Hysteria

Here we go again…..
Cast your mind back to the August Bank Holiday of 1988. Can you remember anything special about that particular Monday? No, I thought not. Well let me remind you, that was the day that sanity, in some form, returned to the licensing laws [oh no, he’s back on that old soap box again!!!!].
Well if you remember that momentous day you may also remember all the hysteria that preceded it in the press in the weeks and months running up to the big day. Call it ground hog day if you want but the same thing is happening again.
My trusty Mail on Sunday has virtually put out a call to lay down the twin set and pearls and pick up the stab vest and CS spray and gird up the loins in readiness for the millions of drunken yobs who will be pissing in the streets come November when the pubs will open 24 hours a day.
Ooops, slight error on the part of the MoS. [this bit of info comes from my B/F and his union NALHM – National Association of Licensed House Managers]. Only 35 establishments in the whole of England & Wales have applied to open 24 hours. Whether or not they have the application granted has yet to be seen.
What lots of people seem not to have noticed is that it always has been [almost] possible to drink the full way around the clock. Here’s how.

• Pub has a “Market Licence” [think of the Hop Poles in Hammersmith]. Where the premises serves an “ancient and traditionally known market”, the premises may supply refreshment to such persons using the facility of such a market between the hours of 04.00am until the terminal hour of 10.00am with a “drinking up time” of 20 minutes.
  Pub has a Section 76 “Full, On Licence” letting them open at 11.00 am through until 11.00pm [your normal pub hours, plus the 20 mins drinking up time”
  
• Pub has an additional “Supper Hour” licence. This is a bolt on to the Section 76 but the downside of it is that for people to stay and drink they must be having “Substantial Food” i.e., not a bag of crisps but a knife and fork job. Drinking up time doesn’t apply to the end of a supper hour extension.
  
• Pub has a “Public Entertainments & Music and Dancing of a Like Kind” [PEL] Outside of “Greater London” this would let you go until 01.00am [this is granted by the Local Authority cunts not the magistrates].
  
• Pub has a “Special Hours Certificate” This, again issued to the Local Authority, and is a bolt on to the PEL. Each SHS is unique and the “Terminal Hour” can vary. If the terminal Hour is 04.00, you are only left with about 40 mins in the day when you can’t walk up to the bar and buy a dink.
  

Going back to 1988 the first day of “All day opening” and the pubs were bunged full. Two weeks later when the novelty had worn off, many of them went back to closing on an afternoon. There were no drunken hoards staggering the streets, no starving, and abandoned kids all over the place. In short, people only have a finite amount of money to piss up the wall and when it’s gone, it’s gone. The same still applies.
I doubt that drink is going to become the new Crack Cocaine and people are going to start stealing to finance their drinking habit.

I’ll have a pint please!