Mark Daniels: Who's Been A Barred Girl Again?
She's become infamous for being the first person in the country to be barred from every pub, club and off-license in the country, and the recently administered Drinking Banning Order has probably elevated her social status on Facebook much higher than any ASBO a 14-year-old has achieved, but I haven't been given any information whatsoever on the apparent ne'er-do-well that is Laura Hall.
From what I can gather, Laura likes a bit of a drink. And she's a bit of a trouble maker when she's had one. This is a bad thing and nobody in our industry wants their reputation tarnished by condoning such behaviour, and so the administration of a Drinking Banning Order - the first ever to be issued in the country - is a good thing.
The DBO is designed to curb Laura's drinking habit to the point where she's not allowed in any licensed premises in the country, isn't allowed to have alcohol in an unsealed container and isn't allowed to drink in public for the next two years.
But, from what I can also gather, Laura appears to look like any other pretty twenty-year-old on a night out and doesn't have a name like Penelope BottomStopper, so if - on a busy night at the bar - she were to present her ID to a harrassed member of bar staff, her rather ordinary name and contemporary looks would most likely mean that she would get served.
Why? Well, I might have just got back from a short family break and have a pile of post thicker than Mount Eyjafjallajökull's ash cloud to go through, but I - and therefore presumably every other licensed premises in the country - haven't received any official notification that this girl has received a Drinking Banning Order. No letter from my licensing officer has been sent and no wanted style poster has been issued for me to put up behind the bar and show my staff.
Indeed, if I hadn't seen her name and picture in The Sun - or several other media resources - I wouldn't even know this girl existed or what she potentially looks like.
Which means that, unless Laura Hall walks in to my pub and announces herself as the naughtiest drinking twenty-year-old in the country, I - and the rest of my staff - am not going to know who she is.
The DBO is a powerful tool that would appear to have been issued correctly in this case, and there's no doubt that more will be issued in the future, but Laura Hall's circumstances have only made headlines because it's the first such case. Future ones won't make the front pages and will eventually just end up as part of the Magistrate's Court Notices nestled in the deepest nether regions of local rags.
But unless publicans and off-license traders get issued with details of such notices, the DBO isn't going to be worth the paper it's issued on.
Meanwhile, the best that Laura can hope for is that she can convince her mates to nip down to the local Tesco on her behalf and buy her a litre of cheap Vodka so that she can drink herself in to a vomit-inducing stupor in the privacy of her own home.
