Forget about the price of drink - just enforce the law!

The proposal by NICE for minimum pricing for alcoholic drinks represents the kneejerk response of all government agencies to any perceived “problem” – Nanny State intervention which punishes both the guilty,

i.e. young people who drink themselves into a deranged shrieking, punching, puking mess – and the innocent, i.e. those who like to get merry on an occasional basis.

I don’t give a fig how much alcohol complete strangers pour into themselves, how bad it makes them feel the next day, or what it does to their bodies over time. That’s their business. What I do care about is the sort of Gin Lane-style public disorder that results from these activities, which covers the whole spectrum of nastiness from pissing, vomiting and passing out in public (that’s just the “girls”), through Caliban shrieking, aggressive male posturing, vandalism and fighting, all the way to spousal and child abuse and murder.

Fortunately, we have laws against public disorder. And we have a police force and courts to enforce those laws.

So why don’t they bloody well enforce them?

The last time (in fact, probably the only time) I phoned the police to report drink-related bad behaviour was about ten years ago. Some appallingly crude Australian oiks had rented a house behind ours and, after squeezing no less than sixteen “lodgers” into it, had proceeded to hold a series of riotous parties which often lasted from midday on Saturday through to late Sunday evening (with one or two midweek sessions thrown in). After four or five of these nightmarish events – fantastically disruptive in a residential area full of young families and quiet middle-aged types – I opened our garden door one Saturday lunchtime to discover a bevvy of drunken Antipodeans urinating in the publicly accessible alley between our houses. 

Enough was enough. I phoned the local police, explained what was happening, and asked if they could send someone over to have a word with the knuckle-draggers about using a public space that our children played in as a urinal – only to be brushed off with “I’m afraid there’s nothing much we can do, sir”. 

“Do you mean to tell me that urinating in public in broad daylight is not an offence?”

“Have you tried talking to them, sir?”

“They’ve broken the law. Surely it’s your job to talk to them.”

“I suggest you contact the council, sir.”

“I don’t need a pen-pusher – I need a policeman!”

Brilliant! When someone commits an offence in public – don’t call a cop, call a council! (It’d make a great slogan.)

That marked the moment when a long-dawning suspicion that the police no longer saw it as their job to protect the well-behaved majority who pay their wages turned to certainty.

Cameron banged on endlessly about “Broken Britain” before the election. Now he’s in charge, he can actually do something about it. He has the laws to stop drunken youngsters destroying our quality of life: he has the police force to reclaim our city centres, towns and villages from the forces of yobbery.

But then, he has already signaled how committed he is to sorting out public misbehaviour by appointing Theresa May as Home Secretary.

I bet those drunken yobs are really shaking in their boots!

The only hope is that locally-elected police chiefs will actually do what we want them to do. But somehow you just know that in five years’ time, not a single thing will have changed – whatever the price of booze.