Aberdeen Curfew

[evo-lution]

Hello everyone.

As you may or may not be aware, our wonderful licensing board/council in Aberdeen intends to bring in a 12.30am curfew in September 2009. What this curfew means is that every pub and club in the city must shut their doors at 12.30am, barring entry to anyone after that time.

For example, if you wish to go to a club after you've been in a bar, you have to leave that bar and be in the club before 12.30am. Disregarding the fact that some bars in the city are licensed till 1am. For those that work in the licensed trade, they'll no longer be able to finish their work and go for a drink afterwards. The freedom to move between licensed premises after 12.30am, for whatever reason, will be lost.

The licensing board are basing their decision on the fact they've been out on the streets with the Police between the hours of 12midnight and 3am, blatantly ignoring the fact that any problem is happening way before that time.

It has been estimated the economy in Aberdeen stands to lose approximately £2million as a result of decrease in trade, which will in turn lead to a vast number of job losses. With an estimated 35,000 students in the city, and a number of visitors through tourism and the oil industry, these jobs are vital. You'd like to think that in these troubled times that the council would do their utmost to ensure the safety of people's jobs and to boost the economy in the city, not add to the problems.

Large scale events like Offshore Europe attracts hundreds, if not thousands, of delegates to the city, and they will undoubtedly be just one group that will directly suffer with this ruling coming into place.

Once again, Aberdeen City Council is hitting the on-trade where it hurts, yet the off-trade is still allowed to continue selling bottles of beer cheaper than it sells bottles of water. They are blatantly stopping businesses trading in the permitted hours which they themselves gave out.

To make matters worse they did not seek consultation from the industry before making this proposal. I don't think you need me to spell it out to you how ludicrous this plan is...

A similar curfew was brought in to both Edinburgh and Glasgow, and they're no longer in place.

Here's a direct quote from Aberdeen City Licensing convener Muriel Jaffrey, "It is a moving policy, it can be looked at again. In Edinburgh it lasted 18 months and it was a total disaster."

I think that says it all.

Please lend your support and sign the petition below...

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-t...n-aberdeen.html

The petition is only a small part of the work that is being done behind the scenes to stop this proposal coming into place, however, the more people that lend their support, the better.

Many thanks,

Adam

[Mattmvb]

You've got my signature.

This is typical of councils up and down the country, and I'm fed up of the presumption that all alcohol related disorder is caused by the on trade. I'm sure they can't really be THAT stupid, it's more likely the case that they are scared of taking on the Tescos of this world - they can fight back, we have to just go along with whatever they say or get closed down (sometimes be forced to close down anyway due to the impact of the policies).

A few years ago in Birmingham we had one of the most ridiculous examples of this that I have yet seen. If you don't know Birmingham, Broad Street is the biggest of the main centres for nightlife - a street about 3/4 mile long dominated by pubs, clubs and bars. All chain places and I generally stay away as much as possible, but on a Friday or Saturday night there are tens of thousands of people out in the bars and moving between them. The geniuses at our council decided it would be a good idea to ban taxis from the street on weekend evenings. Over December as well! A lot of businesses lost a lot of money and the council only relented when they all got together and threatened to sue for loss of earnings.

On a related subject, are they still looking to impose a minimum price per unit of alcohol in off licenses in Scotland? This is one of the very few sensible policies I have heard recently and hope it works out well.

Cheers,

Matt