I’m absolutely in favour of teenagers not getting drunk or putting them on a path to becoming alcoholics - which is why I am completely against these proposals from Alcohol Concern for it to be illegal.
The best way of getting teenagers to want to drink too much is to tell them it is some forbidden fruit which they are not allowed to have. Have the authors of this proposal never come across the fact that, as a cartoon I saw recently put it “the best way to get something done is to tell your children not to do it”?
The consequences of making alcohol unattainable are very clear from Sweden and Norway which make it very difficult to purchase alcohol and as a result have some of the worst drunkenness figures of anywhere. Just compare this with the countries of southern Europe where children learn to live with drink from a young age and consequently don’t grow up wanting to consume excessive quantities of it.
As part of children growing up they should learn about alcohol: clearly not force-fed huge quantities of it, but allowed to try it appropriately.
And if there is a problem with young teenagers drinking alcohol excessively - which there seems to be some limited evidence there might be - then preventing their parents from giving them small quantities is hardly going to address it.
Fortunately this proposal is so wrong that even this nanny government isn’t prepared to take it forward - Caroline Flint, the relevant Minister, dismissing it on Today this morning.
April’s edition of Prospect has quite an interesting lengthy interview with Ken Livingstone, in which he sets out his views on quite a broad range of issues facing London. It also has a range of other associated articles, including a plea from Simon Jenkins on behalf of the rights of London’s ‘villages’, and a case from Andrew Adonis for the reformed House of Lords to be based in Manchester.
Ken is, as we know, keen to meet the housing crisis and demand for places to live, by increasing housing density in London to the levels of Paris and Madrid, including by building more very tall buildings. He is right that London is much less dense in terms of housing than other major European cities, but I don’t agree with him that piling more properties into more intense developments is the answer, or what Londoners want. He claims it can be done by “having intensive development around transport nodes, which can be medium rise, the sort of stuff you’ve got in Kensington and Notting Hill”. But that isn’t the way it’s coming out around where I live, where his high targets for intensity in new developments means some quite heavily over-developed proposals, which face serious opposition from local people. He’s right that the sorts of buildings you build are as important as the density statistics, but sheer intensity is also a crucial part of the picture too.
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Two good things about last night’s meeting of the party’s Federal Policy Committee - one from the point of view of Lib Dem policy-making, and one a bit more personal.
The one that should benefit the party’s policy-making is that we had ‘early’ discussions of two areas where FPC will be taking policy papers to autumn conference this year. One of the points about our policy-making process that many, including me in Wasted Rainforests, have made, is that FPC should take much more ownership of the policy papers that it takes to Conference in its name: in the past FPC has only had a full discussion of the final paper at a very late stage, when printing deadlines are looming. So we have changed the process and last night’s meeting was one of the first occasions when we had a full discussion of what you might call a ‘pre-final’ draft of two papers that the world will be seeing in the run up to autumn conference. Not having the pressure of a full final paper and an imminent deadline allowed for some quite full and helpful discussion of the issues. We’d already had discussions of them both with the chairs of the working groups, and it should all help to contribute to more considered and consistent sets of proposals from FPC to Conference.
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A small prize will be available to anyone who can explain to me why areas of extreme deprivation are currently known as ‘Super Output Areas’ (SOAs). I’m all for talking up areas positively but am having some difficulty identifying what exactly what it is that such areas put out so superbly.
About six years ago, in my first foray into one of the party’s policy mechanism, I sat on the party’s crime policy working group. I was very conscious that I knew less than everyone else in the room and hardly said anything at all. But one thing I do remember asking about was why, when there was such a problem with people seeking to defer their jury service because they had been called at a time inconvenient to them, the system didn’t allow people to volunteer to do their service at a time that *was* convenient to them. There were a few nodding heads saying they thought that was a good idea, but nothing more was ever heard of it.
Until a few weeks ago, when I read the draft of the crime and justice policy paper going to this spring’s party conference - Together We Can Cut Crime. The policy aims to make some improvements to the working of the justice system (it’s actually really good - do have a look at it) and I thought I would try submitting my suggestion as an amendment to it.
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