing , after three-quarters of police officers and 50% of ambulance staff told a survey they had been injured while handling drink-related violence.A survey run by the emergency services?
Respondents to the survey by the Institute of Alcohol Studies…Ah. I guess we (the taxpaying majority) can safely ignore it, then.
… said there was a culture of fear among emergency service workers about being attacked when dealing with alcohol-related incidents.Part of the job. Like fishing dead bodies out of rivers and being in the front lines of riots.
Suck it up! You aren’t a conscript, you’re a volunteer, and if you failed to realise the job had less savoury aspects to it, well, more fool you!
The move had changed policing forever, a sergeant told the survey. The majority of police time was now spent “dealing with the fallout from the night time economy,” he said. “No longer are we able to patrol residential areas to catch burglars etc.”Wait a minute, I thought you were bleating about not doing that due to those awful Tory cuts? Now it’s because you’re too busy with drunks?
Make up your damned minds!
Katherine Brown, the director of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, said: “Our report shows how alcohol takes up a disproportionate share of emergency service time, costing taxpayers billions of pounds each year.
…
Brown said: “Police officers we spoke to would far rather be dealing with burglaries than Friday night drunks. We call on the government to better support our emergency services and implement policies to ease this burden, such as minimum unit pricing for alcohol.”OK, 1) that cost is more than offset by the billions of pounds taken in alcohol taxes, and 2) the EU has already ruled that minimum pricing is a no-go, you collective punishment-loving moron!
Not that the police need to rely on convenient third parties to demand collective punishment – they are pretty hand at initiating it:
Police in London are urging shopkeepers to refuse to sell eggs and flour to under-16s in the run-up to Halloween in case they use them to target the homes of elderly and vulnerable residents.They might want to make bloody pancakes, or be buying shopping for someone else, though? What sort of idiot demands that they be inconvenienced anyway?
Oh. Of course. A Labour Party idiot:
Labour councillor for King's Cross Jonathan Simpson dismissed suggestions the initiative is an overreaction.
"The police don't send out letters lightly," he said. "I don't have a problem with it. It may inconvenience some young people but it is probably a week or so and I would rather that than have a vulnerable or elderly resident attacked.
"I wouldn't want an elderly or vulnerable resident to be faced being pelted in a violent way at any time of year. It is a way of preventing that."Another way of preventing that would be to round up all the elderly and vulnerable and lock them up for a fortnight. Why not try this? What’s that? They have rights? Why, yes. Now you get it…
And I’m sick and tired of the only answer to police issues being collective punishment.
Enough! No more. If your ‘solution’ to a crime problem unfairly impinges on the rights of others top go about their lives unhindered and unobstructed, then you haven’t thought it out.
And we pay you to do that. So off you go, and come back with a better solution.
Funny, I thought they'd rather spend their time smearing dead disc jockeys, searching for tweets to be offended by or sucking up to the local mosque.
ReplyDeleteMinimum unit pricing as proposed would not affect the price of *any* drinks sold in pubs and bars, which presumably are the source of the vast majority of alcohol-related disorder.
ReplyDeletePlus there is an existing law against serving drunks, which perhaps they could try enforcing.
Unfortunately the differential between bar prices and supermarket prices is so great that "youngsters" will "pre-load" with a cheap bottle of vodka and then make one or two drinks last the whole evening.
ReplyDeleteAlso, when 24 hour licensing was introduced Metropolitan Plod WERE IN FAVOUR - it meant that the hordes of drunken rabble did not all flow out of the vomitaria at the same time, they were...... staggered!
alcohol is cheaper to buy in France, Italy and other countries than it is in the UK - will the theoreticians tell us what sort of problems there ar4e there?
"Plus there is an existing law against serving drunks, which perhaps they could try enforcing."
ReplyDeleteI suspect it falls into the 'too difficult to prove' category, or as I call it, the 'What, I might have to do some WORK!?' category...
"...when 24 hour licensing was introduced Metropolitan Plod WERE IN FAVOUR - it meant that the hordes of drunken rabble did not all flow out of the vomitaria at the same time, they were...... staggered!"
Good point!