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Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

theguardian.com

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Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#41

Post by chris_wot »

paganel wrote: post #26
predakanga wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past few years, there have been a number of deaths caused by unprovoked one-punch attacks ("king-hits", or now "coward punches"), possibly the highest profile being the death of Daniel Christie[0] after being attacked in Kings Cross, a hotspot for nightlife. In the wake of these attacks, a number of new regulations and laws have been passed, with the stated aim of reducing alcohol-related violence. These reg…

> showing the Senior Australian of the Year Gordian Fulde responding to a question about the lockout laws, for which he was a strong advocate. I have no idea who the guy is, he might be great in other respects, but his answer to the question he was asked was absolute bollocks. "Of course you can still have a drink at 2AM, go home with your friends and open a bottle of champagne", I mean, what kind of shitty answer is…

He's the guy who makes sure that you don't die when you get assaulted in Kings Cross. He runs the Emergency Department at St Vincent's Hospital, which is right across from that area.

HTH.

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#42

Post by chris_wot »

danieltillett wrote: post #19

Sydney has never really had a good night life. I wonder what has changed over the years to make people (both men and women) so much more aggressive when they get drunk. My personal observation is young men are much more muscular than my generation were − maybe all this violence is being driven by testosterone and/or droids.

It has always been this violent. However, community attitudes have changed, we no longer accept that alcohol-fueled violence is acceptable. It used to be, and isn't any more.

It used to be acceptable in Sydney to drive home drunk. If you admitted you drove home drunk now, you'd be rightly pilloried.

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#43

Post by chris_wot »

Khaine wrote: post #25

There are to many moralists in Australia. They abhor people having a fun night out.

Moralising against the moralists, huh?

There are far too many assaults caused by alcohol, and the levels of alcoholism and domestic violence caused by alcohol in Australia is a real problem.

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#44

Post by chris_wot »

sydneysider wrote: post #23
danieltillett wrote: post #19

Sydney has never really had a good night life. I wonder what has changed over the years to make people (both men and women) so much more aggressive when they get drunk. My personal observation is young men are much more muscular than my generation were − maybe all this violence is being driven by testosterone and/or droids.

westies jacked up on roids.

This comment explains everything. Let me guess, you live in the Northern suburbs?

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#45

Post by sydneysider »

chris_wot wrote: post #38
sydneysider wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of destroying small business and bringing in laws which detrimentally affect everyone, the state government should create examples of the offenders (the idiots that thing its cool to knock someone out), throw the book at them. strengthen the laws in a way that limits the potential for misuse, but sends a strong message to the drunken yobs, "if you do this, you're toast". These lockout laws don't fix anything,…

The media did. There's not much point in making an example out of drunk people, because violent drunk people aren't thinking of the consequences. The only way of making this work would be a register of offenders who can't go to pubs because of their drunkenness. Given that we tried to have mandatory pre-commitment for gamblers (which allowed them to gamble, but put limits on it) and this utterly failed, I'm not surpr…

My issue is that we even need laws to deal with this, people can have horrible neighbours (you must remember the fence wars saga), what's to stop your horrible neighbour from making your life painful because you grill up some food once in a while.

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#46

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

chris_wot wrote: post #35
tajen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who don't know Sydney: Kings Cross is a 400m street packed with clubs. It does look shady with its erotic clubs, but short enough that you're out in a few minutes. Newspapers have a focus over night crime in Kings Cross, I've always wondered there was a political agenda or whether that was statistically abnormal. Alternatives are downtown (less dense in clubs), Oxford St (gay clubs) and farther neighbourhoo…

They are. The lockout laws actually come from Newcastle, which had an even worse problem. Alcohol fueled violence has been and remains a massive problem in Australia. In fact, drinking in Australia remains a massive problem: we have some of the worst cases of binge-drinking and alcoholism rates in the world. We have a list of dangerous pubs in NSW: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-27/north-coast-pub-tops-l...

