nanny state at it Again

[sir_drinks_alot]

Great more unwanted attention from the government.

Public transport 'drink ban plan'

No drinking on buses and trains

[Tuftus]

Czars?
Sherriffs?

What country is this?

[sir_drinks_alot]

Originally Posted by Tuftus

Czars?
Sherriffs?

What country is this?

Not the Great britain i grew up seems we are now ruled by foreigners and the pc brigade. the world would be a far better place if we where still in charge.

[BBKing]

Is Louise Casey a foreigner? Tony Blair? These are home-grown idiocies, so blaming 'foreigners' is itself idiotic. They're not 'PC' either, except in the sense that 'PC' is now an infinitely elastic term for anything people don't like, and is thus meaningless.

Worth noting that these proposals have nothing to do with 'respect' or 'anti-social behaviour' and everything to do with the usual Labour need to have an 'initiative' (and preferably a draconian one that'll get good headlines in the Mail, Express and Sun) every few days to distract the sheeple from things like the 'Terrorism' Bill, David Blunkett and such affronts to civilisation.

I'll lay large amounts of money (say, 10p) that these proposals will never see the light of day in their current form. After all, the trains I go on can't keep yobs out of first class, don't enforce the daft 'quiet carriage' at all* and quite often have a distinct whiff of cigarettes. There aren't enough staff on short-distance frequent stop commuter trains to police it, and I doubt the Government will pay for armies of little Hitlers to patrol public transport breathalysing people and searching their bags for Smirnoff Ice. Mind you, they'll probably contract it to a PFI consortium of Halliburton and the Free Presbyterian Kirk.

Oh, and it's yet another example of new initiatives where there are perfectly good existing laws - being drunk and disorderly in a public place is already arrestable and there have been recent cases of endangering the safety of an aircraft against disorderly passengers.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/group...on_507710.hcsp
Hey, whaddayaknow, there are already laws against drunkeness in an aircraft, introduced a whole 2 years ago!

Louise Casey's had an interesting preparation for her new role dictating what the rest of us can do - at a speech a few months ago she declared 'Doing things sober is no way to get things done.'. One rule for them, eh?

*Friday night going up town I sat in this by accident and all three of the people in the section I was in either made or received a mobile phone call while there (including me). No ticket inspection was made in the 25 minutes I was on the train, either, and I could have probably got through a couple of cans of wifebeater had I thought to bring any along. I'll be sure to next time, though.

[Nidge]

There has been a ban on alcohol on Buses since they were deregulated back in the late 80's. I bet Tony Blair didn't know that

[Graham]

Originally Posted by sir_drinks_alot

Great more unwanted attention from the government.

Oh look, *more* Control Freakery courtesy of the Nanny State!

So now we have proposals for: a smoking ban, a ban on simply *possessing* so-called "extreme pornography", a ban on importing birds, and even for a ban on a video game that hasn't even been *released* yet! (And that's not the full list, by any means, but I started to despair at this point!)

What *IS* it about these people that seemingly their first reaction to anything they don't like is to propose a ban on it as if, somehow, that will magically wave a magic wand and cause all the world's problems to disappear?

Or is it just that they want to, yet again, be seen to be "doing something" to placate the media, even though what they are doing is ridiculous?



Because of the actions of a small minority, once again, *everyone* gets it in the neck be it a few drunken idiots, a single murder, the threat of avian flu or a minority of idiots.

Banning alcohol consumption will not stop drunken idiots getting *on* trains or buses and may well cause them to actually go back to using cars instead which would be even *more* dangerous! It almost certainly won't make most of these people think "wow, I'd better not have that extra pint otherwise I could get thrown off the train/ bus or even get nicked!"

There are no *quick fixes" to these sorts of things, and such sweeping regulation does no good to anyone, it just makes us all look like irresponsible idiots who are incapable of making sensible decisions for ourselves.

Nanny State? Just say NO!
__________________

Originally Posted by Tuftus

Czars?
Sherriffs?

What country is this?

Czar may not be British, however Sherriff certainly is, it comes from "Shire Reeve" a person who was the chief representative of the Crown in a Shire (say, Nottingham )

[BBKing]

Isn't Czar the same as Caesar? We used to be run by one, IIRC.

Reading around a bit today, I think there's an internal political subtext to this one - Blair is increasingly running a damaged Cabinet and the cracks are beginning to show. Having the Sunday moming discussions about booze on trains rather than rows in Number 10 is obviously a good PR move, if one that hints at desperation. It's also possible that it's a warning shot to Casey to stay in line and keep providing Number 10 with tough-on-ASB headlines.

