Garda body calls for drink sales ban at petrol stations

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shnaek

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Are we to be continually treated as children here in Ireland? I am well aware of the problems that drink causes, but why can't we be responsible for ourselves like the Germans, French etc? Surely we are as mature a nation as our EU neighbours. Even the Brits have 24 hour opening these days. When I lived in Germany you could buy beer in the petrol stations 24 hours a day.

As long as we are treated like children we will behave as such. Surely it is time to take a new attitude in Ireland. An attitude of personal responsibility. Surely the nanny state has outlived its usefulness. Or are we just not as mature as our EU partners?
 
shnaek said:
As long as we are treated like children we will behave as such.
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That sounds childish enough to me. do you mean that the stricter the legislation the more people will drink? Is that the rationale?

Education starts at home, when people stop being seen by their children with a drink at hand at any occasion and always happily associating drinking with having fun perhaps then a new culture will emerge. Until then you'll be the target of these desperate legislative attempts to get you to behave responsibly.
 
Unless one chooses to have a drink at hand at every occassion and does actually have fun drinking. The point i think the OP is making is the right to make individual choices is being taken away from us bit by bit and I tend to agree with him. Drink has definitely been demonised consistently in the last number of years and I think maybe we are starting to feel uncomfortable with our stereotype, but to be honest its a lazy stereotype and we have proved as a country in the last decade especially that we have progressed enormously and are quite a capable nation. The news that they are now trying to ban advertising drink is another example of nanny state nonsense that should be knocked on the head
 
MrMan said:
The news that they are now trying to ban advertising drink is another example of nanny state nonsense that should be knocked on the head
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Do you think that drink advertisement is not something that should be elimitated from television, sport sponsorships and internet? Especially the kind that equates drinking to social success and fun times? Do you not think this kind of advertising is socially poisonous, on par with tobacco advertising?

Individual choices are being taken away because many people abuse their freeedoms, I agree that this deleterious but the only way to prevent this is for people to wake up to the reality that drink abuse is drink abuse and should not be socially acceptable. Harsher criminal penalties for alcohol abuse and a strong anti-alcohol message starting from school is the way forward I think.
 
I don't personally think it should be banned from garages but I was coming back from Blackrock last Tuesday and I stopped at an 'on the run garage' , as I pulled up this young lad, could not have been more than 14 or so - he looked very very young, wearing a tracksuit, shaved head came out holding a 12 pack of Budweiser beer - he walked to just outside the garage and then broke into a run up to his friends waiting for him, I'm not joking they were all aged from about 12 to no more than 15 and from the looks of it they could not believe that he had been served, they were all whooping and cheering!. The thing was, he was so obviously a child and there is no way on earth he should have been served. It seems to me that the staff at garages etc are not trained adequately to ask for ID and check who they are serving alcohol to, staff in off licences etc at least know what to look for.
 

Definitely not, apart from the fact that this would eliminate alot of jobs, it would also affect TV and radio revenues to a greater degree. That is the financial side of things, on the social aspect I couldn't agree less that it is socially poisonous, drinking isn't part of our culture its part of our lifestyle and everyone should be free to make legal lifestyle choices. If they ban drink ads, they should ban McDonald's ads (obesity) and where would it stop.


I don't think you need to be trained to ask for ID, if he looked as youndg as you say then the person serving was just incompetent or potentially may have been intimidated.
 
What is their rationale for banning the sale of alcohol at petrol stations?
 
What is their rationale for banning the sale of alcohol at petrol stations?
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It's simply a knee-jerk reaction to make the public think that these powers are competent, and know what they're doing.

If you treat alcohol like a forbidden fruit, then it will only serve to exacerbate the situation. Alcohol is freely available in many mediterranean countries and children has access to wine etc from an early age. This fosters (lager) a completely different attitude towards drink.
 
Thanks.

So it was the outgoing chairman of the complaints board so some of the kneejerk reaction criticism above of the Gardaí themselves may be misplaced?
Gordon Holmes, chair of the Garda Síochána Complaints Board (GSCB) and former chair of the Commission on Liquor Licensing, said he thought deregulation in the sale of alcohol was a mistake.
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What the hell does this mean?
“I don’t think garages should be allowed to sell alcohol, merely on the perception grounds.
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And was the sub-editor drunk when s/he reviewed the following for punctuation?
“You are permitting people who are attached to garages where cars go for petrol to sell drink to the people who are driving those cars. I think the perception of that must raise queries in any ordinary person’s mind,” he said.
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ClubMan said:
And was the sub-editor drunk when s/he reviewed the following for punctuation?
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Even if the punctuation was correct it's still a load of tripe.

To paraphrase:

"We shouldn't allow garages to sell alcohol because that's where people with cars go to get petrol and we don't want to encourage drunk driving"

Right?
 

having grown up in italy let me confirm that it is definitely true that there is a completely different attitude to drink. Yes, you can buy it wherever and whenever however there is such a negative perception of drunkness that no one in their right mind would consider it as 'a lifestyle' choice, it would be seen for what it is, an addiction and an example of poor upbringing.

Also the antics you see in the street of dublin performed by 'merry' revelers would very quickly bring you to the attention of the authorities which are far less lenient than the garda when it comes to public order.
 
we should have little kiosks on street corners with beer for sale, we can have a can before we go to work, a few for lunch and a few on the way home, bring in 24hr drinking
 
Do we in ireland have a genetic weakness for drink ?

Or is it the "crack" when the drink is flowing that people are looking for ?

People drank too much in ireland in bad times now they are drinking as much or more in good times

Its alright saying have drink easily available and we will have a more mature attitude to it,I don't see any evidence that this would be the case in ireland
 
capall said:
Its alright saying have drink easily available and we will have a more mature attitude to it,I don't see any evidence that this would be the case in ireland
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This doesn't mean that banning/curtailing it is the answer though? Previous attempts would suggest that such an approach isn't always productive.
 
Its alright saying have drink easily available and we will have a more mature attitude to it,I don't see any evidence that this would be the case in ireland
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Attitudes aren't going to change overnight. There's no quick fix solution to a problem that's become ingrained in people's psyche. It could take a couple of generations to change attitudes.

Banning drink certainly isn't the solution, that's just eroding rights. It's probably what we'll end up with though as TDs look for a 'plastic bag tax' approach.
 
Have I missed out on an epidemic of drunken Irish falling around the streets, its simply too general to consider drinking as
an addiction and an example of poor upbringing.
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I really think people overstep the mark when wide generalisations are used to sum up the 'culture' of a nation.
 
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