Am I bovvered though? Do I look bovvered?

(Yes, excuse the Catherine Tate reference, but at least it’s a current one).

I am one of the few (I think) people in the UK who doesn’t give two hoots about the new licensing laws, allowing bars to serve all night.

This is partly because to all intents and purposes I’m a non-drinker. Sure, I like a glass of wine as much as the average person, but I rarely go out to bars at night, preferring to spend my hard-earned cash on coffee and soft drinks. Oh – and I’m usually driving, so can’t drink.

In some ways, though, the 11pm ‘time gentlemen please’ is an anachronism. With modern society being focussed on choice, this one area where we don’t have any. I can choose from over 20 types of yoghurt in the supermarket but I can’t drink a glass of wine in the pub after midnight? How very odd.

I’m not one of those people who thinks this’ll lead to more binge drinking. Let’s face it, binge drinking is fashionable now. Like tattoos and Burberry tops there are certain sectors of the community for whom this is the way to recreation. Like the Burberry and the tattoos this fashion may pass. Certainly very few of my aged 30+ friends binge drink any more.

Nor am I of the school of thought that it will reduce violence by stopping the mass exodus of lagered-up youths onto the street at 11.35. Some lagered-up people fight no matter where they are, street, pub, club or front room.

So then. I’m slightly bemused by the ‘residents’ who are protesting about the change in the licensing laws. It seems that they object to the behaviour of the drinkers at 11.30pm. Why do they think it would be any worse at 3am? It’d be later, sure, but will they urinate any more vehemently into their doorways? Will the extra hours drinking produce tidal waves of urine for the residents to fight back?

Dunno. Noone likes drunken oiks carousing outside their bedroom window, but I’m not sure they’d be any worse a couple of hours later.

I was woken by a (sober) neighbour at 3am this morning. I would have been just as annoyed if she’d woken me at 11.30pm. (Yes, not only am I a non-drinker, I also go to bed early!)

So then. Later licenses? Face? Bothered?