24 Hour Party People

The title of a Happy Mondays single, a very good (semi) factual biopic of Factory Records and if the Daily Mail are to be believed, the drinking habits of everyone under 40.

I spent about 18 months in the North of Scotland, where the licensing laws have been relaxed for many years. Indeed, if you travel to Glasgow or Edinburgh, and you knew which anonymous door in a certain quiet side street to knock on, you could have been drinking for 24 hours for years.

My drinking partners in Scotland didn't go out at 7 o'clock to start their Friday night binging session, and there was no mad rush at 11 to get as many down you before the last bus.

Now we have the same situation in England, and despite the doom-mongers predicting every member of the British workforce drunk in a gutter at 9 in the morning, what has changed ? Nothing. I can get a drink in my local until 1 in the morning at the weekend, and with night buses now running in Nottingham, no taxi rank fights.

However, when the Home Office reports that violent crime is down by 11% since the introduction of the new drinking laws, I'll take that news with a pinch of salt. Isn't it the Home Office that is also responsible for Licensing Laws. Mmmmmm.