Mine's a pint.
Apparently, the Home Office’s 'Design and Technology Alliance Against Crime' (what?) and the Design Council have established a project called Design Out Crime. According to their excitable website, it is
"..showing how designers can get to the root of a crime problem and stop it happening"
Oh really?
And there was us, thinking that we needed more police, and a few more feral fucking hoodies behind bars. And it turns out, its all just design. Design, baby!
So what have these doubtless bespectacled, probably goateed, designers done for us then? Instant Spider-senses? Affordable Bat-mobiles? Nope.
No, what they've done is .. wait for it .. invented a new beer glass.
Yes, really.
But a beer glass with a difference. A beer glass that's a little bit like a car windscreen, in that it doesn't shatter into a million tiny pieces when broken.
So, when the traditional Saturday evening fight kicks off, there'll still be a shitload of people in casualty with broken noses, missing teeth and cracked ribs from the kickings they've received. There'll still be the odd person with stab wounds.There might even be someone with a bullet in 'em.
But what there won't be is that bloke covered in cuts because he's had a glass mashed into his face. No, instead, he'll have a broken nose, and a large round bruise.
Well hoorah! At one stroke, we've addressed binge drinking, disaffected youth and the inadequate policing of violence hotspots. Haven't we? No, we fucking haven't.
We've turned one of the many weapons at hand in a pub brawl into a slightly different - but equally useful - kind of weapon.
And of course, who do you think is going to pay for all this cutting-edge beverage-holding excitement? Well, let's see.
It could be the Home Office. In other words, us.
It could be the owners of pub chains and the vendors of booze, who will promptly increase prices to cover the costs. So again, us.
Or it could be the poor ol' landlords who serve the booze who - if they don't go bust as a result of having to replace every glass in the fucking place - will also pass on the cost in increased prices. So, once more, us.
Grand.
.
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