Drink laws top up night crime
More flexible pub opening times have done little to curb Britain’s excessive
drinking habits, it emerged last week. There was a rise in nighttime crime
after the new laws were introduced and one study suggests that the number of
alcohol-related nighttime hospital visits has trebled.
Ministers hoped that staggered opening hours and later closing times
introduced by the 2003 Licensing Act would limit offences committed by the
drunken crowds that surged onto the streets at the traditional 11pm closing
time. But a report published by the Home Office last week shows that many of
the troubles have merely been postponed.
Crime is certainly down at the old closing time. In the year after November
2005, when the changes were introduced, there were 3,523 fewer offences of
violence, disorder or criminal damage between 9pm and midnight. But in the
hours between midnight and 6am the number of offences rose by 13,852. The
bright spot, according to the Home Office, is a 5% drop in serious violent
crime during the night.
The figures were collected by 30 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales.
They show:
- 319,846 offences committed between 9pm and midnight (down 1%).
- 242,999 from midnight to 3am (up 2%).
- 57,778 from 3am to 6am (up 22%).
There were also 9,609 crimes for which no time is recorded (down 24%).
The figures should be read against a fall in these offences – by 3% – during
the day, from 6am to 6pm.
The effects of the changes are certainly being felt at St Thomas’ hospital in
London, which stands across the Thames from the House of Commons. Staff at
the accident and emergency department report a threefold increase in
drink-related night visits.
Dr Alastair Newton, writing in the Emergency Medicine Journal, says his team
logged visits in March 2005 and again in March 2006. Before the introduction
of allnight drinking, 79 out of 2,736 visits were alcohol related (2.9%).
Afterwards, alcohol contributed to 250 out of 3,135 visits (8%).
There were 27 alcohol-related assaults at the hospital in March 2005, but 62 a
year later. “If reproduced over longer time periods and across the UK as a
whole, the additional numbers of patients presenting to emergency
departments with alcohol-related problems could be very substantial,” says
Dr Newton.
Previous figures have revealed that drink-related deaths have nearly doubled
in the past 15 years. There were about 8,500 deaths blamed on drink in 2005.
Just to put this into perspective, if people continued to die at this rate
for 10 years, it would be equivalent to killing almost the entire population
of Jersey.
Oops: ‘£5m Titian’ sold for a song
Lot 403 was described in the auctioneer’s catalogue as “18th century
continental school, half-length portrait of an aesthete”. Among the harvest
scenes also on sale that day, this picture of a bearded man gazing into the
distance was expected to fetch about £400.
Yet, as the crowded auction room held its breath, the work finally sold for
£205,000. Now the London art world thinks somebody has unearthed a Titian –
worth around £5m – from their trip to Gilding’s auction house in Market
Harborough, Leicestershire.
The picture was sold by a local woman, who had bought it at a contents sale.
“Our opinion was it was 18th century, after an early Italian artist,” said
auctioneer Mark Gilding. “Obviously a couple of people thought differently:
two people on the day turned up and battled it out.”
London art dealer Simon Dickinson said on seeing a photo of the picture: “It
looks like perfect early Titian.”
The buyer is not known.
Getting history in a muddle
History teachers should stop flitting between ancient Egypt, the second world
war and the Romans, school inspectors have warned. Instead, children should
be taught landmark dates in chronological order.
A new report from Ofsted, called History in the Balance, says children have no
overview of history. They are taught patches of our past, but cannot connect
the periods studied.
It’s perhaps for this reason that most children drop the subject at the age of
14, when it is no longer compulsory. Just 32% of pupils study it for GCSE.
According to Ofsted, the problem begins at primary schools, where teachers
have little training in the subject. “Young people’s knowledge is often very
patchy and specific,” it says. “They often do not know about key historical
events, people and ideas, and there is often unjustified repetition at
different stages of pupils’ school careers.
“Although pupils often know something about selected periods or events – for
example, children in Victorian times, Henry VIII and his wives, or the
Aztecs – they are weak at linking this information to form an overall
narrative.”
Academics say history lessons form an essential part of the way we see
ourselves. “It’s the primary view of the great stories in the past, like
Alfred burning the cakes, Magna Carta, Columbus sailing the ocean blue – all
that sort of stuff,” says Kate Pretty, pro-vice-chancellor of Cambridge
University. “The tiny stories that makes up the common thread which you can
pull on we’re expecting students to somehow implicitly know.”
The historian Antony Beevor told The Times: “I’d like to show the way Britain
is a series of foreign invasions and absorption: how families who arrived a
few decades ago are linked with the Danes and the Saxons, who have been here
for centuries.”
The Bill with a bad Biro habit
Burglars are getting away with crime as police race to stop trivial domestic
quarrels and playground hair-pulling, says a blogging constable.
PC “David Copperfield”, writing in The Daily Telegraph, says the force is fast
becoming a joke. “The modern British policeman’s most important tool is the
Biro. Or the stapler. One thing’s for sure – whatever the statistics say,
we’re not catching proper criminals.
“A week or so ago I attended a domestic dispute involving custody of a
wire-haired terrier. By the time I arrived, two days after the call, the
couple had resolved the matter. It took hours to deal with: the file ran to
15 pages [and] was recorded on at least four computer systems.” Copperfield
says his website (www.coppersblog.blogspot. com) receives daily examples of
“Home Office silliness” from frustrated frontline officers. And he explains
how crime figures are “fiddled”.
“In 2005-2006, the headline was that 27% of crimes were detected. We didn’t
detect 27% of all burglaries, or 27% of all assaults. In order to allow the
government to trumpet that 27% figure the detections include lots of
playground hair-pullings, minor school scuffles and over-the-fence rows.
“We’re arresting children, the perennially stupid and the generally
law-abiding over ludicrous matters in order to meet targets and cover up the
fact that streetwise burglars and muggers are almost guaranteed to get away
scot-free.”
Moth invasion
The wardrobes of Britain are fighting a losing battle against moth
infestation, according to The Independent. “Britain is this year’s hot
destination for moths,” says the paper. “Wardrobes are under siege as never
before from the larvae of clothes-eating moths.”
Rentokil says callouts to serious infestations have risen by 25% in a year,
and sales of cedarwood – a moth repellent – have reportedly tripled.
“Some experts say the current plague is down to warmer winters combined with
overuse of central heating,” says the paper. But the moths have also been
attracted by the ready availability of cashmere. The supply has increased
after EU import quotas were relaxed in 2005 and cheap cashmere flooded in
from China.
“The more expensive and exotic the fabric, the more the moths like it,” says
Iain Whatley of pest control firm Enviroguard UK. “They like tapestries and
rugs, but they love cashmere sweaters and cashmere suits.”
Once established, clothes moths (Tineola bisselliella) are hard to shift.
Their larvae eat ceratin, a protein in natural fibres. Calling in a pest
control firm could cost up to £1,000.