[Lew]

Originally Posted by Graham

<SNIP>

[Tuftus]

Originally Posted by Graham

Czar may not be British, however Sherriff certainly is, it comes from "Shire Reeve" a person who was the chief representative of the Crown in a Shire (say, Nottingham )

Well you learn something new every day...

[Chimaera]

Well if all the drunks are not allowed to travel on public transport (courtesy of the proposed new laws) then they could always go back in the bars, clubs and pubs that will be opening for 24 hours (also courtesy of the new legislation!)

[Anonymouse]

Originally Posted by Graham

What *IS* it about these people that seemingly their first reaction to anything they don't like is to propose a ban on it as if, somehow, that will magically wave a magic wand and cause all the world's problems to disappear?

What we need is a government whose members understand human nature. It is in the nature of people to want that which is banned - remember what happened with Relax? Radio 1 banned it - so, big surprise, it shot straight to No. 1. It wasn't that good a track (I rather prefer Two Tribes myself) - its success was solely because it was banned.

Same with hard drugs - they're expensive because they're hard to obtain, which in turn is because they're illegal. The tragic thing is that more often than not addicts are killed not by the drugs per se, but by the crap they're cut with - and unscrupulous dealers (which I suppose means all of them) cut them with all sorts of stuff - baking soda, bleach, even strychnine. Pure drugs are in fact less damaging than the street varieties.

If they were legal and available to addicts on prescription:

1) They'd be guaranteed pure, subject to the same QC checks as other prescription drugs.
2) The government could easily undercut every dealer in the country by buying direct from source. This would cheapen the drugs and make addicts less desperate for money, which would reduce drug-related crime - probably to zero.
3) It would save the NHS a fortune - for a start, the spread of AIDS via infected shared needles would be greatly reduced if sterile needles were supplied with each prescribed dose.
4) If any addict decided s/he wanted to quit, their doctor could gradually, slowly, cut the drugs with nonlethal agents, thus helping them by weaning them off.
5) The mystique caused by their illegality would be eliminated - and so would a large part of the reason for doing drugs in the first place. Pretty soon the number of users would dwindle to those who really do use them just for recreation, i.e. occasionally and sparingly. I don't really see the harm in that.

How many billions of our money is spent every year on the drugs 'problem'? And what difference does it make? None, that's what. Fighting the drug lords on their own turf just isn't working, and never has. The solution is obvious.

But it's also based on an understanding of human nature, which as already stated the government does not possess.

[BBKing]

Pure drugs are in fact less damaging than the street varieties.

Good quality heroin is far less damaging to health than cheap, legal alcohol.

How many billions of our money is spent every year on the drugs 'problem'?

£16bn is a number I've seen quoted.

[Stuart C]

Anonymouse, if you think legalising drugs will cut the drug problems, I suggest you read up about Needle Park in Zurich. Between 1986 and 1992, the Swiss government changed the law to make drugs legally available in and area now known as Needle Park, and the Letten Railway station. Both areas became a ghetto.

http://opioids.com/switzerland/needle-park.html and http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/ongoing/zurich.html are good start points.

Regarding the ban on drinking on public transport. Well, I don't see it will be effective (I mean hell, they don't even bother checking tickets now, are they *really* going to stop people drinking). However, I personally don't see why people want to drink Alcohol while on the street, on the bus, or on the train. I am a heavy(ish) drinker, and I don't drink in the street..

[BBKing]

Not sure the US DOJ is necessarily the right source of accurate information about drug decriminalisation (which is what Anonymouse was talking about, and expressly *not* what the Zurich experiment was about. And the station was disused, hence dereliction isn't exactly surprising).

Back to PT and drinking - we've established that being drunk and disorderly is illegal, that aircraft are already explicitly covered under legislation two years old, but you also have this to take into account:

1) the PT operator can make drinking against their conditions of carriage, National Express coaches do,
2) on the railways, the legal power already exists to make *any* train dry, breach of which is an offence. It's used on football specials, in fact,
3) Merseyrail already ban drinking on all trains, but I suspect the people who put the story out are London-centric and probably haven't heard of Liverpool.

http://static.highbeam.com/d/dailypo...nswidesupport/

Making something illegal twice is not 'being tough on crime/antisocial behaviour/yada', it's a stupid waste of Parliamentary time.

