Alcohol abuse is a major problem in the UK, guys.....mostly by people 18 to 25 or so, and on a "bingeing" basis for the most part. I reckon you know that already.
Weekend nights in many towns and cities regularly see young people pouring out of the pubs and clubs, many of them nissed as pewts and making the local constabularies really work for their dosh.
Here in the UK the legal drinking age is 18 everywhere, but it's far from unknown for off licenses (as we call stores/shops which sell alcohol for consumption off the premises, unlike our pubs, inns, hotel bars, etc) to sell booze to people who are clearly under 18, very much against the law, but Britkids are mostly very streetwise and always find ways and means of getting their hands on booze.
Shopkeepers who are found to sell alcohol to underagers are prosecuted, and have their licenses withdrawn, as do publicans (people running pubs) who knowingly sell booze at the bar to people who are clearly blootered, but practice and theory often conflict with each other, and British pubs are generally very crowded and hectically busy especially at weekends, and bar staff don't have much time to weigh up the possible ages of people standing there at the bar clutching a tenner in their hands eager to be served.
British pubs are not just places where people go to drink, to either get blootered for the sake of it or to seek out a possible lay for the night - they are very social places in all sorts of ways, and the hub of conviviality for the most part, not only for social discourse, but also to go to have full scale meals or just a snack.
Brits on the Continent don't have too much of a problem in this respect as European bars come at least a wee bit close to the British pub scene -but still not with anything like the same atmosphere as back in Blighty (as Brits refer to the UK when abroad). In America it's a different situation altogether, and it seems that that's one of the reasons Brits in the USA feel so homesick - they really miss the British pub scene, be it a crowded city centre theme pub, or the convivial, cosy village pub with cosy bars, cosy chats and cosy laughs with the locals, cosy chats with mates discussing cosy business deals or cosy love trysts, cosy bar meals, cosy dart boards, cosy giant plasma screens showing cosy football games, cosy roaring log fires, cosy outdoor gardens with cosy well trimmed lawns covered with cosy sunshaded tables and benches overlooking a cosy duck pond and a cosy village green complete with cosy cricket pitch, and cosy roses and cosy ivy covering the 17th century cosy front walls of the cosy Dog and Duck or the cosy Slug and Lettuce (yes, there are loads of Slugs and Lettuces across the land - in England mainly). Here in Scotland we are more like to have a cosy Duke of Sutherland or a cosy Hole in the Wall or a cosy Poosie Nancies or a cosy Muscular Arms or even (in Glasgow) a cosy Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam
Some bar staff in pubs are very vigilant over the minimum age issue (18 here, remember) and although I am now 26 it was only last year, in London, that I was challenged over my age by the barman when I gave him my order at the bar of a pub in Putney High Street. I didn't know whether to kiss him or lamp him! That's when student cards (which I still possess) or student rail cards, complete with DOB come in useful (which I still have but which becomes invalid when I hit 27 next April).
The UK does not have official ID cards at the present time, unlike most other EU countries, but they will be foisted on us soon complete with all the latest recognition technology.....another EU directive. I have no problem with that at all.
Americans seem to have a problem with drinks at lunchtime....deeply frowned on by all accounts. They should see the crowded wine and bistro bars in places like the City of London (the financial district) or the area around Canary Wharf, also in London (largest commercial area in Europe where I have worked twice), or all along Rose Street, here in Edinburgh, in the city centre. ;-) But restraint and common sense are the key words here - there is absolutely no doubt at all that here in the UK if it's evident that alcohol in any way interferes with your work you are in dead trouble, big time. Employers will not tolerate it, so for the most part a glass of wine or a half pint of lager with your bar meal at lunchtime is the absolute limit for most people.
What you do after work, when you and your work colleagues drop into the Gordon Highlander or the Quill and Pen or the Cheshire Cheese on your way home is your business alone! As long as you're clear headed for work the next morning.
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