Did you have a nice Christmas and New Year?
Did you go down the pub, and sink a few?
Maybe you are thinking of popping down to the boozer tonight, for a quick one?
Well, have a care!
It seems that Nanny is sending her spies into the ordinary local, in order to keep an eye on how much we are drinking.
In Blackpool recently, Nanny's police piloted a scheme whereby undercover officers spied on patrons and bar staff.
The spying was not just for information gathering purposes re drinking habits etc, which would be bad enough, but in order to issue fines.
It seems that two bar staff were fined for serving drunk customers.
Please note that this is a pilot scheme, this means that it will be rolled out to a boozer near you in the near future.
So, the question is, what constitutes "drunk" in Nanny's eyes?
-Falling flat on your face?
-Walking in a wobbly line?
-Speaking loudly about how you hate the state?
-Would Nanny care to provide us with a definition of "drunk"?
Nice to see that the police in Blackpool have nothing better to do!
Ken said:
ReplyDelete"Nice to see that the police in Blackpool have nothing better to do!"
Most rank and file officers probably have got better things to do (*) but will have been ordered to carry out this farce by their superiors who as acolytes of Nanny no doubt see it as a nice little earner. After all, in a pub you have all your 'criminals' in a nice, easily managed environment so it's a case of "You've had a couple, fifty quid fine, you're drunk, fifty quid fine...".
Of course if this works how long before we see "Ah! You've had a sniff of the lemonade shandy sir, fifty quid fine!" or knocks on the door of us 'binge drinking middle classes' of a Friday evening to be confronted by a couple of 'state alcohol consumption monitoring officers' telling us "Right, you've had a glass of wine tonight haven't you ? Five hundred pound fine and six months at a re-education camp!"
(*) I know several serving members of various forces...sorry 'services' and believe me, they would much rather be out nicking some of the little scrotes who steal cars, sell drugs and generally make life miserable for the law abiding populations of their towns rather than as one of them put it "carrying out the chief superintendents latest useless initiative that has all the effect of a wet fart in a thunderstorm!"
Good grief....Is there nothing Nanny will sink to in order to raise money?...Kerching....It's a new fine, oppps sorry penalty, everyday!! Kerching.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that if people drink too much, well actually anything, then they may not get up for work the next day....This in unacceptable to Nanny as she wants the money that income tax brings in for her crazy schemes. As I have said before....Nanny wants us to be a nation of worker drones so she can tax us and tax us again and again....
Makes you proud to be British doesn't it?
“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”
ReplyDeleteWhat’s new?
Having seen your title, it prompted me to dig out and open a letter I’d thrown in the bin this morning. It comes every month so I’ve long since given up reading it, but here’s a flavour of the contents:
“WARNING AGAINST UNLAWFUL ACTION”
“You are hereby notified that … authorisation has been granted for Enforcement Officers to visit your property to determine if any of the following are being used illegally:
TV
DVD recorder
Set-top box
Computer
[Seemingly they’re soon to add: ‘mobile phone’]
If evidence is found … you may be cautioned and your statement taken in accordance with the relevant criminal law”.
[That’s a bit optimistic of them to assume I’ll give them a statement]
And so on and so on and so on … ad nauseam.
I.e., it’s from the TV Licensing Authority (aka Capita Group Plc). I don’t have a TV and so the BBC are annoyed that I’m not paying their TV tax. I’ve tried reasoning with them in the past but it does no good. The only way to get them off my back is to let them in to search my house at regular intervals (the chances of which being less than zero).
PS Does anyone know if reading Ken’s blog on a computer is classed as illegal? If so, I’ll probably be hauled off pretty soon to HMP.
Oh Dear,
ReplyDeleteI don't envy the PC PC's who are going to have to do this job during Blackpool's summer season, when the place is packed with Jocks who's only aim seems to be to get (and stay) as pissed as possible in the shortest possible time.
Getting them to cough fifty quidsworth of booze vouchers would be a bit like trying to get Nanny to keep her nose out of people's private affairs - bloody near impossible!
Anon:
ReplyDeleteI had the Crapita thing some years ago for a house I had inherited.
Made the calls, wrote the letters. Explained that the addressee was deceased.
Worked for about 6 weeks, then the letter were back addressed, at first to 'The Occupier' and later to the original, deceased, licence holder - who was of course over 75 anyway ...
4 letters a month at one point, from different offices though sometimes 'signed' by the same person with an alternative job title.
I was going to paper a wall with them but the collection was lost somewhere when I moved the final contents out of the house after it was sold.
grumpy,
Ah, Nanny's PC PC's are not THAT stupid. They fine the bar staff not the drunk. Much easier and less of a confrontation for the PC.
Of course more of a confrontation for the bar staff but then Nanny's resp get a day in court on GBH of affray charges without the risk of being attacked themselves.
Pity the poor bar staff though.
Presumably the staff could sell coloured water or something and therefore not prosecuted for selling alcohol, though they could then be prosecuted for NOT selling alcohol.
I think Nanny hopes that all bars will just shut down. Restricting alcohol flow (for Health reasons of course) to just Supermarkets would make control much easier.
Or, as in Finland (still, presumably - some years since I last visited) have the public take home sales run by the state.
