The Portman Group, an organisation established in 1989 by the UK's leading alcohol producers, with a role to promote responsible drinking; to help prevent alcohol misuse; has reported strong evidence to show that ‘we’ (the great British public that is) are changing our relationship with alcohol!
The politicians of course, ever seeking to boast of their wisdom, try to take all of the praise for achieving this; with alcohol consumption falling, underage drinking falling, breath-test positives falling and alcohol related accident numbers and violence also declining.
However, the real praise should go to those great British Publicans who through greater professionalism, training and education ensure that alcohol is sold responsibly in the 50,000 + pubs in the UK.
The dramatic growth in food sales in pubs has changed the whole atmosphere in so many pubs; legislation has also forced pubs to comply with more and more red tape and stringent penalties for any irresponsible alcohol retailing activity. I just hope that drinking at home (where consumption is totally unsupervised) is not taking too much out of our treasured world famous ‘British Pub’ heritage! ‘Pre-loading’ at home often sees intoxicated customers arriving at the pub having not bought a single half of bitter there! Leaving the publican to deal with the consequences.
The reported trends are of course good news, whilst I have no doubt that other reports to counter this published evidence are on their way and will show we are all on our way to Armageddon through ‘the evils of drink’.
The anti-alcohol brigade is alive and well and will latch onto any shred of a statistic proving alcohol to be at the root cause of all societies problems!
Watch this space!
Martin Read CMBII
Managing Director of Inn-Dispensable Personal Licence Courses
No comments:
Post a Comment