Compare and contrast news

An unusual opportunity arose on the breakfast news this morning both Breakfast and GMTV did a piece on the funding to tackle under-aged drinking. GMTV had a reporter out on the street and did an interview with the widow of someone killed by drunken 'yobs'; Breakfast had two community workers being interviewed on the sofa.

Apparently the incidence of under-age drinking increases during the Summer holiday, gee who'd have thunk it. Police can use the discriminatory powers to move on groups, yes discriminatory because they specifically target a select group of people based on a single term (age) the heading in the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 being:

Dispersal of groups and removal of persons under 16 to their place of residence

Imagine the outcry if it had been "Dispersal of groups and removal of ethnic minorities to their place of residence". And no it's not just a separate specialist section of the dispersal part; under Part 4 "Dispersal of groups etc." it's the only section that actually details dispersal.

Anyway the police like it; except it turns out that when they escort these young people home they find no parents because they're out drinking too (supposition there) and this was uttered in disgusted tones by the GMTV reporter - yep if your under-16 is out with friends you are now expected to remain at home. So that'd be no you can't leave them alone, no you can't take them to the pub, and no you can't send them out while you go to the pub - congratulations you're a new parent welcome to 16 years of effectual prison.

Finally the police seem to enjoy confiscating alcohol, powers granted to them under the Confiscation of Alcohol (Young Persons) Act 1997 do I even need to point out what would happen if that "Young Persons" was changed to something else?

What is still truly amusing is that despite all this it is still not illegal for an under-18 to drink alcohol. Surely instead of these piecemeal laws a simple ban would be more logical? Yeah except that would affect the middle-upper classes who are quite happy giving their children alcohol as part of a meal etc. as well as all those sodden riff-raff on the streets and we can't have that can we.

At this point I'd like to sincerely applaud the council powers that allow them to set areas in which public drinking of alcohol is prohibited. This can be used to target specific areas and applies to anyone while allowing drinking in private or in designated beer gardens etc. keeps the drinking contained and as an effect helps prevents under-age drinking.

Of course the true solution would be remove the age-limit on the purchase of alcohol. Stupid that you can be a wage-earner (and tax-payer) at 16 yet be unable to spend that money on legally-available goods (or vote for that matter).

But nope alcohol is eeevil, eeevil I tells ya and we must protect our innocent little cherubs from it's devilishly seductive charms. The assumption is that removing the limit will see the lower-classes plying their children with booze, that said children will be out all night on the piss (as if those likely to aren't already), that they'd hurt themselves or others and other consquences (all of which also applies to over-18's).

So we're never going to have a rational debate on this and we'll see more of our money and more laws being introduced to tackle this 'problem'. Yay?