www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... leave.html Good thing or not?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... leave.html Good thing or not?

IMO there are too many questions the article doesn't answer:
What happens when the 'drunk' has actually been spiked, or has a mental issue? Does the private company have access to people's medical records as the NHS do, in case they are allergic to something, need to take something etc? How do you force someone to pay £400? What if they don't have that much money? Should we trust private companies to detain people? What happens when someone realises they're going to be fined £400 and gets aggressive? Will these private companies make a big profit off this and be able to attract the best doctors and nurses to work for them instead of working for the NHS?

And if people refuse to pay do they have to stay there indefinitely?

I agree with all of that, and in particular whether the individual has himself to blame or if they have had their drink spiked. It's a rare occurrence in my experience (thankfully) but it does happen, because believe it or not, not everyone who goes for a night out in town drink in excess. I think there is an unfair generalisation here, in that respect.

It begs the question how they will deal with the alcoholics that are living rough in many town centres. They could be locked up every night, which they might welcome, but would never be able to pay the £400.

Also, will they subsidise places that don't have big problems with drunks? Or will they just have the current fines? Will these places run 24/7?

And if people refuse to pay do they have to stay there indefinitely?

From the article linked to above...



To which I would reply, "Because thats your f##kin job you idiot".

Whether they like it or not being drunk and disorderly is a public order offence and unless the chief constable is happy to devolve some of his police powers to private company's then he has to roll his sleeves up and get on with the job he is paid to do, if he doesn't like it then "there is a queue of people waiting to take your place" blah, blah, blah.

Whether or not the police and health providers can claim something back from the drunk on the proviso that they can prove that getting drunk was the drunkards sole aim at the start of the night is another thing, presumably they already know that extracting a sum of money from a sobered up person might be a tad difficult and they'd rather G4S have a go at doing that instead while all of the rozzers on duty in town centres on Friday and Saturday nights can sit at home watching Simply Come Dancing and have their wives moan at them because theres no overtime this month.

It also raises another issue about the manufacturers and retailers of the alcohol in the first place who have some culpability, particularly the retailers and especially the licensees who are breaking the terms of their alcohol licence by serving someone who is clearly already intoxicated, whether or not they were intoxicated when they left home - as soon as you served them in your premises you broke the law and when you happily serve people to unconsciousness you are directly causing the problem that apparently costs so much to clean up afterwards.

In the city I live in there have been several initiatives to levy a duty on alcohol retailers in the city centre to pay for the extra policing that they cause, which is always shouted down with howls of anguish from bar owners all pleading poverty and threatening that they'll leave the area if they have to pay for clearing up the detritus of their retailing skills.

And yet we always come back to a point I raise time and again when this subject comes up - stop the emphasised sales of spirits and shots and cleverly marketed high strength small volume drinks and you will fix the problem of unconscious drunks almost overnight and once again I'll mention that when I was in my drinking youth I often got drunk on beer, but never enough to not be able to control my actions or fall unconcious and that was simply because it is impossible to drink pints of beer in a high enough volume to become unconcious before you start throwing up and being generally unwell and when I was in my drinking youth spirits and cocktails were for old men and women.

Excuse me while I go have a drink to calm down now.

One way would be for pubs and bars to stop selling alcohol in their establishments when that person is clearaly drunk. Or do they not know that it it illegal to serve alcohol to someone who is drunk ?

It's also illegal to buy (or attempt to buy) alcohol if you are intoxicated, how many prosecutions have you seen for that offense?

Half of the problem is that "intoxicated" is all relative to the individual anyway, anyone ever heard of the phrase "functioning alcoholic", people who lead perfectly normal lives, holding down responsible work positions, while all the time hiding the fact that they are loaded up on alcohol 24/7 to levels that would see the rest of us under the table ?

It would take about a week for someone to die. How will these private contractors be protected against claims arising from those circumstances (not that they should be)?

What about claims for false imprisonment of people with medical conditions, such as epilepsy, where the idiots acting for the private firms assume they're drunk and lock them up?

Looks to me a stupid idea that will give the legal profession another boost and cause much harm.

All true ... but ... a bit of thinking on the part of the local constabulary could place a couple of young coppers in a hot-spot pub/bar and spot a few punters who are very obviously "intoxicated" but who nonetheless get served ... and then serve a summons on the proprietors.
More than x amount of summons in a year and the license is revoked.

Granted, a few functioning alcoholics who still behave well will drop through the net and not get arrested but that's a separate issue, we're targeting behaviour here.

Agreed. Bigger punishments are needed for the establishments and more blame should be attached to councils who allow so many bars/clubs etc in often small areas.
Restrict the amount of people allowed in the pubs/bars/clubs at any one time so that they're not so packed full. Then bar staff might actually have a chance to assess whether someone has had too many or not, rather than simply working like mad to simply keep the queue at the bar to a half hour wait.

