Avoiding Responsibility

I remeber reading all those stories from the 50's about how Rock n Roll was destroying the youth of the day and was tearing at the fabric of society itself. It would appear however that society made it through pretty much unscathed.

Parents and old people of today have something new to be worried about - binge drinking. It is destroying our teenagers and we must do something about it before it destroys society itself.

Erm, sure. In the UK, the common definition used for 'binge drinking' these days is having 150% of the recommended daily intake of alcohol in one sitting. For an adult male, thats 4 pints (5 schooners). See when I was growing up, and my parents were growing up, and their parents were growing up, and their parents were growing up etc, this was called 'having a drink on Friday night'. Now, its binge drinking, and it is so much worse now than ever before didn't you know!

See I remember going out on a friday night and not seeing anyone blokes getting into a fight. And I never saw anyone break a bottle in the street. Or unrinate in the doorway of a shop. See these things didn't happen when I was young, because we didn't binge drink.

Now the people in charge of saving our teenagers from themselves have come up with some really good ideas on how to do it. Firstly, let's restrict the opening hours of pubs. See, what you do is you make all the pubs shut at an arbitary time, say midnight (or 6pm, depending on what era you're in). And then 15 minutes before all the pubs close, they ring a bell indicating that they are taking last orders. And so everyone runs up to the bar and gets a couple of extra shots and a chaser to make sure they are completely pissed. And then at midnight, all the pubs kick all the aforesaid pissed people out on the streets to compete with each other for the limited number of cabs available to get home. See, this is how you solve anti-social behaviour. As opposed to letting people decide when they've had enough and filter home sporadically, restricting the number of people who want a cab at the same time. Yup, problem solved.

The ABC website has a balanced and well reasoned article about how my home town of Newcaslte has been 'overrun' with binge drinkers.

Some of my favourite quotes are these:

"Most of the residents live in the city, they're 55 and over and they won't come out after dark and they don't leave their environment because they're scared."

Erm, then don't move into the bloody city. What, just because you've paid half a million dollars for a two-bedroom apartment, do you think that entitles you to demand the Council to provide you with peace and quiet? Let me introduce you to a concept that has been in the common law for nigh on a 1,000 years - caveat emptor. Buyer beware. If you're stupid enough to buy a property without knowing what the area is like, then don't expect the area to change to suit your needs. You didn't have to buy that over-priced inner-city apartment now that the kids have flown the nest. The 'binge drinkers' were there before you moved there, so why the hell should they change their way of life just because you've decided you want to live in town.

"I can't essentially see why they're open after midnight, I just don't get why that's really acceptable, and I think what we're trying to say is, 'You can have a fantastic time, you can go clubbing and dancing and partying without getting smashed'" - World Vision chief Tim Costello

Yes you can Tim. You can go out and have a good time without getting smashed. The point is, they don't want to. They want to get stupidly intoxicated and have unprotected sex with ugly people and vomit on themselves. Just because you don't think its fun, doesn't mean that you have the right to tell them that they can't do it. And because they do, they pump significant amounts of revenue into the local economy, ensuring there are plenty of part-time jobs for the students who your brother anally raped when he was Treasurer.

"I think we've got too many outlets" - Tim Costello

Tim, go and have a long chat with your brother about basic economic theory. The town has as many outlets as there is demand for. If you decide to start shutting them down, you're going to do one of three things. You're going to have:

(a) licencees trying to cram too many people into their establishments, which will be dangerous in terms of dealing with an emergency and/or people will be tripping over each other and this will lead to more fights

(b) people will come into town but discover that they can't get in anywhere and wander around the streets trying to find things to entertain themselves, say fighting other people who can't get in anywhere, or breaking shit

(c) people will start having more parties at their homes in the suburbs, disturbing more people than those stupid enough to buy an apartment built over the top of one of the oldest nightclubs in the town centre. This third option has the extra benefit of meaning that rather than being able to concentrating the police in a small geographic area, they have to be driving all over the suburbs to disperse a group of 50 teenagers with just two officers.

Yup, you've all really thought this one through haven't you. Glad to see we have
such great thinkers in charge of that country.

The ultimate irony of all this for me is that the English government has just introduced 24-hour drinking licences, with the aim of cutting down on binge drinking!!!