29 Jul 2008
Acceptable in the 80's?
The country is screwed. The economy is in the toilet and we're all facing a return to the days of yore. Going out hunting, clubbing things over the head and bartering with neighbours in the next cave for a cup of Mammoth Milk. Yes it's a return to the glorious recession days of the 1980's. Although born in the 80's, I wasn't acutely aware of economics so it didn't really affect me that much. I was too busy watching Gummi Bears and trying on Mother's heals.
One might turn to the bottle in times like this but fear not, our glorious government is on-hand to help nip any fun in the bud. They have decided that full grown adults can't be trusted to go out on their own and have introduced the wonderful Intoxicating Liquor Act 2008. From tomorrow this act becomes enforcable and teams of Thought Police Gardaí will be ready to help keep us all in line.
The Intoxicating Liquor Act 2008 has some interesting new regulations. The biggest of which relates to pub and pub closing times. From tomorrow, every night club in the land will close at 2.30am Monday-Saturday and 1am on Sunday. Read that again: every nightclub in the country. That's right. In effort to reduce the amount of drink-related public order offences the Ministry of Love Department of Justice has decided that throwing every customer out of nightclubs at the same time is a great idea. Hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets at the same time. Perhaps they think that everyone will pile out of clubs, form one big happy line and everyone will march home together requiring not taxi nor late-night feed to assist them on their journey.
Not a very likely outcome is it. I'd be willing to wager that public order offences will rise as soon as these new closing times kick in. This weekend to be precise! And come Tuesday morning people will be ringing Joe Duffy in droves to complain about some trouble they experience in town or how they found it impossible to get a taxi home (in this a city of 15,000+ taxis) because so many people were heading home at the same time.
There is another uglier side to these new regulations. In a time of economic uncertainty the government seem content in forcing people out of work. By enforcing 1am closures on Sundays and abolishing the Theatre License there are a number of clubs that are unfortunately going to go out of Business (Bukkake for instance - though it will still run on Bank Holiday Sundays). Not everyone works in a 9-5 Monday-Friday world. Why deny people who don't work Mondays (of which there are many) the chance of a night out? And for those who do work Monday why deny them a Sunday night out. If they want to go out and get drunk and be hungover on a Monday morning then so be it. It should be their personal choice and not the choice of policy makers because it's seen as being in the 'National Interest.'
In some regards our government is quite progressive (mainly thanks to the pushing of issues by the Green Party) but on issues like this it seems that it is quite content in pushing us back in time. The move towards a Nanny State is well and truly gathering pace.