Interesting, recently there was a study posted on HN that it depends on genetics whether or not someone becomes violent when drunk. Australia started as a prison colony, maybe there is a connection there?

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#47

Post by sydneysider »

chris_wot wrote: post #44
sydneysider wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

westies jacked up on roids.

This comment explains everything. Let me guess, you live in the Northern suburbs?

I don't understand what this has to do with anything. (and for the record, no, I don't, not eastern suburbs either).

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#48

Post by tankenmate »

chris_wot wrote: post #36
EdwardDiego wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh God. I travelled to Newcastle to meet friends and went out on the town on a Friday night. My big mistake was waiting until 10:30pm to depart, because nearly everything was closed or getting ready to close at midnight - Newcastle's "favourite cocktail bar" was unable to make any cocktails. I'm from Christchurch, and we have a better nightlife than Newcastle, and our CBD got smooshed by an earthquake.

Your chances of being assaulted in Newcastle before the lockout laws were very high. I doubt you would be having much fun in the Emergency Department, getting stitched up.

Of course the heavy handedness of the Star Hotel has been long forgotten; now of course they boil the frog slower, so instead of riots we now have malaise and the brain drain.

In the end there will still be loss, but this time it won't be accompanied regeneration. In time Sydney will become a financial / service sector equivalent of Port Kembla unless the ship is turned around.

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#49

Post by DominikR »

sqldba wrote: post #5
stevebmark wrote: post #4

I'm an outsider to Sydney and Australia, and I'm a regular visitor. This article rings of an insider perspective, full of "we" statements. It has a vibe of personal anger and personal overreaction. What I'm genuinely curious about is the events that lead to the formation of these laws. Again, as an outsider, the main thing to do in Sydney is drink. A lot. The main thing my friends want to do after work in Sydney is d…

Innocent people kept getting murdered on King St (a popular bar and night life destination, as well as prostitution or at least erotic joints, and possibly some drug use.) A few years back there was a spate of "King Hits" which is when one person hits another person in the head and immediately knocks them unconscious, usually through random chance rather than any kind of skill, but meaning that person then bears the…

This is truly horrible, but I have to say that I'd rather have the government use proportionate force on bad players instead of using it on business owners to have them enforce some reactionary laws and in the process limiting the freedoms of the majority.

The state has the monopoly on enforcing rules and it should not fear forcing citizens to comply.

If the state for some reason cannot uphold order anymore then we are back at having survival of the fittest and might makes right on the streets.

I'm not defending trigger happy police men, but in this particular case police should have been watching this area and arrest and later charge everyone that hit somebody random in the head for attempted manslaughter, even if the victim didn't suffer any enduring damage.

I believe this would have sent a message.

Re: Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

#50

Post by vacri »

dicemoose wrote: post #10
sydneysider wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit over the top, completely playing into the media hysteria. A few people got killed because some drunken, uneducated cowards hit them. This wasn't night after night. I'm also amused at the fact that the premier and all his buddies are devout christians, don't get me wrong,I have no issue with religion or the liberals, I'm long time lib voter, but I'm going to reconsider my vote in the future now though ba…

`'One-punch'' assaults have cost 90 Australian lives since 2000, most in booze-fuelled bashings, a study has found.` ... `NSW had the highest number of king-hits (28), followed by Victoria and Queensland (24 cases each).` So not night after night at all, but more than a couple (this article is from 2013. http://www.smh.com.au/national/90-killed-in-singlepunch-assa...

So you're looking at about 4 deaths a year. To put that in context, in 2012[1] 26 Australians died from falling off a chair and 58 died falling while getting out of bed. The gold standard for these kind of comparisons, lightning strikes, gets 5-10 Australians a year[2].

There is a problem with drinking and violence in Australia, but at the same time, 90 people over 13 years isn't all that many; by itself, it shouldn't be used to argue for new laws.

[1] http://www.news.com.au/national/the-weird-ways-australians-d...

[2] https://www.australiawidefirstaid.com.au/lightning-strikes/

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