huh? banning the pint glass...

[Mike70]

yet another in a long, long string of crazy ideas from the chuckleheads running the UK. this one is a doozy for sure http://www.loweringthebar.net/2009/0...tic-pints.html lowering the bar is a great site by the way. it looks at law and legal issues in a humorous, often flippant manner that is a nice change from stuffy ass legal sites.

[SymphonicX]

ahh there's been plastic pint glasses in most places, especially in peak times - for a while now... As someone who got a glass smashed into my face when I was 18, leaving a permanent (but not serious) scar on the left side of my face, I'm all for it personally... (back story: I was in pub with mates, we were a bit loud and boistrous, but the pub was a bit dead so we left - a guy followed us out, tapped me on the shoulder and asked "where is your mate?" before smashing the glass into my face...I pushed him into the road and it all kicked off and I realised that my face and neck was drenched in blood - luckily there was a hospital across the road so I got stitched up....great first date though!!!! it WAS unprovoked - we were just having a good time out and made absolutely no threatening comments or behaviour, we were just laughing and joking - turns out the guy had a habit of randomly attacking people and was seen a week later looking to do the same to someone else.)

[Mike70]

ahh there's been plastic pint glasses in most places, especially in peak times - for a while now... As someone who got a glass smashed into my face when I was 18, leaving a permanent (but not serious) scar on the left side of my face, I'm all for it personally... let me ask you another question then and you might be able to give an excellent answer: why is person on person violence, usually in the form of assault, so common over there? the rate of assault in the UK is 8.5 TIMES higher than in the US.

[SymphonicX]

Easy - alcohol! Cheap and easy to obtain alcohol, a fundamental lack of morals surrounding it and 24 hour drinking laws. Coupled with many other factors like instant gratification, the breakdown of community, media creation of the "bogeyman" (in recent times this is terrorists or those of different race), celebrity obsession and emulation, low education, and a predatory marketing system geared at selling alcohol to the younger generation. Binge drinking is something we're still struggling with, with kids being hospitalised with liver failure due to just ONE night's drinking! The alcohol problem over here is, to be perfectly frank, disgusting. You'll find that 90% of violent assaults are alcohol related - and anyone should see any town centre on a friday night for a true example of this...

[Mike70]

Easy - alcohol! Cheap and easy to obtain alcohol, a fundamental lack of morals surrounding it and 24 hour drinking laws. wait a second... 24 hour drinking laws??? what kind of sense that does make? there isn't any time when alcohol sales are cut off? wow, you're probably right about that being part of the problem. i'm all for a good time but there is a point when it's time to cut 'em off and send them home. this leads onto my next question: how prevalent is public drunkeness over there?

[SymphonicX]

Oh fucking hell its rampant on the evenings at the weekend...literally man some places are just foul. Blackpool town centre...evil! Girls pissing in the streets, yobs screaming england chants, just pure fucking morons falling all over themselves left, right and centre. What's sickening is a lot of people involved in this violent element are normally just ordinary people who go absolutely fucking mental on alcohol....now I may be a bit jaded because I don't drink at all - and it may be worth getting another opinion on the subject - however the public drunkeness aspect of the UK is a serious, serious problem... You may find this link interesting: http://www.thesite.org/drinkanddrugs...urdrinkinglaws you can apply for a 24 hour licence - not sure how popular they are though but what with the billion spent chucking flammable fluids down our necks I'd say it's a pretty sure-fire-winner.

[Mike70]

Oh fucking hell its rampant on the evenings at the weekend...literally man some places are just foul. Blackpool town centre...evil! Girls pissing in the streets, yobs screaming england chants, just pure fucking morons falling all over themselves left, right and centre. what a difference an ocean makes. being drunk in public is something that is simply not tolerated over here at all. if you are drunk in public, you go to jail (esp. if you are acting the fool). i lived in a college town for 5 years and the number of students i saw being arrested for being drunk in public was staggering.

[SymphonicX]

You can be "drunk and disorderley" but that only covers stupid or threatening behaviour - you can be merry, jolly and go out on a good ol' singsong and stuff like that and not be arrested - but as soon as it turns nasty then police tend to get involved - if they're around...which is rare...things do get out of hand quite often.... I hate it tbh...

