The front page story in today's South Wales Echo was about the veteran broadcaster John Humphreys and his condemnation of binge-drinking culture after spending a night on patrol with police.This story isn't a shock to anyone from Cardiff.
The real surprise is that this story has not hit the headlines before today. Indeed, anyone who is from the city and is over the age of 30 won't go anywhere near the bottom of St Mary's Street on a Friday or Saturday night.
The question, of course, is whether such an image actually harms Wales or are we managing to keep this sordid secret to ourselves?
No such luck I am afraid.
Only last week, the Wall Street Journal, of all papers, ran a story about the UK's drinking culture and focused on Cardiff.
As the article notes,
"Such raucous partying routinely turns the weekend streetscape here in the capital of Wales into a scene from "Night of the Living Dead." Drunken young men and women stumble through streets fouled with trash and broken glass".
To be fair, the journalist does praise the police and is complementary, as is John Humphries, regarding the work they have to every weekend.
However, the Wall Street Journal article has an accompanying video which, to put it bluntly, is hardly an advert for the city of Cardiff.
So what are the parties promising to do about this?
Judge for yourself as this is what emerges from the four manifestos:
- Conservatives: Overhaul the Licensing Act to give local authorities and the police much stronger powers to remove licences from, or refuse to grant licences to, any premises that are causing problems. In addition, the Conservatives will (a) allow councils and the police to shut down permanently any shop or bar found persistently selling alcohol to children; double the maximum fine for under-age alcohol sales to £20,000; (b) raise taxes on those drinks linked to anti- social drinking, while abolishing Labour’s new ‘cider tax’ on ordinary drinkers; (c) ban off-licences and supermarkets from selling alcohol below cost price; and (d) permit local councils to charge more for late- night licences to pay for additional policing.
- Labour: State they have banned irresponsible promotions and strengthened police and council powers to close down rowdy pubs and clubs, cracking down on under-age and public drinking. We have brought in a right to petition local authorities to end 24-hour licensing where problems arise.
- Liberal Democrats: Support a ban on below-cost selling, and are in favour of the principle of minimum pricing, subject to detailed work to establish how it could be used in tackling problems of irresponsible drinking. Will also review the complex, ill-thought-through system of taxation for alcohol to ensure it tackles binge drinking without unfairly penalising responsible drinkers, pubs and important local industries
- Plaid Cymru: Call for a minimum price per unit of alcohol, initially set at 50p, along with stricter controls on alcohol advertising and marketing.
Given the broad consensus across all four parties, one would expect that this issue will be prioritised after the general election, but I won't be holding my breath.
Comments
lack of political will here like so many other sbjects with WAG
remains important to a significant proportion of the Capital's citizens,and their local communities of faith.
Media do not report it.
Surely the logical thing would be to ban the culture of drinking during TV soaps and sit-coms...and since cigarrette advertising has been banned, why allow the promotion of alcohol, which as can be seen, has become a blight upon our young people.
The corporate brewers and pub chains should be told to come forward with proposals...or else!