Stones and glass houses

The Chief Constable of Northamptonshire today brings to our attention the growing problem of alcohol-fuelled disorder. He asserts that the current system of dealing with the drunk and disorderly is unsustainable. In 1751, the English painter William Hogarth completed his work "Gin Lane". In it, he depicted the consequences of alcohol in the aptly named Beer Street and Gin Lane. Beer Street showed healthy, happy and prosperous people drinking the "good" beverage of English beer. By contrast, Gin Lane showed a problematic society in which hard liquor produced lazy, scrawny and careless people. With the support of his friend Henry Fielding, the painting was made available as prints in support of the Gin Act of 1751. Gin had been introduced form the Netherlands in the 1690s after the government had passed a law in 1689 which allowed anyone to distill spirits provided they paid the taxes on them. Two basic mistakes were made. The first was that gin was extremely cheap. The second was that it had now become widely available. The result might have been predicted. It is reckoned that by the 1730s, the average Londoner was drinking the equivalent of two pints of gin per week. That is 1.136 litres which equates to about 40 units of alcohol. That said, it is almost impossible to guess at the alcohol content of the gin since so many different people were distilling it. The main gin distillers were prohibited by the Gin Act from supplying unlicensed merchants. If you can believe this, the government of the day sought to encourage the import of tea as an invigorating non-alcoholic alternative. The point I make of course is that none of our alcohol problems today are new. Because they have been around for such a long time, it is considered a right of passage to drink yourself half way to the moon in this country when you are young. The Chief Constable cites the growing challenges of the various Freshers Weeks taking place as a new crop of school leavers venture forth to higher education with its lucrative Student Union alcohol promotions. In a sense, he makes a valid point. His solution does seem a trifle Dickensian though. He espouses the use of "drunk tanks" in which overly inebriated youngsters are dumped in to a room to cool off. They are then to billed for the costs involved. I'm not sure he's put much real thought in to this. Aside from the inevitable chaos of having so many drunk people in one confined space, I think he has perhaps chosen the wrong target. There is also the minor point of locking somebody up against their free will. Perhaps if he was to target the source of the alcohol, his plans might bear more fruit. No doubt cynics would point out that there already is a room where loads of drunks are put at the weekend. That is A and E though and this post does not seek to turn its attention to the NHS (however tempting). No, the obvious solution is to either keep bar prices high enough to deter or issue only a set number of tokens per student. Even these measures will fall flat though because one inescapable fact remains. If people intend to get drunk, there is very little you can do to stop them. For many, it is their first taste of being free of the apron strings. This is what people do. They test the boundaries and for most of them no damage is done. Young people seek to go beyond the boundary for the simple reason they don't have the responsibilities of children, mortgages and pensions. These are inescapable facts so while I have a degree of sympathy for the Chief Constable, I feel he will just have to get on with it and deal with the problem. I would though remind the Chief Constable of Andrew Mitchell. Remember him? He was the government Chief Whip who resigned on the back of allegations that he called duty policemen "plebs". The allegations have subsequently been discredited. Mr. Mitchell remains out of office with his career on hold pending a report of the incident. Both the Metropolitan Police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission are dragging their feet over this. I can't believe it can take this long to report on an incident which is said to have occurred over a period of about 30 seconds on September 19th last year. If the boot was on the other foot, the latter would be demanding a report with a full apology written in blood. The rules for the police remain as one sided as ever though. When they are in the right, the Police are world beaters at letting every man and his dog know all about it. They are seldom so forthcoming when they are in the wrong. One thing is certain - the longer they take, the greater the damage to the Police Service and the Met in particular. Perhaps the officers and their organisations should be deposited in to a "truth tank" until they can learn to tell it. You can't put a price on truth.