Just speaking from personal experience but there is far less trouble at my local pub, where the landlord knows a decent proportion of his customers, can tell when someone's had enough and knows who might be a problem and who is ok, than the clubs in the town centre where it's just a matter of serving them as quickly as possible.

Many seem to be missing key points:

1. From clubs' perspective, many are run on the model of attracting and admitting as many as possible and serving as many shots and cheap drinks as quickly as possible to as many of them as possible as often as possible.

2. It's all very well talking about well-controlled pubs etc. but this risibly ignores the point that the masses who end up paralytic in the street every weekend early hours DO NOT WANT that type of environment, the clubs are providing them with what they want, which is a route to a long session into the early hours including getting totally off your face.

There is a good point about it being illegal to serve a drunk. If a customer comes out of X club off his or her face, then apart from anything else, it would be hard to defend a charge. But for some reason, I can't remember ever reading about a club being so charged. The police occasionally whinge about the state of people on the streets in the early hours, but whilst they are unlikely to modify the behaviour of the thousands whose lifestyle this is, why don't the clubs who have got people off their face ever get their collars felt?

I would imagine that one night of surveillance inside and outside one of those establishments would be enough to produce evidence of dozens if not hundreds of offences and this would be an effective solution as being summonsed for serving 100 drunks on one weekend would not endear you to the council alcohol licensing committee.

So my conclusion is that the police do not WANT to actually stop the paralytics being plied with drink until they are in that state.

The chief constables and the accountants may want to but for many (most) front line officers its a nice easy, (ok so it can be messy sometimes), bit of overtime or relief to a normally boring night shift.

Oh, absolutely. If I was 6'3", sober, muscled up like a brick 5hithouse and in full body armour, accompanied by six similar, the idea that drunks posed some sort of difficulty to me would be bloody funny. I always wonder though if it es off the lads from the meatwagon on the rare occasions a film crew is about. It would me.

£400

you could get yourself a decent prossie and a night in a good hotel for that.

Have any of you lot ever been in a late night establishment? People do not even drink in them anymore. They get tanked up at home with supermarket deals and then the venues have to deal with it afterwards.

Not really. People don't get drunk at home first, they just get the ball rolling. Even then, it doesn't absolve the establishments of blame.

We need a culture change in the establishments, from one of selling as many drinks as quickly as possible to one that is more responsible.

No licensed venue has to deal with drunks, in fact its illegal for them to "deal" with anyone who is drunk, all they have to do is refuse them admission, easier these days with every club and pub having doormen (the need for which instantly removes them from my "must visit" list).

What happens was perfectly illustrated on last weeks episode of "Bouncers" where the heavy on the gate at one of Jesmonds watering holes was meeting and greeting on a bank holiday monday afternoon and admitted a party of 30-something blokes, most of whom were well blathered, he quoted to camera the fact that if there were only a couple of them he wouldn't have let them in but they didn't have the resources to refuse admission to such a large group and anyway, his boss wouldn't be pleased if he was seen turning away that sort of business.

No, none of us have. Ever.




Let me get this straight; venues spend money to set up, staff, run and license their venue, and admit hundreds of customers, but do this for nothing, (except the privilege of having to deal with a shedload of tanked up assholes) because none of the customers actually spends any money there.

OK. That sounds likely. No, really. I'm sure you're right.

Drunk Tanks - [url=http://newsthump.com/2013/09/18/private-sector-to-add-bars-and-music-to-drunk-tanks/a great business opportunity for the leisure sector![/url

What happens when the powers that be at G4S start setting targets to hit, 12 drunks a night so we are in profit?
How will people be judged that they've had too much to drink?
Who judges them and what training/background checks will they have?

Some people talk nonsense - "People nowadays get tanked up on Supermarket ale before going out". It's always been the case having a few before you go out, or go to the pub for happy hour or have a few in the local before we go out etc.

Most of the idiots that cause trouble are fuelled by cocaine, not alcohol, its just some Tory minister that hasn't been on a night out in 50 years, what next Police State?

Honest to God, every time I've ever been out I've had a skin full but I can handle it and other than when I've been abroad I've never seen many people spewing/unconscious on the floor in any pub or town centre.

No problem with a drunk tank in a City centre/Town centre but the people placed into them must be done by Police and not to a private firm and must only be on the basis that they are paralytic, which like I said before is a rare site. It would be a complete waste of money IMO if run by Government and if taken on by G4S then the private firm would start setting targets to cover the costs and start nicking anyone who's had a drink to meet their quota, would end up like the Gestapo.

Sorry, am oot!

Don't they just.


No, it hasn't.


Most?
If that's the case, shouldn't we should be testing those scraped off the floor for cocaine?


What does this mean?
That you are immune to the effects of alcohol or that you know when enough is enough?