Every time we create a new law to protect one individual it has the effect of disadvantaging another individual. This is not just a philosophical belief it is a reality. Sometimes they might say ‘I am stretching the point a bit’ but when one has to consider the impact of any law one may often apply what I call the ‘what if’ rule and as Mythmania is my specialty I reserve that right.
We enact drink-drive laws, quite rightly, to prevent drunks from getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle or any other form of transport – even horses, and hurting other people or animals either deliberately or accidentally.
In all the fervour and the knee-jerk reactions to prevent people from killing themselves on the road through the misuse of alcohol we may not see the whole picture and the flow on effect of the introduction of these rules. I may have to explain that I am totally against the free-for-all that the selling of alcohol has become. This drug is just as dangerous, if not more so as any other and to allow its sale so openly to anyone with the money is just wrong. I am a drinker that is true, and I may sometimes have more than I should. The odd fact that I only drink in one hotel is irrelevant to this story.
Hotels and Social Clubs, in my estimation, like any community gathering place carry with them certain unwritten rules of behaviour if you wish to be able to continue enjoying the conviviality and the atmosphere. To break any of these rules usually has the result of you being taken care of’ by those around you and as a result one is forced to behave in a manner acceptable to other patrons. In my case, in a town with less people than days in a year, one stands out if you dare breach the local customs.
This ‘control’ in hotels usually established by the publican means that if you do drink too much then advice to stop drinking is usually enforced and back-up by other drinkers. Whether or not one has done the R.S.A Course which usually just means you know when people are pissed and should be refused service, just common sense really, the person dispensing the alcohol usually knows when the customer should stop and it’s not after a certain amount of drink either for different people have different tolerances and differ in their reactions. Some get violent, others go quiet and still others just drop top the floor unconscious. In the case of some females a sign of drunkenness was how far they threw their dress over their head and danced the ‘fandango’.
To cut a long story short, when the majority of people drank in a hotel, rules applied which did not necessarily apply if you got pissed at home. Most commonly it was restricted to ‘alcoholics’ that drank too much everywhere. The Salvation Army was always adept at locating an alcoholic. All that coin box shaking and rattling was not just for the collection of money and selling the ‘War Cry’. How long it took and the accuracy of your aim getting a coin into the box was a telltale sign of sobriety.
Over the last few decades there has been a slow change in peoples drinking habits because of the introduction of drink driving laws and the increasingly harsh measures being applied to prevent people from continuing to drink and drive. The effect of more drinking at home has meant less social control and censure by peers and subsequently less self control. In the pub you got a bunch of fives applied liberally to the nose, at home the reverse has begun to apply and it is long suffering women and children who now cop the brunt of the bunch of fives from an out-of-control drunken mate.
It might be prudent at this point that to suggest the abuse is not strictly confined to the male of the species but where I say men in this case I should really be saying them so as to include all three genders. My point is that away from public gaze a drunken person can perpetrate all manner of heinous offence upon family and friends in privacy and of course this includes vulnerable children.
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