the world ended last week

Well you'd have thought so by the way the press was wittering on. The reason? Britain finally got some pub licensing hours that treat us like adults.

If you believed the right wing press then chaos would have been unleashed on the nation as we all turned into binge drinking asbos-in-waiting. So what happened? On the first night, no problems. Since then? No problems. And whys that?

1, Closing times are now staggered meaning that everyone isn't pitched out onto the street at the same time, fighting over cabs and in other ways clashing.

2, Without so much time pressure people don't drink so much in a short space of time

I knew this would be the case because of my past experience as the licensee of a small students' union. After a couple of years of having to go cap-in-hand to the magistrates court every time we wanted an extension to our hours I decided to apply for a Section 77 Special Hours Certificate. This meant that we could serve until 2am on Thurs, Fri & Saturday (rather than 11pm). Did chaos and disorder descend? No - there were no more problems than before. Did people drink more? No our takings remained the same, so actually we lost money because of increased staff wage costs.

There will be some teething troubles and cultural change is not a quick process, but it is about time this particular change was made whatever David Davis or the Daily Mail think.