The coun­cil is going to draft a by-law to ban drink­ing in pub­lic places.

But don’t worry, respect­able cit­izens! It’s not aimed at you! It’s aimed at pesky booz­ers.

Extend­ing the liquor ban would mean we could deal with prob­lems in the sub­urbs. It would­n’t be about stop­ping people hav­ing a quiet beer or a glass of wine on the beach or in the park – and the Police are already on the record as say­ing they would use dis­cre­tion.

Anoth­er “x-ing while brown” offence in the mak­ing.

They break bottles, yell and swear, vomit and cre­ate chaos – but there’s noth­ing the Police can really do at the moment about the drink­ing of alco­hol – which is gen­er­ally the cause of the prob­lems.

This is a puzz­ler. If people are behav­ing badly, that’s dis­orderly beha­viour. If they’re not, who cares wheth­er they’re drink­ing?

If only there were some­where for hard­core street drink­ers to go. Mean­while, wast­ing police time on herd­ing them around the city is appar­ently the only way out.

There’s a Face­book group in oppos­i­tion. Here’s hop­ing that’s just a start.