War memorial defiled

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Title – War memorial defiledSource – Metro
Date – 16th October 2009

You can present every argument under the sun in defence of the

Licensed Retail Sector, but if a picture speaks a thousand words, this one speaks several million.

This type of behaviour is deplorable, there is no way or desire to defend it. This man (you can call him a student, but at 19 he is a man not a child) is going to pay very heavily indeed for his actions, not just in the immediate consequence of his actions, but in his name and this image being on the internet forever.. a punishment which even he probably does not yet understand the severity of.

But we can and should not concentrate on this individual, but on a society which breeds such behaviour. Is alcohol to blame?

Certainly alcohol is not innocent in all of this, it plays a part in our society and not always in a positive role; but equally not always in a negative role. Alcohol is present in almost every civilisation in history, every country on the planet and has been around for longer than humans have ‘ruled’ the planet. Ever since plants bore fruit, fruit has fermented producing alcohol; the infamous images of drunk elephants are a David Attenborough special.

We have to learn to live with alcohol and we have to learn to sell and consume it responsibly; something sadly sections of society have forgotten. Prohibition does not work and neither does deregulation; tackling alcohol consumption alone is not the answer.

This behaviour can only be prevented by a much wider co-ordinated approach and in partnership with the many authorities involved in regulation, the Licensed Retail Sector itself and consumers, parents, teachers and other key figures in communities. We need to work together to create a society which doesn’t accept that drunkenness can be an excuse for vile behaviour, but which honours the heroes our country produces and the sacrifices some of them make and doesn’t stand idly by while those who abuse alcohol ruin it for the majority who enjoy alcohol responsibly

At Beyond The Blue we run a number of courses for those working in the Licensed Retail Sector to help them sell alcohol more responsibly. These include; The Award in Responsible Alcohol Retailing (ARAR) designed for front-line staff to help them meet their statutory requirements; The National Certificate for Personal Licence Holders (NCPLH) which qualifies candidates to apply for their personal licence; Our Conflict Management and Resolution (CMR) course compliments these courses to help employees deal with Workplace Violence and alcohol related disorder.

Please visit our website at www.btbl.co.uk. For a complete list of Blog entries visit our National Press Archive page.

For more information on any of our services, please call us on 0845 602 55 95 or Contact Us.