Though the Daily Mail hysteria has abated, its malign effect
Levying taxes on a whole swathe of pubs if one of them is consistently misbehaving seems the logic of the madhouse. Why should those who retail responsibly pick up the bill because rival pubs are undercutting their prices and serving customers they wouldn't?
It's not just the Daily Mail and addle-brained politicians who are to blame. The police's new mantra is "the polluter pays" and in their eyes that means pubs and clubs must cough up for late-night policing costs.
As one justification, they cite the example of football clubs, where the principle of paid-for-policing is long established. But the analogy fails to convince. With football, there's obviously just one "polluter", the club staging the match, and it's fair it should contribute to policing costs. It can't control its own or other clubs' spectators. It needs the help. With the trade, though, most circuit pubs and bars are trying very hard to control their customers. Why, therefore, penalise them when one or two venues get it wrong? It's logical to penalise the few misbehaving places, but not the rest.
The truth is that we wouldn't be discussing these problems if the police had done their job properly in the first place. All along the police have had powers to control and close down bad pubs. As Nick Bish asks in discussing with the MA this week his brave and challenging opinion column in the ALMR's latest newsletter we hear about all the assaults that take place in city centres, so where are all the arrests? Why are the police so handcuffed by red tape that they dread arresting people?
It's crucial that one of our nation's great and good looks at the paperwork demands of modern policing. And if they still decide the police need more resources, give it them, but out of the public purse. Meanwhile, please let's ditch all talk of ADZs and concentrate instead on making business improvement districts work. Forget Mail lies and focus on where the future lies.
