With record-setting temperatures across Europe, Britons have fled for beaches, parks and pools. But while the heat wave has pushed suffering city-goers outdoors, they haven’t left their famous bitters behind. And the surge in binge drinking, especially among young people, has led to calls for a dramatic changes to the nation’s pub culture.
Britons consumed an estimated 3 million more pints of beer last weekend than usual, according to brewers, as temperatures hit a record-breaking 100 degrees.
The tally wasn’t unexpected. However, the increase in young binge-drinkers who congregate in pubs in the evening hours is causing concern.
Now a government parliamentary committee has proposed a redesign of town centers to emulate their continental counterparts’ café cultures — and to cut down on the country’s booze intake.
When the summer sun sets on English towns and cities, entertainment venues “center around young people and alcohol, leading to associated problems of crime and disorder,” the committee said in a report published this month, adding that when most other leisure activities shutter around 6 p.m., “young people gather in ‘vertical drinking’ venues where there are few tables or chairs. They drink standing up, in crowded, bustling environments where music is played at high volume.”
The Commons Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee has urged Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to lead a campaign to provide an evening atmosphere more accommodating to people of all ages, drinkers and teetotalers alike.
InsertArt(2009453)“Activities with wide demographic appeal” such as stores, cafes, museums, and galleries should be urged to stay open later, and early bird discounts should be offered at cinemas and restaurants, the committee said. Diversification would open up the evening hours to a number of groups and individuals, watering down the quantity of intoxicated youths on city streets, it said.
EARLY NIGHT
English pubs currently close at 11 p.m., due to a law enacted during World War I to ensure that late-night boozing would not harm the war effort. But these days the law appears to encourage young people to binge drink right up until “last call.”
Restrictions on opening hours are likely to be abolished at the beginning of 2005, allowing licensees to choose their own hours of operation, as they do in most of continental Europe.
“The existing licensing laws don’t apply to 21st century society,” said a spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern, a national charity agency for alcohol abuse, but changing the law “is quite a complex issue,” she said.
Without a time restriction it is hoped that people will not feel the need to binge-drink, “but that kind of cultural change doesn’t happen overnight — it happens over a generation,” she said, asking that her name not be used.
Several surveys show Britons are some of the biggest imbibers in Europe, and the country’s Office for National Statistics reported earlier this year that an increase in binge drinking among young people, particularly women, has led to a significant rise in alcohol-related deaths in Britain.
“People in England, even the English in Spain, seem to be more visibly drunk (than continental Europeans). The English all stand out — it’s a pub mentality — English people drink to get [drunk],” said Temi Ogunsanya, a London designer who previously worked in the Spanish resort town of Marbella.
Hopes are high that a licensing change will promote responsible drinking, but Britons are wary that the law may backfire as it has in Ireland. Due to all-night bingeing and a rise in alcohol-fueled crime, the Irish government is currently attempting to reverse the law.
PURIFYING THE DRINKING ATMOSPHERE
Apart from a “Europeanization” — through urban redesign — of British habits, measures to clean up the drinking environment also are underway.
The seaside town of Brighton plans to become the first in Britain to ban smoking in pubs, clubs and restaurants. The resort town, southof London, was also the first to grant police the power to confiscate alcohol from unruly drinkers a month ago.
The parliamentary report noted that such unruliness is alienating other social groups, and preventing them from enjoying city centers and public places.
Jill Piercey, a 69-year-old retiree, said that while country pubs cater to families and the elderly, “In the towns, where the young congregate, the older people find it intimidating... . We older people find the young mass rather frightening, especially when they are drinking.”
The alcohol industry appears to coming to grips with the dangers of Britain’s bingeing.
Over the weekend, talking posters funded by British liquor producers began a test run in pub bathrooms, warning the inebriated against drink-induced intercourse. The posters play corny chat-up lines to show how alcohol affects one’s judgment of the opposite sex.
One of the advertisements seen in a ladies bathroom says: “When they made the alphabet they should have put U and I together.” It features a close-up of a man wearing a studded dog collar above the words: “If you do drink, don’t do him.”
MSNBC.com’s Jennifer Carlile is based in London.