So supposedly drinking on public transport in London is going to be illegal from 1st June onwards. I am not sure that the message has really got through to people. I knew it was something that Boris Johnson said he was going to try to do when he got into office, but the only reason I know it is coming up quite so imminently is that I have seen a single poster about it at White City tube station. That's not exactly a publicity blitz. Maybe I am just unobservant, but my guess is that a majority of people have no idea that this new initiative is about to kick in.
I am not against it as an idea, incidentally. I think it's an admirable hope that people might be made to curb their excesses on public transport. But having travelled into town and back tonight on the tube I would be very interested to see how they hope to police this idea. The amount of boozing going on even on the way out to a Saturday night is quite incredible. Maybe one in five passengers has a can or bottle in their hands and the seats are littered with the detritus of previous pissed passengers. Even on the way home plenty of people are still tanking up and as they are even more off their faces I certainly wouldn't like to the one charged with telling them they have to put the bottles away. And realistically it's going to be up to other passengers to enforce this isn't it? Unless they have booze police on every carriage and bus in the capital. Cos I don't want to be the one saying, "Excuse me fellows, you must not have heard, but our Mayor, Boris Johnson, who I am sure you all respect, has banned drinking on the train and so you're going to have to put those open cans of lager back in your bags I am afraid. No please don't punch me repeatedly in the face like that."
Maybe it will work - after all, a lot of people thought the smoking ban would be greeted with more resistance, but then the landlords had to enforce it and would have been fined and lost their licences if they hadn't. Are they going to have the same deal with the tube drivers? Cos that would be fun. But not as much fun as Boris Johnson having to go up and down the tube network telling everyone to stop, with absolutely no back up whatsoever. In fact if they did that I would end up being quite happy that he'd got in after all.
Anyway, this, apparently, is the last weekend that I will have to travel with rivers of lager on the floor and bottles rolling around on the seats and men with unfocused eyes, already full to the brim with booze, forcing more down their throats. It's going to be a brave new world. Nothing can possibly go wrong.
