rant about booze and bars

You guys have probably seen that because good old K-Rudd has been talking about the alcohol industry and how they are basically profiting off our misery in by promoting 'alcopops' stuff like cruisers. Well they respond like any industry that is worried that they will actually face some regulations and they have tried to curb their worst excesses to prove they actually have souls. So now a few big companies are ditching their drink lines that are premix and over 7% alcohol but are keeping the 7% and lower ones.

It's retarded that no ones has pushed for this until now. I mean it's pretty obvious kids want to drink and what stops them drinking way too much isn't common sense but cost. I really think they should limit these drinks alcohol content to 5%. this way you have to drink a decent amount to get really pissed. When I was a teenage in Ballarat we all drank at stupid ages as well but it was a lot harder to get pissed on beer and cask wine.

Now the news media has latched onto the fact that Melbourne city at night is fucking horrible. I’m glad that they are realizing that Melbourne’s great nightlife also has a nasty side. we've got some cool clubs and spots but getting home is the problem. It also shows that all these bars and alcohol companies are doing a great job at externalizing the costs of business onto us. Here are pubs, bars and clubs in the city making packets of money getting people drunk. Yet the police are struggling because they are understaffed and hospitals are struggling because they are under funded and ordinary people are increasingly becoming the victims of alcohol fueled crime.

Imagine a Saturday night in the city if no one was drunk. The hospitals would have a lot less people to patch up, the police would have a lot less fights and assaults to stop and the mood would be lot safer. so then it's clear that by selling alcohol all the bars in Melbourne are actually costing the city money. yet they don't contribute any extra. The costs drunken people cause to society should be borne by the people who made the money off getting them drunk in the first place. Why the hell should tax payers be forced to spend more money on police to protect the cities atmosphere when it's the bars and clubs that are causing the problem? they profit from making people drunk as a collective industry and as an industry they should have to foot the fucking bill to fix the situation.

Look I’m not some stickler I like to have a night out as well, but the city right now is out of control. So instead of allowing these businesses to make money off making our city a worse place to live in we need to charge them more for doing business and use that money to lessen the impact. In Melbourne you can get a liquor license for $500 but in Sydney it's more like $15,000. I think liquor licenses can be cheap to give small businesses a chance to start up with small investment but they should be forced to pay a levy of between 1-5% of their income straight back to the city depending on how they operate. This money will be divided among the police, hospitals and alcohol rehab programs.

We have to stop letting businesses of all kinds from gambling, alcohol, energy and basically everything else from pushing the costs of their profit making onto us. The states pokies machines make billions but who pays to try put the people’s lives back together? certainly not the casinos and football clubs. Power companies pollute the air to create electricity and get paid but when do they have to pay for fucking up the atmosphere?

We have to stop letting businesses externalize costs onto us and we can't ever let them convince us that they have the right to make money. No one has the right to make a profit. The permission to make money is given to people by society on the proviso that they don't fuck people over while doing it. But they seem to think that they can do what they want and that even the government doesn't have the right to tell them not to act like such rabid animals. We need to regulate industry because these pigs will never regulate themselves. They feel it's their right to make money and who cares who gets hurt along the way.