Enough to drive you to drink

Judging from this (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/bill-set-to-tackle-antisocial-drinking-1-4499694 ) the Geriatric’s Choice is back to his old tricks. Possibly he’s just getting his token gesture out of the way before the winter, when most of those who elected him will either pop their clogs or develop full-blown Alzheimers and forget all about him.

An island-wide ban on public drinking? Guess that sort of nonsense is bound to be suggested eventually when you hand control of both social services and the police force to a bunch of Evangelical party-poopers.

The truth (as Singer would discover if he bothered to use the extensive government resources available to him) is that the police already have more than enough power to send anti-social drinkers on their way or lock them up.

It should also take less than 30 seconds (again, if he could be bothered) to discover that the current designated areas were carefully worked out between local authorities and police. In fact, when he was a Ramsey Commissioner he was (technically) present at those meetings. Even though they happened in closed sessions which are not minuted anywhere I had no problem finding that out, so unless he is now as senile as the care home duffers who voted him in he ought to recall it too.

With a little more research he could even discover that the binge-drinking problem does not exist outside the minds of a few terrified pensioners who never go out, the gutter press publications they read, and a tiny but determined lobby of religious parasites who see public money up for grabs with every folk devil and moral panic they can invent.

The Bill – as Singer also knows – will fail if more than half the House are awake or present when it is voted on.

But he’s still a prat, and this is still irritating.