From the article linked to above...
Adrian Lee, the chief constable of Northamptonshire and the Association of Chief Police Officers’ lead on tackling alcohol problems, said: “I do not see why the police service or the health service should pick up the duty of care for someone who has chosen to go out and get so drunk that they cannot look after themselves.
To which I would reply, "Because thats your f##kin job you idiot".
Whether they like it or not being drunk and disorderly is a public order offence and unless the chief constable is happy to devolve some of his police powers to private company's then he has to roll his sleeves up and get on with the job he is paid to do, if he doesn't like it then "there is a queue of people waiting to take your place" blah, blah, blah.
Whether or not the police and health providers can claim something back from the drunk on the proviso that they can prove that getting drunk was the drunkards sole aim at the start of the night is another thing, presumably they already know that extracting a sum of money from a sobered up person might be a tad difficult and they'd rather G4S have a go at doing that instead while all of the rozzers on duty in town centres on Friday and Saturday nights can sit at home watching Simply Come Dancing and have their wives moan at them because theres no overtime this month.
It also raises another issue about the manufacturers and retailers of the alcohol in the first place who have some culpability, particularly the retailers and especially the licensees who are breaking the terms of their alcohol licence by serving someone who is clearly already intoxicated, whether or not they were intoxicated when they left home - as soon as you served them in your premises you broke the law and when you happily serve people to unconsciousness you are directly causing the problem that apparently costs so much to clean up afterwards.
In the city I live in there have been several initiatives to levy a duty on alcohol retailers in the city centre to pay for the extra policing that they cause, which is always shouted down with howls of anguish from bar owners all pleading poverty and threatening that they'll leave the area if they have to pay for clearing up the detritus of their retailing skills.
And yet we always come back to a point I raise time and again when this subject comes up - stop the emphasised sales of spirits and shots and cleverly marketed high strength small volume drinks and you will fix the problem of unconscious drunks almost overnight and once again I'll mention that when I was in my drinking youth I often got drunk on beer, but never enough to not be able to control my actions or fall unconcious and that was simply because it is impossible to drink pints of beer in a high enough volume to become unconcious before you start throwing up and being generally unwell and when I was in my drinking youth spirits and cocktails were for old men and women.
Excuse me while I go have a drink to calm down now.
