How to use this Page

One year on from the introduction of the UK government’s 24 hour licensing laws, the official report finds a “mixed picture” of their impact. I asked Martin and Moira Plant, of the Alcohol and Health Research Unit at the University of West of England, for their reaction to the report as they wrote our book Binge Britain: Alcohol and the National Response. This is their short, hard-hitting reply. What do you make of liberalizing alcohol laws? Let us know in the comments below.

(more…)

Share This

I consider myself fortunate to have a brother who knows more than which end is up when it comes to computers. After the loss of my beloved laptop to crackheads on Sunday, I got right back in the saddle and ordered a new one. It is a Dell Vostro 1500.

I was sick all weekend. No, I wasn't sick, I felt worse than dead all weekend. I felt like I had been trampled by sixteen elephants, three rhinos and a bush baby wearing soccer cleats then left to rot many days on the Savannah during the dry season. Needless to say, it was not a good weekend.

Then it got worse.

My laptop got stolen out of my car. This is my writing laptop. The one with all my files on it. Now understand, I never leave my laptop in my car. Never. I'm always too nervous it will get stolen. But I felt like hell and I knew I would not be using it and I knew I'd need it at the office the next day, so I left my laptop in the car. One time.

Silly me, I forgot it was "Crackhead Ransack the Cars in my Neighborhood Night."

For those of you who are not writers, understand that the loss of the primary laptop is akin to a career marathon runner losing a leg. Or this one magician I knew when I was a kid who specialized in sleight of hand until he lost most of his fingers in a car accident (This is what we writers call irony).

I know I locked the car. I'm positive. I'm one of those people who thumbs the remote lock button over and over until the car beeps into submission as it re-re-re-locks. I can still feel last night's beep reverberating in my bones, but upon arriving at my office this morning, my laptop was gone.

I assumed I had absentmindedly brought the laptop into the house and had forgotten it on the dining room table, but I had this gnawing feeling in my gut so I drove back home. As I pulled up to my house, I saw the police car. It was parked in front of my neighbor's house and she was pointing at her car, parked not twenty yards from where mine had been. She was ranting and raving exactly as I wanted to be ranting and raving.

And at that moment I knew all was lost.

I must have accidentally hit the unlock button when I threw my keys on the counter.

I went over there and asked if she had something stolen from her car. She had lost an iPod and a bag filled with gifts. I indicated I had lost my laptop. The police officer told me to wait by my car until he finished with her police report. After filling out my police report, the officer told me that these cases are ranked in order of "solvability" and this one does not rank high. He told me they might find the laptop someday when they nab someone for something else, but it's not likely it will ever turn up. I appreciated the honesty and knew that I would have to suck it up and get me a new hunk of technology.

The thing that sucks is that I suck at backing up.

My job now is to go through my thumb drive and my other computers and figure out what I have saved and where. It will not be fun and I am certain I've lost stuff. Much stuff. I can't write about this any more because it twists up my guts like that time I swallowed the business end of a hand mixer and plugged it in.

Wish me luck.

Oh, and the other thing that happened today is that I just agreed to terms on my second book! Good news among the bad. My perihelion and aphelion all rolled into one (look them up). Possibly the best news an author can get and the worst all in one day. Now, I have to go figure out how I should be feeling right now.