• Cause and effect?

It's been a theme throughout 2007 of people complaining about the new licensing laws from a couple of years ago causing an upsurge in binge drinking and in drink related health problems and anti-social behaviour.  So no surprises that there's another such story:

More than 500 people a day are being admitted to hospital because of alcohol-induced accidents, violence and liver damage, a charity said yesterday.

The number of alcohol-related hospital admissions has increased by almost a third since the licensing laws were relaxed almost two years ago.

The British Liver Trust said that the number now being admitted to hospitals because of alcohol was a big problem for the country. It blamed a combination of cheap drink and extended drinking times.

Yes, it should be part of the social contract if you like that people who knowingly and deliberately go out and indulge in things that can forseeably cause them damage either pay to have that damage repaired outside the general pot set aside for public healthcare or accept that they are shortening their lives and get on with it (I have with smoking and eating).  But let's not kid ourselves that the simple fact of permitting somethig to happen (in this case selling alcohol) will actually make it happen. 

Most venues I know are open at best an extra hour or so on what they used to be.  And I have noted a pattern in halls where people leave it an hour or more later to go out - queues at my onsite pub/club used to start at 7.30 on a Saturday night for a 2am finish, now it's more like 10pm, still in my case for a 2 am finish.  I have stumbled out into the daylight from clubs twenty years ago, perfectly legally so far as I was aware.  Tough liberalism is what we need - zero tolerance for those who use their liberties to bligh the lives of others, but until they do, leave the rest of us alone please!