As anyone who has visited Finland will know this has led to a very sober and alcohol free society whose members drink only healthy Lingonberry Juice. And a coupld of other similar nourishing fruit based drinks whose names I can't remember in english et alone Finnish.
Aha Grant
ReplyDeleteFinland...yes been there many times when I was living and working in Stockholm.
Finland, Norway and Sweden all have a very Nannyish view about booze.
It is sold through gov shops, which of course are now breaking EU rules because they are classified as monopolies.
When I lived in Sweden the booze shops (System Bolegat or whatever it was called) shut on the weekend, and every night in the week by 5PM I seem to recall.
Norway had the strangest rule in its bars.
No doubles!
The solution?
Easy, buy two singles and then pour them into one glass!
Bar staff thought it was a stoopid rule.
Everyone got shit faced on national day...I have never seen an entire city (Oslo) so shit faced as on their national day.
Finland..great place..very easy to get shit faced there, as you have to drink the entire bottle once you open it.
Read all about my time there in my book Accountants Can Cook
Ken
Oh the joys of Systembolaget at 6:45pm during the Friday rush for alcohol (note the enlightened 21st century extended hours), wondering if your queue ticket number will get called before it closed at 7pm for the weekend. It has got better - open until 3pm on Saturdays now, and while I was still living in Södertälje 3 years ago, they opened one of the new style ones where they even trust you pick the booze off the shelves and carry it to the checkout by yourself!
ReplyDeleteFinland... only ever ventured to Helsinki on the ferry - not a good mode of transport if you're looking for sober Nordic types. Particularly impressive are the efforts that went into exempting Åland from EU VAT rules to maintain the tax free status of the ferries.
As for my favourite part of the world, Norway, despite the £6.50 for a pint at central Oslo or Bergen prices, plenty of alcohol gets put away. Not been there on 17th May, but based on the average weekend in Oslo, I can imagine!
None of this semi-prohibition makes any difference. Part of the reason that Systembolaget has had to modernise is because with EU membership and the Schengen Agreement, so much cheap alcohol arrives in Sweden from continental Europe that it's estimated that only about 50% of alcohol consumed is purchased through Systembolaget. There's also a fair amount of booze made in illicit stills - but that's another story.
Of course state monopolies do have some advantages - Göran Persson's wife became the boss of Systembolaget while he was prime minister. Jobs for the boys, and in the spirit (pun intended) of Nordic gender equality, girls.
Anon & Grant, as someone who cannot be bothered with the crap that passes for entertainment on TV these days, I too have a fine collection of letters from Crapita. I'm still not convinced that phrase "WARNING AGAINST UNLAWFUL ACTION" makes any grammatical sense.
Helsinki seemed to be populated by people who could drink prodigious amounts.
ReplyDeleteWe once had a 12 hour drinking session starting at the client's office on a Thursday afternoon (much to my surprise and that of the manager whose larger than normal office was requisitioned for it) on the pretext that one of the people there, nothing at all to do with the group I was working with at the time, was about to go of for his longish summer holiday.
We started at about 14:30 iirc and I left them still drinking hard at about 02:15. We had eaten during that time but half the bill for that was booze. As I recall the bill, which I paid but it was agreed was to be invoiced back on expenses, came to about £1000 for 12 of us. That would have been back around 1990 give or take a couple of years.
I often thought that people in Sweden, whilst enjoying their tipple, were much less ardent drinkers than the Finns. For many a couple of beers would see them struggling.
The Norwegians seemed especially proud of their Jul Ol. Though I spent less time with them tan with the Swedes and Finns and missed most of the likely celebration days.
One customer's project manager was married to an Irish lady and duty free imports of Irish Whisky were always welcomed.
All back in the days when flying was still almost a pleasure and the duty free savings on the way home made the entire trip worthwhile.
Most of my Stockholm visits left me stranded out in the business suburbs but I recall one when the entire client project team, partly because we as vendor had a larger than normal contingent on site, went on a spree into the city and ate at an interesting restautrant whose name escpaes me just at the moment. Basically it was a large open cooking unit with most of the seating being a sort of communal bench along one wall. Spare chairs hung from hooks on the wall. There was a single though large unisex toilet at the end of that side of the eating area and at busy times it was expected that double occupancy would apply - the next two people in the queue basically. Or at least that is how I remember it.
Unusual I thought, ensuring that I drank slowly that night ...
You probably know of it. I did see a review some years later in an in flight magazine so I guess it survived for a while, unlike many.
f the TV inspector asks to see inside your home, refuse and demand that he gets a Search Warrant.
ReplyDeleteEventually the police will get sick of him.
Anything for the quiet life, eh?
Yes Pietr,
ReplyDeleteSearch warrant or ram raid are the only two options available to them.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteNorwegians can't break EU rules because they had the good sense not to join.
This is scandalous! I was always of the opinion that the Sunday morning hangover was more than just retribution for having partaken of a Bacchanalian debauchery on a Saturday night and I was always quite happy to have this admonitory lesson driven home to me at least once a week. I'm a slow learner of course. Now I find that I'm to be earholed just for being a bit squiffy. It's almost enough to make me hang up my drinking boots (almost ... but not quite) This bloody country is fast becoming a Teetotalitarian Regime! Bastards! :o(
ReplyDeleteJesus Christ- England is turning into a police state!!
ReplyDeleteThank god I live in Scotland, it's much better up here.