I think even the wingers in news:alt.food.wine will be glad to
hear this news. Deregulation leads to less crime - the facts
don't lie.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4692016.stm>

Violence down amid pub law change

Violent crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales fell
by 11% at the end of last year, despite longer pub opening hours
coming in, figures show.

The Home Office figures for the last three months of 2005
include a six-week period when the police were given £2.5m to
target alcohol-related crime.

The figures are the first since licensing laws were changed in
November to allow extended drinking hours.

Police have said it will take longer to assess the full impact
of the changes.

Half of all violent crime is linked to excessive drinking and
the government had been waiting to see how the figures would be
affected by longer opening hours for pubs and clubs.

To nip potential problems in the bud, the Home Office gave the
police and trading standards departments £2.5m to target binge
drinking between 12 November and Christmas.

With more officers on the streets at night, violent crime went
down by 11% overall, with an even sharper fall in more serious
types of offence, the figures show.

However, BBC crime correspondent Neil Bennett said it was not
possible to draw firm conclusions about the effects of extended
opening hours from these figures alone.

He said: "The extra money to tackle drink-related violence has
now run out and - as the figures for mugging showed recently -
when specially targeted operations stop, so crime tends to go up
again."

When the new licensing laws came in on 24 November, police
forces said the full implications would not be clear for at
least six months.

At the time, about 1,000 premises had 24-hour licences, with
thousands more licensed to extend opening times by only one or
two hours.