I see our kebab munching (only if surrounded by body guards), cannabis smoking (promoted to class B on Jacqui's personal recommendation...I guess she thought that she was still at school) ex teacher Home Secretary, Jacqui (she likes to use the short name) "42 days is not long enough" Smith, is keen to jump on the Boris Bandwagon.
Hot on the heels of Boris's announcement that he is to ban drinking booze on tubes and buses, she has decided to look into banning booze on trains.
One small fly in her oinkment, train journeys tend to be much longer than tube or bus journeys (ever suffered the 6-10 hour journey from London to Edinburgh?). Indeed, trains often have a drinks trolley flogging the stuff to their thoroughly fed up customers.
Whilst banning it on the tube and buses makes sense, as the journeys are much shorter and there are no facilities for serving it, drinking it or indeed pissing it away etc; banning it on trains is absurd.
How else am I meant to endure the journey from Croydonia to London, without my regular fix of a double G&T served in a non threatening plastic cup?
The majority of well behaved train drinkers should not be punished for the actions of the moronic, slack jawed, dribbling minority who misbehave on buses and tubes; usually because they are three sheets to the wind before they get on the tube, bus or train.
Smith should get off Boris's Bandwagon!
Maybe she needs to smoke something to calm down!
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I believe it is already illegal to drink on a bus.
ReplyDeleteEven paying inflated prices and having to drink from a plastic glass on a train is preferable to, sitting in a dirty carriage listening to muppets giving a running commentary on their mobile phone to someone back on Fraggle Rock.
A drink on the train is a good distraction from Nanny's world and I would hate to see a ban.
Nanny should let adults make their own decisions and take responsibility for their own actions. It is like a whole class being punished for one kid talking.
Nanny's mantra:-
Regulate it
Tax it
Ban it.
Let's wait now to see new threatening messages on the TV from Dot Gov telling us what else we can't do on trains now. All the messages amount to the same thing; Do as you're told or we'll have you. What ever happened to good old public information films?
I believe Tonk is correct about not being allowed to drink on a bus, even a privately hired bus.
ReplyDeleteAs for the trains, well, I don't use them often but a couple of year's ago a blagged a cheap ticket on 1st class for a round trip to London. On a late and almost empty train back to the midlands I was offered complimentary wine (no longer an aoption I understand) but as I was driving from the station had to decline.
Practically the only other passengers in the carriage were a group of about 7 or 8 who seemed to be local councillors of some sort judging form the loud conversation I could overhear. Half were drunk.
Needless to say they enjoyed the additional free beverage that came with 1st class travel. Also standing in the door area to smoke for most of the journey. Annoying for me as I was sitting next to the door which, being automatic, kept opening and closing.
The young Asian lad who was the steward for the carriage was verbally abused and ignored several times during the hour or so it took to reach Leicester, both for asking them to stop smoking and refusing just to leave several bottles of wine on the tables.
Judging by the loud mobile phone conversations and general chitchat the leader of the group led somewhat unedifying personal lives to boot. Probably at public expense I would guess.
Nanny really should get her own charges into line before blathering on about how the masses should behave.
But other than that I tend to agree that a long train journey absent the possibility for a small stress reducing refresher threatens to be a torture too far.
What next, no booze on river booze cruises?
No booze in the Palace of Westminster?
Pigs flying?
Grant
Nanny won't be deterred by the small matter of alcohol being available to buy on trains.
ReplyDeleteCigarettes were available to buy in pubs and clubs but Nanny banned smoking there.
Nanny's "Guide to Banning Alcohol" has already been written by the anti-smoking brigade.
Coming soon - withdrawal of drinks companies from sport sponsorship; junk stats linking drinking and driving, domestic violence and child abuse with alcohol; beauty spots becoming AlcoholFree Zones; insurance premiums inflated for drinkers of half a bottle a night of Rioja, and so on and so boringly forth with the message, as Tonk said, rammed home every ad break by earnest, shrill Dot Gov.
Joyce
Fearful self-flagellation has begun already.
ReplyDeleteDiageo is running pre-threatverts promising alternative 'nights to remember'.
