Over to Stratford to the Drugs and Alcohol Service London AGM where I am giving a keynote speak on alcohol. The other key speaker is from Alcohol Concern and the statistics she gave were truly scary. I think we need to be doing quite a lot of work in terms of how to displace the excessive drinking activity that plagues so many areas and people.

We need alternative night-time economy ideas (late night museums and non-alcoholic pubs) and so much more effort in terms of aspiration and how to spend our time. Of course, the relaxation of the licensing laws is ill-timed and probably previous – but you have to hope that we can create a society where it will be ok for people to decide for themselves when they want to drink. The problem – we just ain’t there yet!