Craster wrote:
Hmm - surely the point, though, is that that parental supervision is almost nonexistant in most cases? Banning it is clearly ludicrous, but if it's just being used as a bypass for the legal alcohol purchasing age, what's the sensible alternative?
It's not nonexistant in "most cases". Most parents don't have kids who get wasted in the local park and chuck cans at passers by.
And it's not being used as a bypass very much either, clearly, as the whinges from the politicos have been that shops and bars are serving underage kids all the time, not that little Johnny's mummy is giving him gin.
One of the problems here is the ridiculously mixed laws on the matter. I'm not 100% sure what they are (and I'm a lawyer, ffs), but it seems to break down that
(1) You're allowed to drink at home over the age of 5.
(2) You can drink in pub beer gardens and have some booze with dinner in restaurants if you're over, 16, I think?
(3) It's illegal to buy booze if you're under 18 or buy booze for someone who is under 18 if they're not your kid.
(4) It's all but illegal to drink in public if you're under 18.
So, what's the point here? What are they trying to achieve? It seems to me that kids drinking in and of itself isn't inherently wrong, or a problem (until now, of course). We're accepting that by allowing them to do it with their parents, so it's clearly not a health issue.
So if it's a public order issue, well. This thing about giving kids a criminal record for being caught drinking repeatedly - if they're not causing a disturbance what does it matter? And if they are, you can already arrest them for being drunk and disorderly.
On the public disorder side, I think we're sadly missing the local bobby here, to be honest. My wife's aunt's town used to have a local bobby who would bring the kids home and embarrass them in front of their parents. And he knew all the kids so could tell the shopkeepers who not to serve.