Health & Safety - Rise of plastic glasses

Not content with looking into each and every aspect of our lives, seems that the latest wheeze for safety is plastic glasses. Strangely enough this is coming not from the local councils, but from the police.

One would have thought that the major priority for the police was to catch criminals, you remember them dubious chaps in striped sweaters carrying a bag marked SWAG! or failing that to raise revenue by enforcing motoring rules to the hilt. Was going to make a joke about if that fails then stitching up a black man for the crime, but I am sure Toyin Agbetu lacks a sense of humour and so will pass on that. However it looks like health and safety is now part of day to day policing here in the UK:http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news_detail.aspx?articleid=29937

Moves by police forces to pressurise pub operators into replacing glass with polycarbonate vessels are “growing like a bushfire” around the country, a leading trade body has claimed.

The British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) has now made the issue of stopping a blanket ban on glasses one of its main priorities. JD Wetherspoon chief executive John Hutson has claimed requests from police forces are coming in “thick and fast”.

The customers you will tend to attract with plastic glasses are the ones who don’t care about quality. Director of communications Mark Hastings.

The BBPA is writing to a number of police forces around the country to stress that polycarbonate glasses should not be introduced on a blanket basis. It is also involved in talks with the Association of Chief Police Officers stressing the trade’s opposition to a blanket ban on glass in pubs.

The trade body has previously written to all MPs who signed an early day motion calling for the introduction of polycarbonate glasses, stressing the trade’s opposition to the move.

Director of communications Mark Hastings said: “Polycarbonate glasses are a down-market, low-grade experience for customers.

“The customers you will tend to attract with plastic glasses are the ones who don’t care about quality. The issue is growing like a bushfire. This is a classic case of police forces talking to other police forces.”

Hastings insisted that the introduction of polycarbonate glasses should only be the result of an operator deciding a risk assessment showed it was needed for public safety reasons.

Thames Valley Police licensing co-ordinator Inspector John Fox says the force does not have a blanket ban policy, but big town-centre bars are being "encouraged" to take on plastic.

**Indeed drinking a decent pint of traditional beer out of a plastic glass is a horrid experience at best, worst thing is getting a grip on the plastic glass and it then folding sending half the beer over either yourself or other people. Oh and of course the slow leak from the hairline crack, again designed to ruin a chaps evening.


The health and safety people will argue that this is all for our own good, after all glass is dangerous, yes there are idiots out there who throw glasses and even use them as weapons - those people if deprived of a glass would use anything else they could get to hand as a weapon instead, this of course is something the nanny state overlooks their logic being that removal is far better than actually trusting the public.

We as adults may be old enough to drink, vote and pay taxes but alas we can not be trusted to handle a glass properly, oh and what will happen when they realise that we have glasses in our own homes? Maybe they feel that we should just be given a baby's bottle when we order our drink in the pub and have done with it.

Tags: BBPA, polycarbonate glasses, risk assessment, Political Correctness, CAMRA, Real Ale, Nanny State,

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