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Brighton is famed for its nightlife - which all too often means binge drinking. So will the new licensing laws put an end to all that? Ben Bailey braved West Street to find out
It's Saturday night on West Street. The clubs have just kicked out, and it's heaving. There are blokes everywhere, sweaty, hungry and drunk. The girls, in their distressed denim all-season miniskirts, are no less pissed. Everywhere you look, there is flesh to be found. Either squeezed into boobtubes or stuffed between slices of pita bread. The kebab shops here will probably make more money in the next half hour than during the whole of the rest of the week. There are stomachs to be filled - vast quantities of alcohol to be soaked up. As the police presence testifies, the atmosphere here is always tense. Wherever you get groups of drunken men, you invariably get aggro. All it takes is one bloke to spill chilli sauce down another's Topman shirt...
I see no violence tonight, however. The taxis dutifully ferry away most of the clubbers, while the rest stagger up to the clock tower and disperse into the night. All that is left are the fag butts, flyers and occasional piles of unwanted semi-digested takeaways. Next weekend it will happen all over again.
"I hate Brighton on a Saturday night," says Paul Hailstone, 24, on his way home from what used to be the Joint. "It's a sin. If they napalmed the whole of West Street it would solve a lot of Brighton's problems." Much as you may be inclined to agree, this scenario is far from unique. Binge drinking is a national problem - or pastime, depending on your outlook. According to the Government, six million people do it every week.
It has to be said, however, that their definition seems somewhat unrealistic: it includes anyone who drinks more than double the Department of Health recommended daily limit. In case you need reminding, the recommended daily limit is 3-4 units for men, 2-3 for women. In other words, if a girl drinks three pints of Stella in the same evening she is, technically, on a binge. Is it just me or does this seem a little conservative? Maybe they need to get out more. You can't have a moral panic when most of the country is implicated. Either the problem is far worse than they think, or doesn't exist at all.
The statistics are, nevertheless, impressive. The Home Office claims binge drinking costs the country £20bn every year through healthcare, damage to property and loss of productivity at work (apparently 17m days a year are lost to hangovers). Although we don't drink as much in total as many European countries (curiously, Luxembourgers are the biggest boozers), we tend to do it in concentrated bursts. In most Mediterranean countries drinking is integrated into the lifestyle. It's something you do mainly at mealtimes, in moderation. In Britain we wait for the weekends, and then let rip. Both our bodies and our city centres suffer the consequences. So what can be done?
Despite the numerous associated problems, heavy drinking is sometimes seen as an endearing weakness in the British character - just another of those things, like the weather, that we put up with. Many hope the new licensing laws, and the option of extended drinking hours, will go some way to remedy the situation. Theoretically, when pubs are open later punters will no longer feel compelled to down their drinks quite so hastily. Staggered closing times will also mean there'll be less people pouring onto the streets at the same time. Judging from West Street tonight, this can only be a good thing.
Given Brighton's reputation for revelry - not to mention its status as the unofficial capital of hen parties - our city could well be the litmus test for the new laws. There are over 1,000 pubs, clubs and venues in Brighton and many of them have applied for later hours. All applications will have been collected by August 6, but the laws don't come into effect until November. Under the old system it was the magistrates courts that dealt with licence applications. Now that power has been given to local councils.
Don Turner, a member of the Brighton & Hove Council Licensing Committee, is cautiously optimistic. "We don't want to kill the party spirit in Brighton," he says. "We get eight million visitors a year through tourism. But we must apply the legislation very strictly. We'll stamp down on anyone who steps out of line."
There is a potential problem, however, in that our bingey habits will probably persist for some time before we get used to the changes. The transitional stage, therefore, may well entail the worst of both worlds: the same number of drinkers and more time for them to drink. "Maybe it'll take a period of 6-12 months to settle down, but I can't see any increase in danger," says Don. "Remember, even if a pub has applied for a later licence, it doesn't mean they'll have to open that late. The cost of staff may well mean they'll shut if it's a quiet night."
