Binge Drinking is Creating Wild West Towns

By James Chapman

Binge drinking is increasingly making Britain’s towns and cities ‘like the Wild West’, David Cameron has warned.

The Tory leader said a culture of excess was ‘taking over our streets’ and he claimed many areas were now ‘uninhabitable’.

‘I’ve seen some terrible things,’ he said. ‘You have to ask yourself, what is it about our culture that encourages and allows this?

‘Who has given the green light for people to go and get drunk and get into a fight?’

According to the latest Government figures, almost a third of vicious woundings take place in or around pubs and clubs.

It means 167,620 Britons – or 460 every day – were attacked after going out drinking in 2006–7.

Earlier this year, ministers were forced to admit that relaxing the licensing laws had not led to the reduction in alcohol-fuelled disorders they promised. However, Mr Cameron insisted a Tory government would resist using more legislation to crack down on the problem. Instead, it would use existing laws to adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to shops and pubs that sold alcohol to underage drinkers.

‘The police can shut down shops that sell alcohol to young people,’ Mr Cameron said. ‘I think there’s a danger on the whole crime and law and order front that unless we pass another law, this will continue for ever.

‘But we need a more hands-on approach – we need the police to get in there and sort things out, and arrest people selling drink to people under the legal limit, and arrest those who cause trouble in those places when they’re drunk.

‘Off-licences, shops, convenience stores, supermarkets, pubs, clubs. We shouldn’t underestimate what could be done by the police if they were freed from doing all this paperwork.’

Mr Cameron also pledged to increase taxes on alcopops favoured by younger drinkers and use the money raised to slash duties on lower-strength drinks.

And he claimed the police had lost the confidence of ‘hardworking, law abiding people’ because of the ‘target culture’ imposed on them by Labour.

Officers now tended to ‘go after easy cases rather than difficult cases’, he said.

‘That means obviously demonizing the middle classes to a certain extent and targeting people who are fundamentally law-abiding’, the Tory leader added.

‘I think there is a growing sense among the police that unless a new law is passed for a specific offence, then they can’t do anything about it.

‘I think this is very worrying and has been partly caused by Labour’s legislative obsession.’

In a book written with GQ editor Dylan Jones, which details conversations held between the two men over the past year and is published this week, Mr Cameron admitted he drinks ‘probably more than I’m meant to’.

‘The unit count is challenging,’ he said. ‘I like having a couple of glasses of wine in the evening with dinner. Most nights I’ll have a couple of glasses of wine.’

Mr Cameron also addressed claims that, early on his leadership, he called himself the ‘heir to Blair’. ‘That came from a private dinner,’ he said.

‘What I meant is that Tony Blair, having spent most of his time in office without a clue about how to bring about change in schools, the NHS and other public services, finally realised, just before he was booted out, that the way to do it was what we’d been saying all along.’ (Abridged)

From Daily Mail, Tuesday, August, 2008

Language and Culture Focus.

• binge drinking – drinking too much without being able to control yourself

• zero tolerance – the policy of applying laws very strictly so that people are punished even for offences that are not very serious

• off-licence – a shop that sells alcoholic drinks in bottles and cans to take away

• convenience store – a shop that often stays open 24 hours a day

• GQ – Gentlemen’s Quarterly, a magazine focusing upon fashion and culture for men

• Tony Blair – prime minister of the UK from 1997 till 2007, leader of the Labour party

• NHS – National Health Servise

Think of the best way to translate it.

1. … relaxing the licensing laws had not led to the reduction in alcohol-fuelled disorders.

2. But we need a more hands-on approach – we need the police to get in there and sort things out…

3. Mr Cameron also pledged to increase taxes on alcopops favoured by younger drinkers and use the money raised to slash duties on lower-strength drinks.

Comprehension questions and tasks.

1. Is the issue raised in this article only typical of Britain?

2. What’s your attitude to people drinking in the streets?

3. Do you agree that a rigid law should be passed against binge drinkers?

4. Discuss what could be done to ban young people from alcohol drinking.