Cheshire drink-driver tells court 'driveway too long to walk'

Barbara Woodward, a drink-driver, begged magistrates not to ban her from the road because her £6m mansion's quarter-mile driveway was too long for her to walk. The 56 year old also claimed she would struggle to do community service as she had never worked in her life.

Police arrested her for being three times the limit at 09:00 GMT in Chelford, Cheshire on 17 November, after they found her slumped at the wheel of her £79,000 Mercedes G-Class 4x4, with her make-up smeared and slurring her words.

The court heard she had tried to buy sparkling wine at a petrol station to make bucks fizz for friends.
The Petrol station attendant Sharid Butt described her as "stumbling all over the forecourt"

He called police after she drove off at 5mph and staggered out of another shop.

The court heard it happened two days after her husband's funeral.Mrs Woodward said: "He did everything, and then when he died I had to take over. I had never paid a bill in my life."

She denied drink driving but was banned for two years after being convicted at Stockport Magistrates' Court.

Magistrates ordered her to do 15 days' rehabilitation and fined her £560 with £760 surcharges.

For more information and images on this story please visit BBC

Low and no-alcohol lifestyle booms

About 5 million people will drink their first beer or glass of wine that they have consumed in a month next week as “dry January” comes to an end.

However for an increasing number of people it will be an entirely dry year, as low and no-alcohol becomes the lifestyle of choice for many people.

Tesco says its sales of low-alcohol wines have more than doubled. The supermarket’s wine expert Alexandra Runciman, says: “Consumption of alcohol in the UK down is down by 18% over the last decade and we’re seeing more customers looking for a quality wine-drinking experience without the alcohol.”

Drinking rates among British adults are at their lowest since 2005. A recent Office for National Statistics survey found the proportion who drank alcohol at least once a week declined from 64.2% to 56.9% last year. Almost 100,000 people officially signed up to the “dry January” challenge this year – about 40% up on 2017 – while millions more joined in unofficially.

The trend is particularly prevalent among young people: more than a quarter of 16- to 24-year-olds do not drink.

Stuart Elkington, founder of specialist online store Dry Drinker, says his sales have more than doubled in the last 12 months. He believes an improvement in the taste of low- and no-alcohol beers and wines has combined with a general desire to cut calories, be healthy and avoid waking up with a hangover.

For more on this story please read the Guardian

Sugar tax ‘could increase amount of alcohol that we drink’

A new study suggests that the introduction of the sugar tax on soft drinks could have the unintended consequence of driving up alcohol consumption.

Experts examined if price hikes to soft drinks could lead to higher rates of purchase for other drinks – such as alcohol.

The model used data from the expenditure of 32,000 British households in 2012/13 and analysed six million drinks purchases including milk, juice, high-sugar drinks and alcohol.

The experts found that people from poorer homes were more likely to buy high-sugar drinks and spirits while richer homes were more likely to buy juices and wine.

Taking this model in to account it would indicate that an increase in the cost of diet or low-sugar drinks could lead to hikes in the sales of beer, cider and wines.

But an increase in the price of medium-sugar drinks could actually reduce sales of alcoholic drinks, according to the study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

For more on this story visit metro

'Crashed car' displays urging you not to drink or drug drive this Christmas

FIREFIGHTERS are warning motorists who have overindulge in Christmas spirit to keep out of their cars with a dramatic display.

Cars which appear to have crashed with the boundary walls of two Bournemouth fire stations are now in place.

The cars are in place in Redhill and Springbourne alongside banners which read: 'Drink, drugs, drive - don't do it!'

The displays will stay in place until the new year, and have been marked as ‘police aware’ in case members of the public believe them to be a real accident.

Source : bournemouthecho

Breath tests for alcohol have fallen by a quarter

Breath tests for alcohol have fallen by a quarter over five years, figures show, as campaigners warn that drunk drivers are getting away with it.

Experts said a hard core of drink drivers had not responded to efforts to make it socially unacceptable leading to a stalling in the number of people killed on the roads.

John Scruby, former police traffic officer and campaigner against drinking and driving, said that a certain type of offender would continue to drink and drive unless the law was better enforced.

"With the education that we do, they're aware that drink driving is something they shouldn't be doing," he said.

"It's the same with mobile phones or anything - certain people think they've become immune to it, but they haven't."

 Christmas is a peak time for drink-drive offences. Last week police revealed that during last year's crackdown they stopped more than 100,000 vehicles, with 5,698 breath tests that were positive, failed or refused.

For more on this piece please visit telegraph

It is time to BAN alcohol on aeroplanes?

I came across an interesting online article by Martin Townsend in the Express.co.uk entitled "It is time to BAN alcohol on aeroplanes"

Did you know that the death of 31 people 30 years ago in the King’s Cross fire was the trigger for the ban on smoking on the London Underground?

Then in 2008 The ban on alcohol on the Underground came in to force and succeed in making Tube travel more pleasant. (this ban was not introduced because of a disaster)

With a sizable minority of plane passengers not behaving appropriately under the influence of alcohol, (despite it being illegal to enter an aircraft when drunk or to be drunk on an aircraft). Could this end in the ultimate disaster of bringing a plane down if a complete ban doesn't take place?

The maximum penalty for entering an aircraft when drunk or to be drunk on an aircraft is two years’ jail.

A total of 387 people were arrested at British airports and on flights between February 2016 and February 2017 – a rise of 50 per cent in a year.

Mr Townsend made another great point in his article that "Aggressive pub drunks are bad enough but innocent bystanders can always head for the exit. There is no such option on a plane where onlookers are left to quietly fret."

What do you think? should more be done? have you ever seen someone stopped from boarding a plane due to drunkenness? Were you aware that it is illegal to be drunk on a plane before reading this article?

Drivers who kill will now face life sentence

Dangerous drivers who cause death while using their mobile phones or speeding will now face life in prison.

Drivers who kill while under the influence of drink or drugs will also face a life sentence. And there will be a new offence of causing serious injury through careless driving, as part of renewed efforts to improve road safety.

The new measures mean such drivers could face the same length of sentence as those convicted of manslaughter, with maximum penalties raised from 14 years to life.

Read the full story in the guardian