To think MPs shouldn’t be drinking while at work?

I don’t know about MPs drinking on the job, but as others said it is still common in many industries for folks to have a drink with lunch. Have you never walked past a pub in the City of London at lunchtime?

If you go to bank at lunchtime you'll see it's totally normal to be at a restaurant or pub and have a drink at lunch. On a Thursday the pubs will be getting busy from 4.

Not every person is drinking at lunch (nor every day). However, in the property /insurance sectors it's about relationships and people from different firms with meet and may well have a drink.

Its definitely not a sackable offence!

Can’t believe those prices! I last paid that for a pint in the early 00s I think. I imagine the MPs enjoying their cheap drinks as they laugh at how us plebs have to pay double those prices. Really crap beer selection but I suppose most of them drink wine and spirits.

The other difference is that most people don’t want the people who make the decisions about their taxes, health, security or a million other things to be doing while they’re pissed up on cheap Carling.

That's a fair point with regard to some politicians in some roles but these days it appears many MPs simply need to be with it enough to vote along party lines/obey a three line whip.

I'm certainly not sure there's any objective reason the rules around rank and file MPs alcohol consumption should in any way shape or form be similar to those that apply to transport workers or in maybe the medical world, which is what some seem to be suggesting.

I work in the City. Totally normal to have a drink at lunchtime especially if you’ve got a lunch meeting. I had a glass of white wine at a lunch last week. No one cared and it hardly impaired my ability to sit in pointless meetings for the rest of the day!

And yet, here you are starting a thread about something alleged by one of their Westminster colleagues, You do know how many MPs there are, don’t you, other than the few who may choose to have a lunchtime drink? You do know that they’re paid in line with other civil servants who don’t have to take such a personal bashing and harassment in the press and social media in general, as they try to do their jobs.

I do hope your MP is working hard on your behalf, as an ‘overpaid arsehole’.

It’s similar prices to military messes, although I haven’t been in one for a good few years so they might have gone up now. You could get pissed on a tenner. Not at lunchtime though.

You were saying that we pay their salaries so they shouldn't drink at work. Taxpayer pays for lots of people's salaries - nhs, civil service, local government, so does that mean we get to dictate what they do at work but not people in the private sector?

The difference there is that the taxpayer isn’t paying for your subsidised bar. The other difference is that most people don’t want the people who make the decisions about their taxes, health, security or a million other things to be doing while they’re pissed up on cheap Carling.

Looking at that she has a point.

And? Why does that make a difference?
I worked on Saturday. Does that mean I should have been allowed to drink at work? No, because I was working.

Good grief - it’s like a school tuck shop but for booze! It’s far cheaper than a student union bar. Surely there is no need for it at all, much less during working hours.

There are a number of bars and restaurants within the HoP estate. All subsidised by the tax payer.

I'd reduce it to food only and within HMRC expenses guidelines.

Mind you is also reduced the holiday they have.

Is it? It’s not in any job I’ve ever had.
It was dying out and frowned upon when I entered to workforce 25 years ago.
If I had an alcoholic drink at lunchtime and went back to work I’d expect to be sacked. And rightly so.

It doesn’t matter what her other views or proposed policies are. She’s right in this one.

The price list.

https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/foi/141344-Strangers-Bar-Tariff.pdf

I've been a civil servant for 30+ years. Lunchtime drinking was very normal back in the late 80s early 90s. We would regularly go to pub for a couple of hours at lunch time more than once a week. I was a non drinker then, but still used to go otherwise I'd have been in the office by myself🤣

It still happens now, but less frequently. Not a big deal, and not a sackable offence...

Woah, that’s a bit harsh.

Why so angry about this, of all the things?

If you were having heart surgery, a post-lunch slot, would you say the same about the surgeon?

I will assume no.

So that begs the question ‘why?’

my guess is ‘I’d be worried the alcohol would impact their judgement and put my life at risk.’

which would be sensible.

So then what about pilots? Nurses? Bus drivers? Nursery workers?

You’d probably say the same.

So then it would be a question of which jobs need you to be sober most? Are any jobs so unimportant and easy that you can do them drunk - so your ability to make good decisions, your inhibition and your reaction times are compromised?

Id guess that we’d all hope that the people running our country and making decisions that impact us all have their critical thinking skills at their best and are not disinhibited.

The Green Party want to decriminalise drugs, not make them freely available. So they see it as a ‘public health’ concern. They want to do this to break the control of organised gangs. The policy treats addiction as a health issue rather than a criminal one.

Just because something is ,was common doesnt make it right.
Drink driving was common in the 70s
Didn't make it right to do.

DS2 works until after midnight in A&E. If he came into your cubicle, to treat you, reeking of alcohol you’d have something to say.

Work is work. No one should be drinking while they’re working.

The main company I work for still has drinks at lunchtime and when taking clients and prospective clients out for lunch, I always wait to see what they order and then follow with that (usually about 50/50 between alcoholic and soft drinks). Churchill helped win the Second World War half cut so I can’t be too wound up about it. The last thing this country needs is more Cromwalian Puritanism.