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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

#81

Post by chris_wot »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #46
chris_wot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Only if there is a connection between a predisposition of Germans misusing eugenics research to the Second World War.

You honestly are a buffoon.

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

#82

Post by chris_wot »

madaxe_again wrote: post #78
nl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the other Newcastle. This one is north of Sydney (I guess they are both north of Sydney, but there's a bit of a hike to the one on the Tyne...)

Hah - right, yes, I'm talking about the one in England, which apparently has quite a bit in common with its antipodean counterpart.

Well... it used to be that way :-)

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

#83

Post by samizdatum »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #74
johnchristopher wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A wild guess: The most influential backers are Christians. They have the money to lend to the party so it can build effective marketing and political campaign to go after the rest of the voters.

Money - conservative Christians don't usually cause trouble for corporations. Age - conservative retirement-age voters are far more likely to vote than the 18-30 demo. Networking - churches can, and do, bully-pulpit entire parishes. So policy is far further to the right than the population median.

Voting is compulsory in Australia.

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

#84

Post by chris_wot »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #74
johnchristopher wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A wild guess: The most influential backers are Christians. They have the money to lend to the party so it can build effective marketing and political campaign to go after the rest of the voters.

Money - conservative Christians don't usually cause trouble for corporations. Age - conservative retirement-age voters are far more likely to vote than the 18-30 demo. Networking - churches can, and do, bully-pulpit entire parishes. So policy is far further to the right than the population median.

Money - conservative Christians don't usually cause trouble for corporations.

That's not been my experience.

Age - conservative retirement-age voters are far more likely to vote than the 18-30 demo.

Australia has mandatory voting. We have something like 98% voter turn out. You don't know what you are talking about.

Networking - churches can, and do, bully-pulpit entire parishes.

Facts not in evidence.

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

#85

Post by Cyph0n »

switch007 wrote: post #59
hanoz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the UK, where on occasions one can easily feel like the only one in the pub not drinking Jägerbombs, and drinking to massive excess generally is a proud national pastime.

If you don't start drinking at 5pm on a Friday, puke up twice, consume your body weight in kebab meat and then go for a greasy fry-up in the morning, you're basically a boring sod.

That sounds stupid to be honest. To each his own I guess?

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

#86

Post by exodust »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #46
chris_wot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The scientific jury is out on whether drunken violence is a genetic trait. Interesting enough idea. "So your father was an alcoholic" is common among alcoholics and their friends looking for explanation.

Violence is also one of those "fallback" mentalities that stupid people embrace when cornered. Genetics aside, stupid people have few resources at their disposal. Violence is there, justified by a century of iconic pop culture that says "when your friend sleeps with your girlfriend, punch him in the head, it's what you must do".

As for convict Australia. Very few Australians today are the decedents of convicts, and very few of those convicts would have been violent.

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

#87

Post by vacri »

varjag wrote: post #61
vacri wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could come down to Melbourne, it's got a very healthy nightlife and music scene. It has a little bit of wowserism happening at the moment (no new licenses for bars open past 1am anymore, for example, and some more restrictions on 'music pubs'), but as far as I'm aware, no legislation about timing requirements on mixed drinks (which sounds truly crazy). The main article reads like a horror story for nightlife. It'…

> ..there's a lot of conservative christian politicians in power at the federal level, and at some state levels, and they don't reflect modern australian values. How come they don't, if they consistently keep getting elected?

Australian christians don't really advertise the fact. You won't see an Australian politician saying "God Bless 'X'" at the end of a speech (as appears to be the usual case with US politicians) unless they're speaking to an overtly christian audience. It's fine to be christian in Australia, but proselytising is very frowned upon, and christians who often publicly state their faith are generally seen as 'wowsers' (fun-killers).

Also, MPs are generally voted in by party affiliation, so people vote more for the party rather than the individual person. Anyway, I'm not sure how it's happened, but the power-brokers of both major parties have a greater proportion of staunch christians than the wider population. So, when a party wants to do X or Y, often a bone will need to be tossed to one of these power-brokers to get the numbers.

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

#88

Post by pakled_engineer »

Vancouver, Canada when bars were forced to shut down at 2am, resulted in thousands of drunks pouring into the streets all at once and mass brawling with each other. Laws were changed to allow 4am last call and legal after hours, and the gigantic street brawls disappeared. A barwatch association was started to keep out chronic violent offenders and known gangsters from clubs and bars too which helped.

There's also juiced up goofs here running around one punching random people while their friends film their crime and yell "worldstar" (worldstar hiphop) which is the site where all the recent knockout game idiocy originated.

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

#89

Post by vacri »

varjag wrote: post #70
johnchristopher wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A wild guess: The most influential backers are Christians. They have the money to lend to the party so it can build effective marketing and political campaign to go after the rest of the voters.

Given that the majority of Australians are Christian it would indeed make sense that the most influential backers are Christians too. Probably been like that for a long time? Still there might be something in their campaigns that resonates with the views of the majority. One wouldn't imagine them consistently winning fair elections in predominantly Hindu or Muslim country, no matter the campaign spending.

The majority of Australians are secular. Take me: I'm from a family that's Church-of-England (C of E). I've been an atheist since at least 10 years old (first strong memory of it), yet the first time I filled out a census form, I ticked C of E because that was my family's religion. These days the religion question on the census form is the only contentious one on it, because of things just like this. Lots of people associate with a given religion but don't really practice it - churches in Australia are fighting falling attendance and graying congregations.

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

#90

Post by pdkl95 »

fian wrote: post #72
chris_wot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree there has always been an amount of violence. In the past 15-20 years, at least in my opinion, there has been an escalation in the severity of the violence. As a 20 year old, going out to a pub or club, there was always the risk of getting involved in a fight. At the time that probably would have meant a few punches, probably to the body and a lot of pushing and shoving. We mostly drank beer and maybe some spi…

> sugary

Sugar and alcohol is a mixture that has always been popular. A lot of traditional methods for making wine, mead, and beer favored residual sugar. For example, harvesting grapes as late as possible or leaving them to dry in the sun so the sugar was concentrated was a common winemaking technique in ancient times.

> energy drinks

A cup of strong coffee contains much more caffeine than most "energy drinks", and a lot of people add sugar to their coffee. Caffeine+sugar+EtOH isn't a new thing either - before Jagerbombs and "alco-pops", drinking "Irish coffee" and similar coffee+liquor recipes were common.

> I would prefer to see alco-pops and Redbull as a mixer banned from licensed premises.

Yet coffee is ok?

Banning something because of personal dislike is one of the larger problems of modern society. The law should not be used to enforce opinion.

> one of the only drugs that will clear your system

Unless you are a habitual (i.e. ~daily) user, most drugs will clear your system by monday if you used them at a friday evening party. The major exception is THC, which lingers for weeks because it is lipid soluble. Most drugs are water soluble and are eliminated very quickly.

This does depends on a lot of factors. A big one is the testing method. Chemical indicator tests are terribly inaccurate, while a full (and expensive) GC-MS can probably detect almost everything (including methamphetamine after a few days).

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