BBC NEWS | Politics | 'A third of pubs' to open longer About one-third of all the pubs, clubs and shops in England and Wales licensed to sell alcohol are to get longer opening hours, BBC research suggests.

Now, this news is really interesting because of the folk-models of social causality that get employed on both sides of the argument.

The pro side makes the following arguments:

1. Logistical argument: Staggering opening hours will reduce impact of all drunks coming out of pubs at once - also they are not forced to drink their last few pints in a hurry thus reducing their drunkenness
   
2. Moral argument: Letting people decide when they want to drink is treating them like adults (and, sometimes left implicit, they are more likely to behave like adults - of course relying on a specific scenario of adult behavior)

The anti side makes the following case:

1. Logistical argument: Drunks will now be wondering the streets of towns at all hours of the night (and early morning) and will thus spread the annoyance to the citizenry and stretch the already thin resources of the police who now don't have one time in which to focus on maintainig order
2. Moral argument: This is sending a message to the populace that it is ok to drink which, given the evil nature of excessive (or possibly any) drink, is going to be detrimental to national morals and national health

Only time (and probably years or decades rather than months) will show who was right. (I rather suspect that the logistical argument of the pro side holds a bit more water.) But it is interesting to observe two completely separate lines of causal reasoning - both completely sensible - and both probably two partial a model to be successfully applied. Both, rely on the 'rubbing off' and 'message sending' (or simply a stimulus/response) folk theory of human values and behavior. I.e. is you treat somebody in a certain way or present them with a certain model, they will respond with a related echo. And if you do it enough, it will produce a permanent value change (or rub off on them).

Personally, I am very sympathetic to a separate line of attack on the new government policy. The logistical changes (which after all mirror the situation in many other countries that don't have such problems with drink related violence) will not work because of the embedded cultural values, which include the fact that it is an honorable purpose of going to get drunk. Values are very important, however, they are always tied to specific cultural patterns which often follow from logistical restrictions on behavior (such as those imposed by early closing hours). Relaxing those logistical restrictions might give more space in which the cultural patterns can change and this may lead to a change in values. Now, this is not a causal theory. No such result is inevitable, but it becomes possible. Also, it is important to note that no values in any one society are uniform or exclusive and therefore when one speaks of their change, the really process simply involves the reappreciation of values that already exist. 

Any such situation is too complicated to be deterministically set in motion by a simple change in rules for the opening hours of pubs but there is nothing to say that this small tweak cannot ultimately (rather than proximately) lead to a bigger change. (Complexity theory might have something - but possibly not all that much - to say here).