Alcoholic for the people

[addedentry]

The coach got into Oxford at 0200 on Saturday night. I'd forgotten that that was the moment the clocks were set back an hour: an extra hour in bed for us but apparently an extra hour of drinking for everyone else in Oxford

Comments

[juggzy]

Boris Johnson banning opened drinks on the Tube out of some misplaced intuition that cities need vulgarity.

You've correctly observed that some of us object to the Tube ban, but have made an incorrect leap when you imply that the reason every person who objected to the ban did so out of a feeling that cities need vulgarity. I don't know what the name is for this argument or assertation technique, but it starts from a truth and juxtaposes it with a falsehood in the name of supporting an indefensible assertation.

I agree that crowds of young people falling out of clubs onto the street and behaving stupidly and aggressively due to drunkeness is alarming and not very nice.

[addedentry]

Was your objection that a ban would be unenforceable and/or ineffective?

[juggzy]

Very ineffective, in terms of engendering it's ostensible aims (and even those need a bit of teasing out - what do *you* think the aims of the tube open drinks ban was?). OTOH, horribly effective in terms of providing free publicity for Boris and allowing the Apoplectic Classes to think that Something Is Being Done.

[addedentry]

Speaking with mild apoplexy, I think the aim of the ban was to make people reconsider that certain behaviour is unacceptable in a public space.

I don't believe that Something Being Done need ever be a choice between prosecuting the symptom and diminishing the cause. Tough on X, and tough on the causes of X.

[barnacle]

The problem with Boris banning drinks on the Tube, like Oxford banning street drinking as far as the river, is that it was basically a ban on the disadvantaged disguised as COMMON SENSE. There's no clear evidence that it has reduced or increased the vulgarity of behaviour (by whatever objective measure you might use to mangle that subjective term) on the Tube that I've spotted: people can get on rolling or fighting drunk at one station and get off at a later one, having caused the maximum inconvenience or damage in the mean time

[barnacle]

Oh, God. I've just suggested that the invisible guiding hand of the market could solve a problem. I need a drink.

[bateleur]

I think you're safe, because one of your recommendations was "decrease rents for commercial space" which wouldn't be necessary (or possible) if a free market was operating successfully.

[htfb]

Anyway, it was a political decision on the part of the city council to make George Street into a night-time attraction for the youth of Oxfordshire at large; they have control of this market through planning and use regulation.

There is, of course, a procession of the merely tipsy held at exactly that time every year, as the clocks go back. People sometimes claim it's intended as a protest against the contemporary, but really it's just the obvious thing to do.

[brightybot]

Wit against shit!

[htfb]

Poo!

[the_elyan]

I'm absolutely with you. I don't for the life of me see why I should have to put myself in the way of someone who doesn't know me yet wishes me harm. And I couldn't give a toss what ... come on lemming, over the cliff ... class they are - no-one has the right to threaten me or be violent toward me just because they feel like it

[addedentry]

I have changed my life a great deal in the last ten years ...

Isn't that the problem? We know that most of the violence inflicted by drunk young men is towards other drunk young men, but we still change our behaviour to avoid the potential of violence, just as I said nothing on the nightbus.

I refuse to accept that it's rightwing to accept the degradation of public spaces.

[juggzy]

Nobody wants the degradation of public spaces. The ban on drinking on the Tube isn't somebody Doing Something to prevent that degradation; it was a pointless piece of puffery, publicity masquerading as action. It would have been just as pointless had Ken Livingstone implemented it.

[monkeyhands]

someone dressed as Mickey Mouse nipped off to piss in a bin while his girlfriend and two bus staff watched.

Dude,that's what passes for performance art these days. You are so out of touch.