News Article Comments : Good sense prevails for pubwatch

Morning Advertiser has always championed pubwatches. We believe it’s essential a licensee can bar anyone he or she considers unfit to drink in their pub.

And we’ve always upheld the right of licensees to group together to keep troublemakers out of every pub in the locality, if that’s what it takes to uphold safe and pleasant conditions for decent customers. We helped form National Pubwatch more than 10 years ago to assist and strengthen pubwatches all round the country.

At a time when the industry is still under intense scrutiny by politicians, it would have been madness if a High Court judge had found last week against pubwatches.

Mercifully, common sense prevailed and the presiding judge ruled that pubwatches are legal and can’t be challenged by embittered individuals, who — no doubt for very good reasons — find they can’t buy a drink in the pubs they used to frequent.

It might have been so different. In these days of bizarre human rights sanctioned by the European Court of Jus