Pubs & Bars to close at midnight?

[Pete]

Just reading on the DT website that proposals are afoot to stop selling alcohol at midnight - part of the government's drive to stop 24 hour drinking.

A bar owner on Corporation Street said "a midnight ban would kill us". But a leading licensing practice in the UK, reports that Chesterfield was likely to implement the orders and was already ready to do so.

It wouldn't worry me cos me and Mrs Pete are usually in bed by 11 o'clock... 

What do you think?

http://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/local/midnight_ban_would_kill_us_says_pub_boss_1_4257195

[Fly]

Won't this mean that everybody is pilling out of the pubs at the same time ?
I presume someone has looked into the cost of police on the street at:
A: Everybody out at 12am
B: People filtering out till 6am

Never had a reason to stay out while 6am personally 

[Stuart]

Filtering out versus one mad rush was one of the arguments put forward when the laws were changed, but there seems to be more alcohol-fed badness over a longer period - Corporation Street in the couple of hours around midnight is not pleasant.

For me, they can go back to the opening hours that were prevalent before this madness descended upon us.

[Pete]

Maybe policing between midnight and six is too expensive anyway.

Personally, I think there is something basically right about working during the day, having the evenings for recreation and entertainment and then sleeping at night. Just seems natural to me.

Plus as society goes more and more to 24 hour service (like some supermarkets etc) it means more people will have to work unsocial hours.

[Fly]

I've never been a night club type person, even in my younger years.
Finish work, goto pub, go home 

Obviously the bar owners would prefer the pi** heads still drinking around town till 6am.
But they're not the ones paying for all the disrupt outside the bar.

[Scimitar]

Whats wrong with what we did years ago on a friday? Finish work at 5pm, in the pub for half past, get the lats bus home.Why do people want to be drinking up to 6am. Its unreal. These people are obviously not at work/school/or whatever - they need to spend the daylight hours sleeping it off. So who are they?Thursdays offers on drinks make it better than fridays for example.
Is it me, or if we went back to pub liscencing hours as they used to be, maybe drinkers would fill the bars in the shortened  hours that they were allowed in, like when they shut at 10.30pm, or 11.00 on saturdays.
Sunday lunchtime pub hours were great- 12-2pm and go home for dinner(several pints later).
I'm sorry but 24 hour culture of drinking in town just promotes future alcoholism, as its teens apparently doing it,and many times on my way to work at around 5am there are young people displaying signs of drunkeness, and it does not seem right somehow at that time in the morning.
I just think its leading to a future when our present teenagers are going to end up with a drink problem later in life.
Stuff what the present owner on Corporation St thinks-he will have to change with the times just like everyone else has had to do.

[therealjr]

There's a different culture these days amongst the 'kids'. I work with a lot of 18-25 year olds and a lot of them will work till 9, 10 or even 11 then go home get changed and go out then.
If you think about it theres no difference in terms of the length of drinking time. An average Friday or Saturday night for me at their age was be in the local for 7 meet up with the mates, bus into town for 7.45-8 then either in the pubs till 11 (4 hours drinking) or the nightclub till 2 (7 hours). If the kids now don't go out till 11 then thats either 3 am or 6 am to them.
The only difference is instead of everyone ending up on the streets at 11ish or 2ish they are much more spread out.

Not sure if this is still true but I was also once told that Chesterfield Town centre is unique because people will go out and visit 8-10 pubs in an evening where as in other places they tend to visit no more than 2-3.

[Stuart]

I'm not sure if that's unique or not, John, but it struck me as surprising when I first moved up here from a quieter part of Portsmouth, where we tended to start and finish in our local, and might have nipped over the road to the next nearest one for a pint, but that'd be the extent of our adventures. Now and then we might have ventured towards areas of the city that had a greater concentration of pubs but it was a dangerous and exotic thing to do, since there was a perceptably tribal feel to the various districts.

I suppose a town centre pub doesn't attract a great "local" crowd through its being in an area where comparatively few people live. Still, until the 1989 reforms the ones in our town centre all had seats and tables to encourage folk to stay, and and had enough regulars to take part in pub sports leagues. The culture has changed, for sure, and I'm not easily persuaded that things are better for the introduction of what they laughingly call the "night-time economy."


And as for midnight closing killing off town centre pubs - I thought that was the job of the smoking ban? 

[Pete]

Good points Jon - but surely there are not enough people working odd hours to sway the decision.

Would be interested in knowing how much trouble there is between midnight and six o'clock.

[Alsatian]

.....................meet up with the mates............

You bragging you had mates?! 

[therealjr]

well ok I was more of a hanger on

[Pete]

Just found this:

"Since extended hours were introduced, there has been a 25% rise in serious violent offences committed between 3am and 6am. Separate figures from the British Crime Survey reveal there were 1,087,000 violent attacks by drunks in the first full year of the reforms – up 64,000 on the previous year. A person at a licensed premises is five times more likely to be a victim of violence. Official figures reveal a 33% increase in drink-related cases seen by accident and emergency departments in England since 2005."

http://bit.ly/bZVJnQ

[k4blades]

Though I agree with whats being said by many here, that opening hours should be restricted, interesting fact from tonight's Panorama. Though the amount of alcohol consumption has fallen in this country, admissions to hospital due to alcohol abuse is increasing. One of the reasons is the fact that much more drinking is done at home than previously, so dealing with that issue may also help to reduce some of the problems.
I don't know how you would do that though unless its through cost controls.

[Kent]

Talking to Some Youngsters, they seem to think, that there will be MORE Trouble if everybody
is Turfed out at the Same Time.
k4blades is Probably on the right track, many Youngster drink cheap beer at home
then go down Town From 10pm Onwards.

[therealjr]

The kids do drink at home first, they refer to it as front loading.
Doesn't surprise me that there has been a 25% increase between 3 and 6 because we all used to be tucked up in bed having gone home at 2.
Question is has there been a corresponding drop before 3?