Chris Orr comments on… Drinking on public transport

After a tough week in the city Chris Orr reflects on his current right to enjoy a tipple en route home on the 18.34 from Victoria

It’s a little routine but I quite like it. Every Friday, I get to the train station for the 6.34pm to Hove, making sure I’m in time to buy a half bottle of something relatively wet, white and drinkable from the wine shop next to Victoria station. Once on the train, I power up the computer – not to do any work but just watch the latest series of Teachers or the West Wing on the DVD drive. Then I crack open my bottle of wine, and relish the next 48 hours as the only time between work and Monday that I will get any semblance of peace and quiet to myself – and the chance to enjoy a drop of wine without worrying about my two year old grabbing hold of it.

Or at least, that was going to be my routine until I learnt this weekend that our lovely government was threatening to take it away.  Fortunately by the time I picked my Monday morning paper up, I saw that they’d had the common sense to reappraise the situation and life had returned to a semblance of normality. Or had it?

The government has done what amounts to pretty much a volte face on the whole proposal. Apparently it was just a suggestion in a think piece proposed during a meeting by Louise Casey the new head of the Home Office’s anti-social behaviour unit (see column Chris Orr comments on… Binge Drinking).

Various government ministers have come out against the suggestion, the police has called a potential ban ‘unworkable’ and both the Liberal and Conservative parties have slated the government for proposing that a 24-hour licensing law is at all possible. Leaving aside that the government of the day seems to judge whether to proceed with something controversial via leaked reports to the press of “policy” that turns out not to be policy at all, one has to wonder what exactly they think they’re playing at.

But just leaving my own desire for a drink on the way home on a Friday evening, what is so wrong about the suggestion. I mean, anyone that has experienced a journey on a train with some drunken louts will understand the unpleasantness that is caused. Even a couple of loudmouths who have cans of lager in front of them can be enough to put you off.

So let’s look at the negatives. Rail companies say it would be impractical and not stop drunk people from getting on trains. True, they would still be able to get on, but they’d not be able to get any drunker. I think the rail companies are probably more concerned that their highest priced sales via catering with the biggest margins are probably cans of Stella, or ridiculously poor quality quarter bottles of wine. Revenue rather than concern for practicality strikes me as their motive.

Because if someone is drinking on a train, the guard doesn’t need to tackle them himself. Give them a warning then call the police for the next stop if they don’t take heed. Will it slow the train down and take up police time. To begin with, yes. But once the law has been enforced and people get used to the idea, the majority – vast majority will simply follow it.

However, is this hypocritical in the face of a 24-hour licencing law. No not really. One is about introducing a potentially better way of allowing those who want to drink alcohol do it in a way that works for all – the fact that the government have made a mess of their own proposal, handing out extended licences to anyone that sticks their hand out doesn’t detract from the aim of it. And the other – reducing the possibility of violent or abusive behaviour on public transport – has to be surely aiming at the same overall principal. Let’s be real. We’re never going to stop drunken behaviour, but we can control the way it happens and the situation in which it is exacerbated. Personally I can cope with the two hours a week I’d go without it on the way home, with the trade off being I lose a little of my personal freedom. Ask any railway or tube employee who has been assaulted by someone under the influence of alcohol and they’d probably very much agree.