Ann-Widdecombe on binge drinking.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17813245

http://www.telegraph....named-and-shamed.html

Hate her or love her, do you think on this subject our Annie has got a point?

/// “If the police carried out the occasional big blitz in the city centres on a Friday night, drafting in extra manpower and pursuing every single person who was drunk in A&E or incapable on the streets, then people going out specifically to get drunk would risk finding themselves in court on the Monday with their names and photographs in the papers. ///

[bundleone]

I know just being drunk isn't a crime but 'drunk and disorderly' is. and that is what a lot of drunks are, they are a waste of space in A&E and should be sent home to sober up and let the nurses deal with genuine patients.

[TTG]

How do other countries deal with it or is it just a UK thing?

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

You have put up a very good argument, but with a couple of things I would like to address to you.

Firstly, regarding Ann-Widdecombe picking on women, for one she is a woman herself, but most importantly she is trying to address the two issues where it is more dangerous for women to binge drink, 1/ The risk to her virtue and 2/ how women can damage their bodies much more than men can. (see the medical link on the subject that I posted).

Secondly, regarding your statement, /// Newspapers aren't interested in who got done for being D&D. ///

For this we have got to reach out for our history books (something I am always accusing others of doing) but in this instance this is only to prove that the usual excuse of "crime is no worse now than it was in the past, we just didn't get to know about it" just doesn't wash.

Today's papers are so full of reports on murder,rape,shootings and stabbings, but these reports were very rare in the papers of yesterday, so much so that they were interested to report cases of individuals being arrested by the police for being drunk and disorderly, and those who were persistently in the papers for such misdemeanour's, became known to most people of the town.

[joko]

well given the sheer number of people that get in a state and have trouble while drinking, unless the govermnet are going to pay the papers for space in their papers, paper, ink, manpower etc etc in order to get all the info printed its as stupid idea

even if they printed their own 'name and shame' paper... who would buy it? who cares to see a big list of strangers who got drunk?
unless they actually committed a crime, no-one cares.

[Davethedog]

AOG - One swallow does not a summer make, let alone a swallow that is filmed for TV.

[andy-hughes]

AOG - you appear to be harking back to a bygone age when habitual carousers could be shamed by having their names in the papers.

Obviously times - and culture - have moved on considerably from those days.

You cannot shame binge drinkers, since the ethos of binge drinking includes not only a severe case of alcohol poisoning in the evening, but the boasting of it, and its effects, the following morning - shame is not in the equation.

I repeat my previous point - education of children and young people is the solution to this problem, but because it is neither cheap nor instant nor vote-catching, we will not see its implemantation any time soon.

[FredPuli43]

Of course, we don't seem to get cases of drunk and incapable coming to court . Gone are the days when Bow Street or Clerkenwell, for example,had a morning list which began with drunks dealt with thus: Defendant 'Guilty' Police officer: 'Seen unsteady on his feet, his speech was slurred, he was drunk, sir' Clerk 'Drunk last night Mr Smith?' 'Yes, sir' Magistrate 'One pound or one day. You've served the day. You may go' [Overnight was treated as one day] Posher- looking individuals, the ones who'd been in restaurants on a night out, were fined £5.
There were so many of these in a morning that the start of the 'proper' cases would be delayed by half an hour on some days, even at the speedy rate of disposal I've described.
They didn't make the papers.
Cambridge City had no drunks at all! Once, in the late '60s, I attended the annual Licensing Sessions, where the police solemnly reported no cases of drunkenness in a year, for a city of 90,000, with thousands of undergraduates. Reason? They ignored them. If they were trouble, they'd be taken by the City police and dumped down the road, in Cambridgeshire. If students, they'd be handed over to their college.
Can't recall local papers here, in 50 years or more, ever specifically reporting a case of a drunk. Drunks would be in the general list of 'this week in the courts', where every minor offender was named, whatever they'd done.Even that seems to have gone. Drunk-driving cases do get individually reported.

[Zeuhl]

A police intelligence unit has, after an extensive fact finding mission (courtesy of Virgin Holidays) has concluded that the country that has completely solved the problem of drunks in the street is Saudi Arabia

Their 'Win-Win' recommendation is to take groups of deeply committed, socially excluded and under-employed Muslims; deputise them, give them uniforms and put them onto the streets, modelling the Religous Police in Saudi Arabia.

Anyone who is obviously drunk will be given a sound beating.
Anyone who is completely 'legless' will be made so - permanently.
Young women immodestly dressed and behaving like 'Jezabels' will be forwarded to associated organisations who own and run proper establishments all over europe for that kind of thing.
Drink drivers will be forced out of their cars and into Taxis that will drive them miles out of their way then overcharge them.