If you look at those famous pictures Hogarth did showing the effects of excessive drinking in Victorian England you might think they are just a caricature and were an attempt to shock by depicting the extremes of drunkenness but they were not reality.

Well maybe that's true to a point.

However, if you haven't experienced a busy city centre on a Saturday night and maybe visited a police custody centre or a hospital casualty department then you wont know how often some of those Hogarth scenes are played out still every weekend.

In the Daily Echo this week there was coverage of crime/4856341.Drunken_thugs_jailed_after_horrific_beating/">a horrible assault by drunken youths which resulted in a court case and 6 people being sent to prison for their part in the attack.

A good result but a shame it ever happened.

The Government has announced plans for tougher laws around licensing designed to reduce excessive and underage drinking.

That's welcome but I would like to see more.

In Southampton we are determined to reduce the amount of crime and disorder, especially in the City centre, caused by excessive drinking and we are seeing some results of that.

It's not all about policing by any means (for example the Street Pastors Service is a great new addition to helping people in the City centre) but police enforcement has a big role to play and we are having some success.

There is less violent crime in the City overall and less in the City centre at night. Less but still too much including too much violence against women in public and at home.

For my part I would like to see us tackle excessive drinking in the same way we did smoking.

Through more advertising control and bans, pricing policy, education, more restrictions on sale, more treatment services and increased local authority and police enforcement.

We've got to the point where smoking is widely disapproved of and we need to achieve the same for heavy drinking especially amongst young people. I don't think I am a miserable prohibitionist but you can only see so many people harmed by excessive drinking before you decide there must be a better way. I can't accept a 'positive' impact on company profit lines as sufficient reason to put up with the harm and waste caused by excessive drinking so I am pleased that more licensees in the City are talking with us about responsible policies and practice. That's very welcome but we've been here before and I still see plenty of evidence that we need to do more to make sure that Hogarth's vision is one which is increasingly just historical.