[Tricky]

I get drunk most saturday nights, difference is me & my friends know how to behave ourselves even when intoxicated & we just have a good time, something these feral youths reaching the drinking age are unable to do. But there has always been the kind of people who go out just to pick fights & cause trouble, and there always will be unfortunately

[krakenslayer]

To be honest, I don't think the whole "getting assaulted by drunks" thing is as bad as many people make it out to be. I've been going out for years and never been in a fight. I think a lot of it depends ob where you go - I tend to drink in rock bars and the only trouble I've ever seen in one was a biker getting knocked out by a girl for making a lewd remark. A lot of the trouble seems to centre around trendy Yates's/Lloyds/All-Bar-One type places where the spikey haired, ironed shirt-wearing dicks congregate before hitting the clubs. Give them a wide berth and you'll be fine.

[Mike70]

I tend to drink in rock bars and the only trouble I've ever seen in one was a biker getting knocked out by a girl for making a lewd remark. too bad you didn't capture that one on video.

[krakenslayer]

too bad you didn't capture that one on video. I know - it was brilliant! She was a... larger lady. I'm not sure exactly what he said, but whatever it was, it was enough to cause her to leap over a table, knocking him over with the force of her charge, pin him to the ground and punch him in the forehead four times. I'd never seen such a big lady move so fast. To top it all off, HE got kicked out of the bar, not her. Apparently he'd been abusive to staff or whatever too. In a way, it would be entertaining if stuff like that happened more often.

[SymphonicX]

off topic slightly I saw this really horrible vid of a pool party - a girl is offended by something and she chucks a drink over this guy (she's wearing just a bikini, him in shorts and tee shirt I think), the guy reacts by sweep kicking the girl and she lands straight on her back, everyone sort of gasps....really awful.

[JDFP]

Really fascinating stuff. I used to think ALL Brits were intelligent, refined, and sophisticated when I was younger (think Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson from "Remains of the Day")... While this IS true for many, it's good to know that you folks are just as screwed up and even more screwed up when it comes to not being able to handle your beer. I sometimes watch "Questions for the Prime Minister" sessions just for a laugh when I see all the other MP's standing up yelling: "BOOO!!!" and hissing out loud and being as obnoxious as possible. Whoever stands up the fastest and yells loudest gets to speak! Wow, I couldn't imagine happening in our American Senate/House chambers, though it would be funny as hell.. j.p.

[SymphonicX]

Really fascinating stuff. I used to think ALL Brits were intelligent, refined, and sophisticated when I was younger (think Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson from "Remains of the Day")... While this IS true for many, it's good to know that you folks are just as screwed up and even more screwed up when it comes to not being able to handle your beer. I sometimes watch "Questions for the Prime Minister" sessions just for a laugh when I see all the other MP's standing up yelling: "BOOO!!!" and hissing out loud and being as obnoxious as possible. Whoever stands up the fastest and yells loudest gets to speak! Wow, I couldn't imagine happening in our American Senate/House chambers, though it would be funny as hell.. j.p. hehe I'm sure there's compliments in there!! It's a common mistake among americans to generalise the English as the sort of characters you see in Family Guy (Charles Bottomtooth) and all that...or Hugh Grant look a likes...argh. the reality is very different. Sure go to Cambridge and you'll get a lot of yuppies - but take a trip to Hackney and you'll see the real side of London...its not pretty, it's edgy, dark and dangerous...most importantly we are heavily multicultural in London and the UK, but unfortunately we're not short of morons...not at all. Click the link below for proof (it's relevant to alcohol)!! Even I have learnt to throw away a lot of misconceptions about the US in my life...I also thought some pretty generalising things about people from the US until I actually got to know a fair amount, through webboards, my job, and xbox live - you get a real sense of the variety of people both stupid and extremely clever that exist on your side of the pond...I guess we can all thank the internet for helping us to dispell our childhood perceptions..! This story may be of interest - either way click the link cos the picture is HILARIOUS!!!!! http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-...ep_Up_With_Men ---------- Post added at 06:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:30 PM ---------- PS at the bottom of the page on that link are links to other stories about the UKs booze problem...