Hamish Champ: Banning booze on the Tube is a good thing

Part of me wishes I'd been on the London Underground on Saturday night. Thousands of people drank an assortment of beer, wine and cocktails to mark the end of an until recently unassailable human right, that of being able to drink booze on the tube.

It sounded a real hoot.

Meanwhile the ban on carrying opened containers of alcohol on public transport in London starts today. And you know what? I reckon it's a good thing too.

A number of revellers on Saturday night, interviewed by the media, said they were against the new restrictions. They made frequent references to public drinking as being a part of our culture for centuries. Which it certainly has.

I'm not against public drinking full stop, but I do think there's a time and a place. And buses and tubes aren't them.

I remember after Boris Johnson - hardly a man bent on curtailing civil liberties, one would have thought - announced the ban some people said this was a bad start to his mayoral career. That the restriction was precisely the sort of Nannyism that this country could do with less of. More a Labour kinda thing than that of an avowed Conservative politician, the dissenters rumbled.

In the next breath these commentators condemned - rightly, in my view - those who lally-gag about in car parks and on street corners, drinking high-strength spirits with no other aim than that of getting out of their skulls, though sadly not to the extent that they are rendered incapable of launching a violent assault on some hapless passerby.

But you can't have it both ways. It might prove a bit of a pain that as law-abiding adult I now can't quaff a bottle of 1967 Chateau Laffite while travelling on the number 47 bus, or savour a nice Belgian beer on the Bakerloo line, but I think this restriction on my human rights is a small price to pay for getting towards a public transport system that people can feel safe(r) on.

Yes, I know not everyone who drinks alcohol, not even those who drink to excess, is a threat to me on the tube or a bus, just as not all violence committed on a person is perpetrated by those under the influence of booze.

But I reckon the ban is still worth it in the longer run.

As for policing it, soon enough people will just accept it as something you don't do, like smoking on the tube has been a no-no since the King's Cross tube station fire in 1987.

So it is with a heavy heart that I accept that Boris has done something right. My spirits are lightened, however, by the thought that this will probably be the only decent thing he'll do during his four years in office...