Sorry Steve, but that planet doesn't go there
I was watching this Stephen Hawking documentary last night, where it explicitly stated in the commercial that he believed time travel was possible, only to discover that he in fact did not believe it was possible. At all. Pretty disappointing, but to be honest, I was more freaked out about the way his voice kept changing to someone elses, as if the producers felt the audience would be incapable of listening to him personally describe what’s going on, although, I guess that digitized sound isn’t really his voice, so maybe it’s not such a big deal. Anyway, what was I talking about?
Ok, paradoxes, that’s where I was going with that. Apparently paradoxes are what makes time travel impossible, something to do with not being able to go back in time to change events because they’ve already occurred or something, to be honest I wasn’t really paying attention, that whole voice thing was really unnerving. So, a lot like, and not a lot like time travel paradoxes, the paradox that a person can’t be served alcohol if they’re already drunk is a bizarre one, but still, there it is. technically a publican can’t serve you once you’ve had enough lovely, lovely booze to get a buzz going, but as we all know, that’s like, totally not the case, ever.
Similarly, although it’s perfectly legal to walk into a pub or nightclub and get drunk, it is not strictly legal to be drunk in public, so perhaps the best option there would be to leap directly from the beer garden into a waiting taxi, which might sound cool in a Jason Bourne stag night kind of way, but it’s hardly practical. Well it seems that for some poor unfortunate lady from across the channel, the police do have the capacity to follow the letter of this oft-flaunted law when they need to. I say lady only because I’m such a fancy gentleman, but clearly this bird doesn’t qualify. The independent reports;
A woman who became the first person to be banned from drinking alcohol in a public place anywhere in England and Wales was back in court yesterday after police saw her sitting on a wall with a can of lager. Laura Hall (20) was arrested by officers in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in the early hours of Sunday morning. At Redditch Magistrates’ Court she pleaded guilty to breaching the drinking banning order and admitted being drunk and disorderly in a public place. The ban, imposed last month, prohibited Hall from entering a pub, bar, club or off-licence for two years. The drinking banning order also bans Hall from buying alcohol in any public place across England and Wales. Stephen Harris, prosecuting, told the court Hall was “shouting and swearing in the street” when police saw her with a group of friends in Worcester Road, a designated alcohol-free zone, at 2.15am. He said a police officer warned her not to drink any alcohol but she shouted: “I want to go to the f****** offie (off licence) and get some beer.”
I’ve often defended the Irish Independent when people have called it a borderline tabloid, or simply a rag, but really, who are they trying to fool by translating the word “offie”? I’m pretty sure that even those south of the Liffey are acquainted with that little morsel of slang. Anyway, clearly this girl has some brass balls, either that or she’s an alcoholic. In fact I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. I mean, shouting about your desire to go buy some cans at the rozzers, while being banned from doing exactly that? While being drunk in public? Frankly I don’t see a B.A. in her future.
Of the two reasons this story caught my eye, the main one was that I would’ve assumed it was quite difficult to get banned from drinking in an entire country, and considering this girl was the first person in the UK to receive such a ban, whatever she did must have been pretty special. And, as it turns out, after a full eight minutes of furious googling I came up with exactly nothing. Not a sausage. So, I’m going to assume it was something so dreadful the news media could not repeat it for fear of copycat offenders. Seriously, use your imagination, go nuts. The other reason was that it is an uncommonly slow news day, GO JOURNALISM!
LAURA! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!
