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if there is any sound basis for the new law
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Boris himself had to announce another substantial drop in crime on public transport recently (stemming from Livingstone era policies, of course), so you can argue that changing a status quo which current policing and enforcement strategies were demonstrably working in favour of one where the police get extra duties for a problem that was unquantified is bad policy straight off the bat. Do you take coppers off the anti-robbery and staff assault initiatives to patrol near-empty tube trains in case someone's hiding a can of Stella? Do you take money from existing budgets to pay for more policemen to patrol near-empty....etc.? None of this seems to have been thought through.
Of course, it wasn't really Boris' policy at all - he has an unhappy habit of listening to people*, taking what they say at face value and then making it policy without regard to justifiability, cost or effect. In the case of the booze ban, the Sun (which backed him, obviously, having backed Blair and Blunkett for years when they were banning things left right and centre) got hold of it, so the early announcement resulted in some good headlines.
The RMT, incidentally, was unusually spot on with its initial response to the ban, they welcomed anything that would make their members safer, but queried the timing. The resulting assaults on their members give them something of a talking point when it comes to being consulted in future (they weren't consulted at all on the original ban).
* While it's good for politicians to listen to people, he only ever seems to listen to right wing think tanks and suburban Londoners and appears incapable of analysing the opinions he's received. A lot of his policies are therefore obviously unworkable or based on dangerously flawed data, like the bendy bus non-issue.
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i.e in the past there may not have been an explicit law against drinking in public but most right minded people would have considered it bad form,bad mannered and unacceptable
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Eh? Have you any conception of the part drink has played in British history? I suspect not, or you wouldn't be parroting the classic Tory 'back-to-the-1950s' line about 'standards of morality and behaviour'. We've *always* been a drinking country, we're famous for it. We write songs about it. We've probably got more slang about drinking and being drunk than Eskimos have words for snow. What about the gin epidemic in the 18th century? What about kids drinking small beer (because it was safer than water, obviously)? What about the Royal Navy ruling the waves on rum, sodomy and the lash? What about the thousands of pubs and breweries up and down the country? What about the Scots and whisky?
What will you ban next? I spent last night sitting at a table on a South London street outside a pub enjoying a few pints of London Pride and good conversation - should I make the most of it because that'll surely be next if the country is really full of 'right-minded' self-righteous morlocks, killjoys and puritans who think such a pleasant way of passing the time is 'bad form,bad mannered and unacceptable'. Pshaw.