- Norwich is becoming a safer place for weekend and night-time revellers. Despite people's fears over the introduction of new licensing laws a year ago, police said their had been “significant falls” in violence and other offences associated with the Norwich city centre night-time economy. Norwich is host to Operation Enterprise, aimed at reducing late-night violence in the city centre since 2003, and the local paper's Reclaim our Communities campaign, which invites families to let the paper know about any nuisance, problems, or anti-social behaviour in their area for passing on to relevant authorities. Story at Evening News
- MP John Grogan has called on brewers and pubcos to stand together in the fight against cheap supermarket booze. Grogan, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, says some of the promotions in supermarkets are as bad as the ‘drink all you want’ promotions in the on-trade. Speaking to his local paper about the Competition Commission’s supermarket inquiry, the York Press, the Selby MP said: ”The mere existence of the inquiry appears to have galvanised critics of the supermarkets. For the first time, brewers have joined pub companies, farmers, small shops and environmentalists in making critical submissions to the Commission. Morning Advertiser See also previous post (penultimate item)
- Glasgow: A major campaign has been launched to encourage revellers to drink safely over the festive period. Clubbers and pubgoers will be bombarded by the message to "play safe" over the next few weeks, in a bid to cut drunkenness and disorder in the city centre. Evening Times
- Edinburgh: Bottles of alcohol are to be marked with invisible ink in city stores in the latest bid to tackle underage drinking. Shopkeepers across the south of the city are to be visited by police and trading standards officials and asked whether they object to their bottles being marked. The coded markings, which can only be read under ultraviolet light, will allow officers to trace where any booze taken from underage drinkers was bought. Scotsman
- Sussex Police released new figures this week showing a drop in alcohol related crime since the introduction of round-the-clock drinking. Assistant Chief Constable Jeremy Paine welcomed the decrease in violence and public nuisance. However, he said more needed to be done to reverse the problems of binge drinking. The Argus
- Halifax's pioneering Street Angels initiative is set to celebrate its first birthday later this month with a birthday party attended by Halifax MP Linda Riordan. Street Angels is a partnership between Halifax Town Centre Police, Churches Together in Halifax and Halifax YMCA. The concept of providing a safe place for those using the night time economy became a reality on 25 November 2005. The project uses the Fairtrade Café, which is part of the YMCA building on Crossley Street, as a safe place and headquarters for the Street Angels, who patrol the streets of the town centre. Around 50 volunteers took part in the pilot, taking Street Angels to the streets every Friday and Saturday between 9pm and 3am. The Good News See also Norwich SOS bus podcast
- Only a fraction of alleged drug-assisted rapes in England tested positive for date rape drugs while almost all the victims had consumed alcohol, the first police study on the issue found. None of the 120 cases of alleged drug rape examined by the Association of Chief Police Officers showed evidence of the notorious date rape drug Rohypnol, according to the report released on Thursday. Just two victims had traces of GHB, another date rape drug. "These findings suggest Rohypnol, synonymous in many quarters with the phrase 'date rape drug', might not be the threat it is believed to be," the study said. Scotsman
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