The ‘victim’, a solicitor in her forties, had claimed she had been raped because she was too drunk to have been able to consent to having sexual intercourse. The following morning, she asked if they’d had sex, before shouting rape and told him to get out.

Her claim was based on a 2007 Court of Appeal ruling that someone who is drunk may not be capable of giving consent, shouting ‘It?s because of b******s like you that the law has been changed’. However, what the Court of Appeal held in R v Bree was that someone who is voluntarily intoxicated may not be able to give consent, but that there is every chance that they may be able to.

Mr Bacon’s trial lasted three days, and it took the jury just 45 minutes to return the ‘not guilty’ verdict. Judge Patrick Hooton said ‘The fact that she does not remember does not prove that she did not give consent. The fact that a person is drunk, or even very drunk, can, but doesn?t necessarily, affect consent’. The ‘victim’ was at least twice the drink-drive limit, with memory loss and loss of inhibition likely – but not certain.

Mr Bacon told police that he knew the ‘victim’ was drunk, but ‘she was still able to hold a conversation with me’. He reasonably believed that she had consented, and that she had enjoyed the sex: ‘She groaned. She gave the impression that she was enjoying it.’

The case of Bree forms a sizeable portion of my current Criminal Law essay on the Sexual Offences Act 2003, so I have to remain fairly fact specific here – the university rules on plagiarism are quite clear and as the essay isn’t due in until Thursday I have to be quite careful.

However, the ruling in Bree was not brought about to allow any woman who regretted their drunken stupidity to subsequently claim that they had been raped as a way of clearing their conscience. It was made to ensure that those people whose ‘freedom and capacity’ to consent to sexual intercourse had genuinely been affected by voluntary intoxication, were protected from vultures who prey on innocent, yet drunken, women.

There are people out there who are solely out for a quick ‘thrill’, and don’t care whether or not the woman in question has a boyfriend, a fiance or even a husband. Their only concern is having a one night stand and moving on – leaving the woman to deal with the consequences alone. The law needs to protect these women from these vultures – but only when their ‘freedom and capacity’ to consent has genuinely been diminished.

It is not to be used as a bargaining chip for women who still maintained said ‘freedom and capacity’, but were too weak to say no.

Mr Bacon’s case reassures me that the law is being enforced in the correct manner.

Imagine, if you will, the sight of blood dripping from your face and shattered glass lying across the ground. Imagine, if you will, the pain you are in as you try desperately to stem the bleeding.

I don’t have to imagine – I have been in this situation before, where glass from a shattered bottle of WKD shaved part of my eyebrow (which still hasn’t regrown) and left a lasting scar underneath. For me, it was a careless accident. For someone, it could be a vicious assault with far more serious consequences.

Glass bottles are a health hazard – both in the wrong hands and in the wrong mindset. It could be concentrating on the wrong things, or being in the wrong place in front of the wrong person at the wrong time. Either way, there is a chance, however small, that you, too, could become a victim of the glass bottle.

The Co-operative, however, have started to intoduce, I notice, ‘yob-proof’ bottles – alcohol contained inside a safer cage of plastic. The first candidate, Twydall Green patrons will notice, is The Co-operative Special Dry Imperial Vodka (35cl), retailing at ?5.99 (/shameless advertising).

The new plastic bottles are, admittedly, not a new invention. I came across them all the time in my days working at Priestfield Stadium, where all bottles must be made of plastic for safety resaons. However, it is a brilliant idea which has been met with support from customers.

One customer laughed as it was referred to as a ‘yob-proof’ bottle – before making a serious comment that it is a good – and sadly necessary – idea.

One wonders if WKD will be next in line for plastic bottles…

With nearly 6 pubs closing every day, the Conservative Party has launched a campaign to call on the Government to Save the Great British Pub.

For more information, and to sign the petition, head over to Conservatives.com.

How dare the government introduce such filthy legislation so as to open up the freedom to buy alcohol at any time of the day. You wouldn’t have got this in the good old Victorian times, oh no…

Actually, you would! In the Victorian times, the time of day you could buy alcohol was dictated by the times landlords were willing to remain open. Licensing laws dictating hours of sale simply did not exist.

Indeed, had it not have been for the First World War, they may never have done. At the start of the war, the government knew that they had to strictly control the workforce (amongst other things) so as to ensure victory. As a result, once such clause written into the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 ensured that alcohol was watered down and pub opening times were restricted to between 12:00 – 15:00 and 18:30 – 21:30. This was to ensure workers in munitions factories could turn up to work the next day sober and work productively throughout the day.

The Defence of the Realm Act (which also introduced British Summer Time to boost wartime production) was relinquished in 1918, but the pub opening times stayed the same until the Licensing Act 1964, which extended the time to 22:30, and then the Licensing Act 1988, which further extended the time to 23:00.

So there you have it, if it wasn’t for the outbreak of war, we may never have had time restrictions imposed in the first place – and this debate about giving people back the freedom to drink at any time of day wouldn’t be taking place because it would have been long standing.