[Anonymouse]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Anonymouse, if you think legalising drugs will cut the drug problems, I suggest you read up about Needle Park in Zurich. Between 1986 and 1992, the Swiss government changed the law to make drugs legally available in and area now known as Needle Park, and the Letten Railway station. Both areas became a ghetto.

Good point, but it sounds as if the Swedes did it wrong. I wasn't suggesting the addicts should be left unsupervised, as happened in Sweden.

And speaking of drug-related crime: last night we of the Reality Night Shift (hey, that'd be a cool name for a band, wouldn't it? ) had to deal with a smackhead who somehow got into our warehouse and tried to make off with a DVD player, a Samsung STB and a VCR. When he was challenged by one of our lads, this freelance socialist thought it'd be enough just to hand the stuff back.

Yeah, right. In-house policy requires us to challenge anyone we don't recognise and, if necessary, detain them until Security arrive (that's a laugh - see below). Exactly what chance he thought he had outnumbered six to one, and one an ex-squaddie at that, I don't know. Three of our lads piled on him and he was still resisting. Idiot. I'd have got in there myself (BTW, I'm 5'10", I weigh 80 kilos with no body fat to speak of and can lift my own weight above waist height...and I take size 12 in steel toecap safety boots and hate smackheads to the point of antipathy, so it's probably just as well), but there wasn't room in the confined space of the loading bay.

Actually, we could've had a bit of fun with this jerk, though we didn't think of it until later: when tackled, he was trying to slide between a shutter door and a deployed dock leveller, obviously to get out into the depot yard and make a break for the fence. A shame no-one told him that there was a delivery van parked there waiting to be loaded, so even if he'd made it through the gap, he'd have just trapped himself! We could, as our manager suggested, have closed the van door and driven round the yard for a bit to make him think we were kidnapping him!

He did get a bit...roughed up, shall we say. But the police seemed to think we'd only used reasonable force, and besides, with three lads on him, what did he expect? He just lost his balance a few times...

His excuse for being there at all was feeble to say the least: he was looking for a job. Who goes jobhunting after 10pm?!

I don't think he'd find one in the Returns Department, which is where he nicked the gear from - that's only active during the day, and besides, you can't get a job with us on spec, as we have an in-house employment agency...after having had a whole string of utterly useless, undependable gorts courtesy of various employment agencies. We have a word for such useless nonentities: dollopers.

Looking for a job - oh, please. I doubt that scrote's ever done a lick of work in his entire misspent life. As for his threats to sue us, that won't cut much ice with the courts...because he'd been let out on bail just six hours earlier - for exactly the same offence! The officer who came to the depot was the same officer who arrested this git the day before. He's a known criminal (which of course begs the question of what the hell he was doing out on bail), and in fact he's been seen before - one of our lads (one who wasn't involved in the barney, as he was busy on a different floor bringing stuff down to be loaded) remembered seeing him doing a runner in a different part of the depot a few months ago.

And as for Security...well. I'm hitting the big four-oh on the 15th, and most of the security guards are older than me - some are a lot older. They're not exactly the big, beefy, tall imposing types you associate with the phrase 'security guard'...far from it. There's also a female security guard who looks a bit overweight and doesn't patrol the yard at night as she's supposed to...because she's scared of the dark.

No, I'm not kidding. I wish. Security at our place is a joke, just not the funny kind. If I were the depot supervisor, I would now be asking Security searching questions along the lines of "How the hell did this prat get in?!" and "Where the hell were you when our lads were risking life and limb tackling this git?!"

Our lads were entirely justified in laying into him; you never know what a smackhead's going to pull on you, do you? I find it significant that he wouldn't let the police search him (though on what grounds he could possibly refuse after having been caught in the act I really can't imagine - don't anyone mention human rights or I'll get medieval on your ass!). Something on him he didn't want them to find? A knife, perhaps? Whatever he was packing, they very sensibly gave him no chance to use it because they were expecting him to be carrying. So I don't want to hear any sympathy votes for this scrote, all right? He had no right to be there. If our lads hadn't tackled him as forcefully as they did he might have injured or even killed one or more of them. He got what he deserved, and not enough of it at that. End of story.

On the other hand, it was by far the most interesting night we've had since the inauguration of the Night Shift. We're thinking of replacing the 'Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted' sign with one that says 'Trespassers Will Have The Living Crap Kicked Out Of Them By The Night Shift'.