Uk Licensing Laws

Bluetonic

I for one can't wait to track down a 24 hour pub on the next trip over.

Anyone know if any establishments up north have gone for the extended or open all (hours) hours?

p.pete

I'm trying to find some decent figures on this - so far I've seen that one third of pubs and clubs will increase their hours but not too many seem to have applied for 24 hours licences.

Of places that have applied for 24 hours most seem to be off-licences, so I'm not sure how large the impact is going to be. I'll be in London this weekend so hopefully there's some noticeable difference...

<edit>

Found this in the mirror:

"At least 56,000 licensed outlets across England and Wales have applied to sell late alcohol. But only 1,121 - less than one per cent - have 24-hour licences. Of those only 359 are pubs or clubs."

rubadub

Thats what I dont understand, the application. Do they have to pay more for an all night licence? It is a simple matter of supply and demand. Newsagents are allowed to open 24hrs here, you may only find the odd one and it does a fair bit of business since it is the only one open. It is not economical for them all to stay open, staff would have to be paid more, you may even need security for late night drunks.
The people drinking dictate how many pubs will stay open late. A pub near me is closed until after lunch now, obviously the turnover did not give enough profit to pay overheads and staff.
I am sure there would be a uk equivalent of boards to let you know of which boozers are open late

p.pete

rubadub wrote:

I am sure there would be a uk equivalent of boards to let you know of which boozers are open late

I still haven't found it

noby

I guess, seen as the closing time is quite early, that a lot of pubs just want an extra hour or so and close at midnight or 1am.

A pub near me is closed until after lunch now

A lot more common outside Cities, I would imagine. My local doesn't open 'til 6pm midweek now. I know others who open at 7pm, admittedley these are country pubs

The Sweeper

The pubs I know of that have taken advantage of the licensing laws have mostly applied for late licenses to serve drink until 1am. This seems to fit with many of the late bar licenses in Ireland. 11pm winter closing (10.30pm on a Sunday night) has never made a vast amount of sense to me. In Ireland I used to meet people in the pub quite happily around 8.30/9pm. Over here that was when half of them are off home!

I don't think the 24-hour drinking thing will really make a vast difference. It might mean the demand for taxis goes up though, as the pubs keep serving until 1 and 2am instead of turfing you onto the street in time for the last bus...

hoody

Strange decision
Already enough problems with booze related trouble etc.
I don't know how more time to drink is going to change how people drink. Also the 24hr places will surely be the place to go once everywhere else closes.
24hr off licences is a joke, imagine being able to buy a bottle of vodka when yer already drunk off your face.
They'll regret it I think. It's just more money for the pubs, clubs and offies and more social problems from binge drinking.

rubadub

hoody wrote:

Strange decision
Already enough problems with booze related trouble etc.
I don't know how more time to drink is going to change how people drink.

the whole idea is to REDUCE booze related trouble. It would drastically change how people drink. Closing time is when the trouble happens, why? very simple people are flaming drunk at 11, still with pints inside ready to take effect. Then what happens, "only 1 hour left lads, get the vodkas in", then last orders, triples all round (the earlier pints have still yet to take effect). All bail out of the pub at the same time and have fights in overcrowded takeaways, buses, taxi rank queues.
In boozy resorts in spain etc I have not seen the same violence ususally because they open so late. There is no "last order" culture if there is no closing time!, I remember leaving the pub on holidays when I was starting to sober up, people are not sitting at 5am saying, off home now, lets get 2 rounds of triples in. People here are still in full flight at closing time and lash whiskey down like water.

hoody wrote:

I don't know how more time to drink is going to change how people drink. Also the 24hr places will surely be the place to go once everywhere else closes.

Of course they will, whats the problem. Not all will stay open 24hrs, it is not economical, the later it gets, the fewer will stay open, just like a resturaunt, pharmacy, newsagent etc. They will stay open if it is worthwhile, i.e. if they can get a profit while paying staff and overheads. I would imagine dublin would only have 1 or 2 places still going at 7am, but these would be fairly full, it would give shift workers a nice full pub to go to. Many of the early houses in dublin are fairly busy in the morning, and it is not just a bunch of drunks still going from the night before.

hoody wrote:

24hr off licences is a joke, imagine being able to buy a bottle of vodka when yer already drunk off your face.

I can do that right now, get pissed at 2pm and buy a bottle. Why should the time people head out be instructed by the government. What about shift workers who want a pint after work like a lot of other 9-5ers. I think in the first month or so people will go overboard, but then slow down when the gimmick wears off. But in that first month I would just imagine more drinking, I would still expect far less street violence as people will be leaving at staggered times.

The Sweeper

Bumping this over to humanites actually, it's more about the social impact of licensing laws than it is about the taste, price and drinkability of alcohol.

Imposter

hoody wrote:

Strange decision
Already enough problems with booze related trouble etc.
I don't know how more time to drink is going to change how people drink.

It works on the continent where people usually drink slower and as a result generally don't get as drunk. Over here (Austria) the pubs stay open until 4am, if there's customers and the barman wants to stay, and by that stage they are pretty empty as people have generally gone home before then. Drink is available 24hr if you want it but there is nowhere near the same attitude to drink that exists in Ireland and the UK.

The advantages of being open so late is that everyone doesn't pile out at the same time. It is also easier to get seats and places are not as crowded as people don't all come in and leave at the same time.

Xterminator

Yeh, one of the big things it will do is stagger the outflow of thousands of drunks onto the streets of the city centres, and the temple bars.

There wont be the queues for taxis and buses.

That way they wont all congragate in the nearest Supermac's , and bite lumps out of each other's ears etc.

And thats not evn taking account of the removal of the 'last round effect' which should help too.

X

whiskeyman

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4466864.stm
Expect similar media stories about journos trying a 24-hr binge over the next day or so...

growler

I don't think this is going to make a great deal of difference to a lot of people , certainly in the part of London where I live, it has been possible to both buy drink from shops and drink in pub lock-ins for as long as anyone would want. Most of the pubs around me have added a few hours to their opening, usually til 1 or 2am, and one has gone 24hours 7 days a week. The new 24 hours pub is, of course, the one that you could be assured of trouble in on a normal night , I fully expect even more fights to happen now as this will concentrate all the idiots in one place post 2 am.

I was quite happy to sit in my local last night til 1am but the while I can understand the governments *idea* that 24 hour access to booze will ultimately lead to more responsible, paced, drinking I also think that they were wrong to allow 24 hour pub opening. Personally, I would have thought it wiser to allow pubs to open til 2ish but can't see any societal benefit to keeping public houses open all night, I would have opted to allow shops to sell boooze 24 hours (or for 2 hours after closing) and so allow people who want to party on to feck off to someone's house to continue their drinking without the opportunity for meeting others in a similar state when spilling pints / looking at my girlfriend / wearing the wrong colour etc. can lead to pointless confrontation and violence.

Should be an interesting weekend, and in the interests of social anthropology, I plan on making an indepth study of the impact of these new laws.

Maskhadov

Will it work ? did they get it right and us get it wrong ? well im glad were not the circus of europe. Those pictures of drunken english people on the streets is nothing short of a national embarassment

amp

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

Bumping this over to humanites actually, it's more about the social impact of licensing laws than it is about the taste, price and drinkability of alcohol.

It seems to be about one persons quest to find a 24 hour pub actually and not the basis of an intelligent debate.