Sort Out the Troublemakers Plod

I read with incredulity  - or should that be with a resigned sigh - that Mr Plod in the shape of London's Commissioner of  Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe is calling for fewer pubs in order to combat "alcohol fuelled disorder".  Clearly is has escaped his notice that we have lost 13,000 pubs since 2000 and that alcohol consumption has fallen by 18% in a decade. As a matter of fact, the number of arrests in the Metropolitan Police area for offences such as Drunk and Disorderly has remained around the 6000 mark since 2008/09.

Now I don't know about you, but I can't remember when I last saw a fight or other "alcohol fuelled disorder" - well not of the kind of any interest to the bizzies anyway - I don't think talking bollocks round the table counts - either inside or outside a pub.  Where such behaviour occurs it is usually in places where many mostly young people gather for late night drinking and loud music.Clearly, to this observer at least, it is these places, not those that most people normal people would regard as "pubs" that are the issue.  These are really bars or pseudo night clubs with late licences and are already well known to police and everyone else within a given local area as trouble spots.  It is instructive too that Hogan-Howe reckons that councils should disregard development of local economies when handing out more licences.  "It's the economy Stupid" clearly is of no concern to him.  Nor are the provisions of the Licensing Act 2003 - enacted in November 2005 - which restricts severely the reasons for refusing a premises license, but adds in the provision for restrictions to apply to a license and a complicated system of local licensing objectives. It also gives the police a role in objecting or restricting premises licences where a "negative cumulative impact on one or more of the licensing objectives." can be demonstrated.  In other words, as usual, there are enough existing laws and provisions for problems arising from licensed premises and criminal acts outside them to be dealt with.

Hogan-Howe should choose his terminology a lot more carefully. Pubs and local economies should not suffer because the police don't enforce the law. It is not licences to sell alcohol that cause problems. It is people.

One of my more serious posts. It really got on my nerves reading this.  In fact I might have to go to the pub now.

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Outrageous Behaviour

I read in the Morning Advertiser that in some areas, groups of licensees are operating "unofficial" minimum pricing schemes, whereby they agree not to sell alcohol at below a certain cost. Let's be clear about this. It is illegal to do so. It is operating a price fixing cartel, which is an unlawful activity in this country.

As if that isn't bad enough, it seems that such schemes are being encouraged, or even suggested by the police, or at least by the local licensing bobbies that attend PubWatch schemes. Now you, like me, might think that if such a thing was suggested, that the licensees would firmly turn down these illegal suggestions and maybe would actually report such goings on. But no - it seems some go along with it, despite the fact that it is they, not the police that would end up in (quite serious) trouble for so doing.

I talk to landlords a fair bit and there is much pressure - pressure that is contrary to the Licensing Act - put on publicans to do this and that from time to time, whether it be close early, or not open at all at the "request" of the police, despite their legal right to do so. When I point out the police can't do such and such a thing under the law, the answer is inevitably the same. "If  I don't, they'll make life difficult for me."

The police have a hard enough time in administering public order, but they do tend to lump the innocent with the guilty. When they moan about late night drunkenness, it is invariably at certain venues that are repeat offenders, The police already have the powers to deal with these under the existing law,  just as they can lock people up for being drunk and disorderly, exhibiting behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace, or in extreme cases, for being drunk and incapable. It is time they enforced existing laws and stopped encouraging the breaking of the law by hard pressed publicans. It is equally time that politicians addressed why existing powers are not being exercised, rather than pointless posturing and tinkering with prices.

The cops know where the problems are, be they completely pissed people, or the pubs that serve them when they are pissed (small minorities in both cases) and they should get on with sorting them out and leave the rest of us alone.

Politicians should make it clear that they have to do so.