Drink Talking: David Stocken
David Stocken of The Dolphin, Worthing, on binge drinking and why it's time for the scaremongering to stop.
How can we get some publicity to explain that our pub is not anything like the picture of binge-drinking you see on the television every five minutes?
We do not have much violence or drunken behaviour and we police ourselves very well.
The general public is being scared into believing that 24-hour drinking will make their local pub, similar to town-centre "supermarket-style" places. Why are we being treated as if we were the cause of all of this cock-up?
The binge-drinking that goes on in cheap town-centre licensed premises is illegal and has been so since licensing began.
When you have a pub like mine, you have to clear up all the rubbish outside from the two off-licences opposite and the petrol station a quarter of a mile away. All of these seem to sell drinks to anyone with hardly a raised eyebrow.
Irresponsible issuing of licences has led to the current situation, I did not create it and I do not want to see 13 to 18-year-old kids getting drunk in the streets. If people go to a local pub, such as mine, they enjoy a sociable drink and they are not actively encouraged to pour as much lager or vodka down their throats as possible.
I have a further question. Why do petrol stations want to sell alcohol 24 hours a day? Why are they allowed to? As taxpayers we spend several billion pounds per year trying to discourage people from drink-driving. So why put cheap beer in front of them when they are in a petrol station?
In my pub I have people who come and have a few drinks, they hardly complain about anything, they are very rarely a problem to me, my staff or each other.
I want to keep these people, some of whom have drunk in my pub for 40 or more years. Now I am being told that I have to throw these old people out on the street if they smoke and I am serving food. I would rather go to prison for not paying the childish fines than destroy a way of life for these people.
There will never come a time when the politically correct brigade will pay my extremely high overheads, it just won't work!
Who are the people making the rules? They are not making these rules in the interests of most pub-goers or pub owners.
