the parable of the pissed-up jakey

Although I prefer to not-drink in pubs by ordering coffee I am prevented from so doing in the Maltings by the shiteness of the coffee they offer. They have some sort of Nescafé-labelled machine with two buttons on the front (probably for "normal" and "excessively milky" and a complete lack of the bean-grinders and steam-nozzles required for the manufacture of proper tasty coffee. If coffee is not available I sometimes get fruit juice but when it comes out of cartons which haven't been in the fridge I'd rather not bother. The occasional pint can be quite tasty but I dislike the drowsiness and general body-mankiness which results from even small amounts of beerstuffs and so opted to just sit there without drinking anything. I was half-expecting to be questioned about this by a barkeep when they collected the glasses of the others at the table but they left me alone.

Shortly before I arrived a man had apparently pissed himself in the trousers on a seat a few seats away and had been ejected from the pub. The floor had been mopped and the (upholstered) seat removed and I'd approached from the wrong direction to have encountered him outside but it's a reasonably common sight, especially on Saturday afternoons. One of the reasons I prefer not to give pubs and the alcohol industry any money is that they permit and encourage this sort of behaviour; I was under the impression that it's against the laws of alcohol-vending to permit the sale of intoxicants to the already-intoxicated; as I'm seldom in pubs I'm prepared to accept that this might sometimes happen (though I have yet to see it) but seeing as almost any pub one might walk past contains crowdsful of drunk people it would seem that publicans and their staff have a different opinion of what constitutes intoxication. The staff behind the bar must also be trained to keep their eyes out for people smuggling shop-bought boozes and foodstuffs into the pub so they're probably equally capable of watching out for less-drunk people buying drinks for more-drunk people who aren't sitting at the bar itself. Maybe they could get a special prize each time they correctly ID someone who's had enough; after all, get a man too drunk and he might die before he can buy any drinks tomorrow whereas get him just drunk enough and he could come back and do it all again the next day. As some people probably do already.