Joseph Goebbels would be taking his hat off to those cunning propagandists at the Daily Mail group. If you're going to lie, lie big. And that's certainly what the journalists working up the 24-hour drinking hysteria stories have been doing feverishly in the past week.
As we all know, 24-hour pub opening is a complete misnomer. Not a single pub in the country will be open for anything like that. Yet that's not stopped the Mail's executives giving its readers the impression that all hell will break loose soon when every pub in the country ceases to ever close its doors.
Quite how the Mail thinks binge drinking would be eradicated if the Licensing Act was repealed is not made clear. The truth is that bringing in the new licensing regime can play a crucial part in tackling irresponsible drinking as long as three things happen.
First, local authorities need to be crystal clear about their drinking strategy, and decide just how much late-night drinking their towns can safely contain. This is a golden opportunity to review licensed retailing, and although the concept of "saturation" is going to be open to challenge, we all know it's just not sensible for too many pubs to be competing in a small area. Secondly, the British Beer and Pub Association's long-delayed promotions code needs to become standard practice throughout the nation's pubs. Ending forever two-for-ones is a very strong measure, and Government backing would help ensure that the promotional stupidities some retailers have indulged in would go. Thirdly, the police need to be far more active in targeting troublemakers and dealing with them. In binge-drinking TV documentaries, officers seem just to smile at the lunatics they encounter and wave them on their way. The idea floated by Tony Payne of imposing Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos) on repeatedly drunken offenders would soon have an impact on the circuit.
The important thing now for the Government is to stick to its guns and not bend to the Mail and the equally-deluded Tory leader. Tessa Jowell has done well to resist Home Office demands, and she has the prime minister's ear. The trade can help her case by calmly pointing out why we wanted longer hours in the first place to treat the nation's drinkers as adults, and help drinkers become adults.