Even students would struggle to find 50p drinks these days.
It’s just not something you expect any more, and the offer of a 50p drink would surely cause some to raise a quizzical eyebrow and politely decline. Or knock it back. Who knows if we’ll even be here tomorrow anyway.
A bar in St Helens, Merseyside has come under fire for doing the seemingly impossible: offering 50p drinks. On the surface this seems like a bargain, but the people of St. Helens have voiced concern that super-cheap booze will fuel violence and social disorder in the streets.
The bar, Bonkers, which opened just a few weeks ago in October, offers vodka Red Bull, Jägers and vodka mixers at the low low price of 50p on special nights. While the drinks promotion is no doubt proving popular with some revellers, locals aren’t happy, the Liverpool Echo reports.
“No, no, no. More assaults in the town – just what we need,” said someone on Facebook. “No wonder there are fights and knife attacks in St Helens people are just going to drink as much as they can at that price,” another said.
A man claiming to be a former doorman said: “I have worked the doors for 22 years. Any pub opened up and sells drinks for 50p should be shut down.”
Bonkers disagrees, however. A spokesperson for the bar said: “We’ve ran this past the council and the licensing committee and the police and trading standards and none of them have a problem with it at all.
“Fifty pence drinks aren’t a new things for St Helens it has been done in the past and it will be done again in the future. There is no evidence to suggest that 50p drinks provides an increase in anti-social behaviour and disorder here.
“We were selling 50p drinks last Saturday all night and we didn’t have one incident.”
Concern over rising levels of violence in the town reached a peak following the murder of a former doorman Danny Fox in September last year. One woman on Facebook wrote:
“Cheap alcohol = more violence , its the truth. As if there’s not enough going on with bars open till 5am. It’s a joke, let us see how long it is until someone else is fatally hurt.”
Not everyone was upset about the 50p drinks offer, however. One person wrote on Facebook: “Everyone moans that the town is in decline. Somebody has made a new bar which will bring in revenue for the town plus create jobs and you all still moan.
“This bar won’t make people fight if they are going to fight they will fight. Fights happen in London where it’s £5 a drink do they not?”