Actually, the girl in the version where she gets drunk looks to be a hell of a good time, something which the miserable loser British hate.
Nanny will always attempt to crack nuts with a sledgehammer. The problem is not the drinking by all but the behaviour of some. Nanny is too thick to discern the difference and finds it easier to punish the many. The ban on handguns was based on this stupid "reasoning". Has it reduced gun crime? Has it fark. All it has done is irritate the many thousands of perfectly law-abiding gun owners and deprived them of the means to defend themselves against the Nanny-induced rising tide of criminal scumbags.
ReplyDeleteIf a nutter beat a woman (it's always got to be a female victim for maximum knee-jerk hysteria reaction) to death with a diving flipper in a high profile case, Nanny would seek a ban on diving flippers.
Instead of tackling the actual problem, Nanny tackles the fluff surrounding it. I find it hard to believe they can be so incredibly thick.
DoDG wrote:
ReplyDelete"Instead of tackling the actual problem, Nanny tackles the fluff surrounding it. I find it hard to believe they can be so incredibly thick."
I suspect there is a form of political eugenics to ensure that there are always enough candidates around.
Grant
Firstly it is we who are thick, for believing that their machinations are anything but careful, deliberate and fully thought out.
ReplyDeleteSecondly I think a good solution would be to introduce a form of national service; but only for ten-twenty minutes at a go. A copper would be able to designate people as deputies to assist him,and they would be legally obliged to help, with full legal indemnity for their actions until de-selected by official police communication.
Pietr,
ReplyDeleteNational service for what purpose in 10 to 20 minute blocks?
How would a copper being able to select deputies be of any use for anything? In which situations would that be theoretically acceptable and how would you train the copper to make selections and the selected to respond to their responsibilities?
I think there would need to be a regeneration of a sense of purpose and then a sense of moral purpose in society before the concept of appointing deputies would have the desired results.(Very Wild West though, so the concept might just work in the most lawless areas)
Anyway, I thought that was what PCSOs were about, in theory. Perhaps the only difference being that a copper dealing with some drunken yob might prefer a couple of the nearest nightclub bouncers to be involved rather than most, nay all, of the PCSOs I have seen parading the streets.
Grant
Yes anon. Coppers have no ability to judge, and we are all useless anyway.
ReplyDeleteKeep on repeating this as you are led to the killing floor.
Pietr.
ReplyDelete"Keep on repeating this as you are led to the killing floor."
Indeed, but which floor would that be?
The floor of a tube train?
Or perhaps the floor of an expensive property in an upmarket area of London?
Or maybe the floor of a police station cell somewhere?
My point is that you need to be rather sure that the solution will work better than what has gone before.
Nanny seems very bad at that sort of forethought. However I am not at all sure, based on recent events within the ranks of senior management on the police 'force' that Nanny's potential deputies offer a group that could do better, at least as far as social engineering is concerned.
Considering that many of them will have been fast-tracked through the system based on their degree holding status one would then have to wonder about the abilities further down the pyramid.
I am not at all keen to support the concept of control by Nanny's junior acolytes, their underlings and any YTS trainee who happens to be passing when the underling decides he or she wishes to operate mob-handed.
Take things back 40 or 50 years first and I may re-consider, though even those times were not without their problems at street level.
Grant
I'm disappointed for the first time with this blog. I enjoy a beer or two on the train with some friends on the way out to somewhere in London. We're always respectful of other passengers. Just because more people abuse rules on the tube than on the train doesn't mean it should be banned. I don't see why me consuming a few drinks before going into slightly overpriced clubs/bars should be banned simply because slightly more 'yoofs' decide to be stupid. MOst of the problems with alcohol on the tube stem from the journey home when you see some 'bird' head in between knees almost ready to wretch. This situation isn't caused by drinking on the tubes though.
ReplyDeleteAnom
ReplyDeleteThat's what I said:
"The majority of well behaved train drinkers should not be punished for the actions of the moronic, slack jawed, dribbling minority who misbehave on buses and tubes; usually because they are three sheets to the wind before they get on the tube, bus or train."
Ken