Less than a week after the new Mayor of London announced a ban on alcohol consumption on public transport in the capital, the Minister of the Interior bustles up with a similar proposal, but applying to all public transport nationally.
Joyless Jacqui scrambled onto Boris’s bandwagon quicker than Blair used to jump when Bush barked. It’s just something they are “considering” at the moment, but has the government ever given consideration to any illiberal measure and concluded it was not its cup of tea? So expect it to become law sometime within the remaining life of this malign regime.
It’s just too tedious to debate whether the London ban is acceptable because the journey times are never going to be long, or the national ban unworkable due to already overstretched police resource. The only points worth noting are as follows.
First, neither of the main political parties is above using bans on just about anything in order to be seen as more virile than the other. Expect a full scale bans race resulting in stockpiles of bans of mass desperation as an election nears.
Second, politicians (of any hue) just don’t get it. We want to see criminal activity addressed when it occurs (and many of us would like the state to do something about why it occurs too). We don’t want the window dressing of banning activities that are sometimes present when crime is commited and sometimes are not.
Tags: alcohol, bans, boris johnson, jacqui smith, liberty, transport, uk
