carnage

The company Carnage that organise pub crawls for students is coming under fire from all angles in a BBC report.

Students have always scored high grades when it comes to organising a drink or two, but private event firms are also getting a slice of the action. In Brighton on Monday scores of students joined Carnage UK's fancy dress tour of bars and pubs - the latest in a series of events the company runs in 45 towns and cities.

For £10 teenagers are given a t-shirt and free entry to bars and clubs, many of which offer cheap drinks.

Pay £10, get a T-shirt and also free entry into pubs (usually free anyway) and clubs (who hand out free tickets anyway) on a Monday night (usually a quiet night).

For some it is harmless fun, but the president of the National Union of Students, Wes Streeting, told the BBC the pub crawls put students' welfare at risk."It seems to me Carnage does what it says on the tin. It gets lots of students together in one place at one time to go on bar crawls which cause carnage in town centres up and down the country.

"This puts students' welfare at risk and leads to anti-social behaviour... when this happens it tends to be the students' union which gets it in the neck."

I'm sorry Wes but this just sounds like sour grapes from you. For years the Student Union bars were able to offer large discounts on alcohol to students and now that other commercial outlets are doing the same, taking away your customer base, you are complaining? This is commercial jealousy not concern.

This is of course a BBC story about alcohol so it wouldn't be complete without a quote from a fakecharity........

Campaign group Alcohol Concern told the BBC it wants to see an end to organised, paid-for pub crawls which offer "more alcohol at lower prices".

A spokesperson said: "If you've spent £10 to go on an organised pub crawl, you want to get your money's worth, so it incentivises binge drinking... it's something students are expected to do and they [the companies] tap into this."

By the same reasoning you could argue that if you've paid to get into a nightclub then you are more likely to drink to excess .. .. .. ..

Students who are living away from their parents for the first time in their lives are likely to experiment with alcohol. Surely it's better that if they are paralyticly drunk that they are surrounded by people who can help them, rather than being on their own?