If it didn’t mean moving away from family and friends, I’d move out of Scotland and go somewhere sunny. Seriously.
Mr Eugenides prints a story from the Mail on Sunday:
Scotland is set to become the first country in Europe to ban alcohol for under-21s as part of a radical shake-up of licensing laws. The controversial crackdown would also see all members of the public limited to only four alcoholic drinks per visit to a pub or club.
Presumably that four-drink limit doesn’t mean four bottles of wine.
As The Devil’s Kitchen puts it in his inimitable way:
I have been spending some time in Glasgow, a city in which you are not allowed to smoke inside public spaces and you are not allowed to drink outside in public spaces. And, from January, all pubs will have to adopt plastic containers instead of serving drinks in a glass. What the fuck is going on?
This country is leading the way in nanny-state, illiberal, totalitarian bullshit; it’s time to get the fuck out.
A bit later…
The daft glass ban has been shelved: it seems that after an “11th hour climbdown” by officials, the compulsory use of plastic glasses will only apply in venues open after midnight and in places with a history of “glassing” attacks.
And another thing…
It’s bad form to rant and rave without offering an alternative, so here’s mine: why don’t we take the radical step of, y’know, enforcing the laws we already have? Like the ones prohibiting the sale of alcohol to underage kids, or the ones about being drunk and disorderly in public, or the ones prohibiting the sale of booze to people who are completely and utterly pissed?