Those who envisaged the new laws inaugurating a culture of round-the-clock drinking are likely to be disappointed. None of the members of the British Beer and Pub Association intend to stay open all day. Pub hours might be a-changing, but not that drastically - at least not to start with. Rather than opening the door to unparalleled hedonistic opportunities, the licensing act is actually intended to put a cap on our excesses. The upshot is that pubs and clubs are becoming ever more tightly regulated. Many of the large chains have already signed up to a voluntary ban on happy hours and other cheap drinks promotions.
Jeane Lepper, who chairs the local Council Licensing Committee, welcomes the support from the industry. "If premises are not well run, young people are vulnerable," she says. "The clubs on West Street are particularly well run. I've been down there at 2 o'clock in the morning and was quite impressed."
Putting the onus on the proprietors to protect their punters is all very well, but it probably won't get to the root of the problem. The ultimate responsibility lies with the binge drinkers themselves. Why do they feel the need to punctuate the working week with two-day benders? The usual explanation "there's nothing else to do" just isn't true in a place like Brighton. Thousands of people come here every week for various reasons. Some come specifically to drink. Becky Hilland, 22, was here to celebrate her graduation: "I binge drink a lot. I fully admit to that. I only drink a couple of times a week, and when I do go out it tends to be to a stupid extent. Ultimately I can't help myself - it's just something that happens."
There's little the Government can really do to stop someone like Becky drinking, save wholesale prohibition. Extended opening hours, it seems, would have little effect. "At the end of the day, people have only got so much money," says Becky. "I'm not so keen on 24-hour drinking. I wouldn't stay up that long anyway. So I'm not bothered if they do it or not." Maybe Becky isn't the sort of person the Government is trying to target - after all, how many fights do you see between university graduates in ball gowns? But, if that's the case, it would suggest the problem isn't really drinking as much as what people do when they're drunk. Again it comes back to individual responsibility.
There's a lot to be said for the idea that alcohol simply heightens and reinforces certain aspects of your personality. If someone is aggressive or angry generally, that's going to come out when they're drunk, particularly if they are provoked. "It's all psychological," says Daniel Scriven, who works as a bouncer at Polar Central. "If someone's gonna start trouble, it doesn't really matter if they're drunk or not. Most people are okay if you're friendly to them. We rarely get trouble here, but you do get the odd twat."
Tom Sewell, 21, is an aspiring graphic designer and was also clubbing on West Street tonight. He believes binge drinking is motivated by a desire for release. "If you're unhappy with what you're doing," says Tom, "then you get fucked because you want to forget about what you do in the day. I'm not saying I'd totally stop drinking if I got the job I want, cos getting drunk is funny, but I'd definitely cut down." A study by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit in 2003 found that young, white, unemployed men are more likely to abuse alcohol. Interestingly, it also found that women in skilled jobs drink more heavily than other women. Make of that what you will.
The underlying causes of binge drinking are numerous. Quite possibly, in a different culture, they might manifest themselves less harmfully. In northern Europe, alcohol is heavily regulated, punitively taxed and imbued with moral significance. But it still has an illicit attraction. Most young people find the taste of alcohol repulsive, but they are spurred on by the thrill of doing something naughty. In France many children are allowed to drink wine, which may be why they don't end up undergoing the same stomach-churning coming-of-age rituals typical of British teenagers. The more alcohol is stigmatised, it seems, the more appealing it becomes. Perhaps we are still suffering a hangover from the days of Victorian repression. Mind you, in 1900 alcohol consumption in Britain was even higher than it is now. The youth of today, eh?
Britons spend £30bn a year on alcohol - £7bn of which is reclaimed by the Government in taxes.
Nearly 40m people in Britain consume alcohol - more than 90 per cent of the adult population.
The advertising budget for alcohol alone is three times the amount spent on treating alcohol dependency - enough to fund 170,000 detox places.
The city-wide public drinking ban introduced in Brighton in 2003 was the first of its kind in the country.
Young British women top Europe's binge league, downing an average 203 litres of alcoholic drinks a year - the equivalent of 270 bottles of wine.
Alcohol is behind 40 per cent of A&E admissions.
English under-16s consume twice as much alcohol as ten years ago and are more likely to get drunk than their European counterparts.
Brighton & Hove is one of the top ten cities in Britain for alcohol-related deaths.
copyright The Insight
2005 |
