Changing of the hours

The closing times for UK pubs are going to change, Granta's Ian Jack notes: "The argument in Scotland used to be that its moralistic view of alcohol, exemplified by its restrictive licensing laws, was to blame. It was ludicrous... that you couldn't get a coffee in a pub, that children were barred (and in one or two places women too, until the sexual equality legislation), that every pub began calling closing-time at 10 to 10, that on Sundays the only places licensed to sell alcohol were hotels, which until the 1960s kept registers that obliged drinkers to declare themselves "bona-fide travellers", who had travelled at least three miles. If drink were let out of its closet and undemonised, then alcohol might find the place it occupied on the café tables of continental Europe, where people didn't drink to get drunk."