This is DISGUSTING

[charley_bourne]

It's illegal to serve someone alcohol who is visibly intoxicated - the local authorities should look into where he got tanked up.

I simply don't believe that anyone can get so drunk as to fully lose control of themselves, short of being unconscious. It's like that old myth that people hallucinate when drunk. They don't . And if you can still stand up, you have some level of awareness. We've all done daft things when drunk - I went to art school, and art students aren't known for temperance - but there's a big difference between wheeling your mate round the market square in a shopping trolley and desecrating a war memorial. Throw the book at him.

[Matt Dixon]

However emotive this subject, please keep within Forum rules, and do not descend into personal insults.

[Steven Broomfield]

I stick to what I first said: the culture which encourages this behaviour (and which seems to sprout a whole 'industry') should be examined.

No, no-one poured the booze down his throat, but he lives in a culture which sees idiotic drinking as a laugh, as something 'we all do'. Mr Laing is the symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. He's behaved like an idiot. Others have also behaved like idiots and died. As a parent, I'd be horrified if my child did this, but I'd be even more horrified if she died of alcohol poisoning encouraged by a money-making venture which encourages this behaviour.

[keithfazzani]

Fresher's week at University is as I understand it one great excuse to drink, if you don't drink you are not one of the gang. Sadly this behaviour appears to be encouraged by the authorities, and encouraged by the drinks industry, if it weren't then it would be stopped. At 18 newly away from school and the power of peer pressure what do you do. Armed with your student loan you drink the cheap booze on offer. Perhaps I don't agree with the rest of the population, that frankly is irrelevant, perhaps I am old enough to resist peer pressure.

[Nigel Marshall]

I am bound to say that I agree with Keith in the main, although I do believe that having been charged with an offence he should face the courts to answer it and any punishment handed down, further to his own shame, should be an end to it for him.

I agree with the mainstream of the thread in that yes, his behaviour was disgusting. Urinating and exposing oneself in a public place is a disgusting thing to do, and those on the thread who have admitted to urinating in public also are guilty of disgusting behaviour.

This boy was blind drunk and probably couldn't even see that what he was defiling was a War Memorial. I would be surprised, given his apology, that there was any malice in it on his part.

What I find interesting is that there was a press photographer handily in position ready to capture this fool with his flies undone. If it hadn't been him it would have, no doubt, been someone else.

The War Memorial angle stokes our fire because of who WE are. Had it been a shop doorway, it might have gone unreported in the press, indeed I am sure it would, and unnoticed here, but you can be sure that an irate complaint would be put in to the local chamber of commerce. The snapper was there because what that stupid student did was play into the hands of the people who print the papers, who in turn know what it takes to whip up a storm.

The student is a fool, who did something stupid while drunk, and he has now been placed in the line of national, and with our help (and that of others), global humiliation. He is now sober, and I am sure he will stay that way for a good while yet, and he will no doubt behave himself. He will learn form it.

I realise that by making this response, I will become the target for some stone throwers, but I am quite certain that I am not the only one to inhabit a glass house.

Cheers,

Nigel

[Greg]

Freshers week is always riotous but there is now a company which organises drinking ie it is not just students enjoying themselves but a company encouraging excessive drinking- now there is a genuine target for legal action

Greg

[PhilB]

This boy was blind drunk and probably couldn't even see that what he was defiling was a War Memorial. I would be surprised, given his apology, that there was any malice in it on his part.

Nigel

I don`t think the presence or absence of malice is pertinent, Nigel. Do you forgive drunk drivers because thay had no malice? If this lad can`t control himself when drunk, he shouldn`t get drunk.

[Kath]

Even in Turkey now!

http://www.cnnturk.com/2009/yasam/diger/10....hali/547904.0/

I hope this student's action is a trigger to control ALL the anti-social behaviour by students suffered by Sheffielders & elsewhere.

Kath.

[Jesse]

Here in the US we shoot each other to excess, but in the UK public drunken ill behaviour is known worldwide. I would say that in both empires action is warranted.

Unbelievable but unfortunately true.

Norman

Here

[Kate Wills]

Why do the university and licencing authorities welcome an event called 'carnage'?

Anti-social behaviour appears to be intended, and that is the certainly the end result for the city centre.

I agree with Steve that just because something is cheap is no excuse, and these dunderheads appear to have forgotten that they have already forked-out £10 to participate. What happens then? Are the drinks free, reduced in price or what?

[Maxsparky]

This carnage is run for profit obviously, as each participant pays £10 to end up laying in the gutter looking at the stars, after having gained entry to various Licensed premises. The clue is in the title "Carnage". Laing could stand, no excuses, he knew what he was doing.

If he is to face proceedings at some later date, he should mitigate beforehand by making a handsome donation to the "Help the Hero's Fund"

This sordid episode should be swiftly brought to an end publicly by further donations to Help the Hero's fund by Sheffield Hallam University, the organisers Varsity Leisure and the Licensed trade connected to this event who clearly profited from it. The shame also rests with them!

[Salfordian]

I am baffled with the defence of this students actions. Just because he was drunk does not make the "crime" justifiable. Even drunk he still would have registered in his head that this was a war memorial, the mass of Poppy wreaths underline that fact. I could possibliy accept if the memorial had no wreath in his state he could have thought it was a wall, but it was full of wreaths and was quite a noticable memorial. He just thought at the time it was a laugh. As mentioned earlier, even in my uttermost wasted drunken state of my youth, when I had a wee on the way home, I would always find a hedge, alleyway or tree to use, for the simple reason I knew having a wee in full view was wrong. I accept that even having a wee in an alley was wrong, but it shows that you are never that drunk to p*ss on a war memorial and Poppy wreaths, you always have a minute sense of what you are doing.

What next on this forum. Accepting people nick the brass plates from memorials as they are hard-up and need scrap to feed their kids?

[Dragon]

I support the comments of Jim, Keith, Nigel and Sue, and others who are looking at the wider issue.

The student is clearly mortified by his behaviour, and rightly so. I don't see that widespread condemnation of most students as brainless, irresponsible and feckless is very productive, and from my own student days I can think of some highly intelligent, academically-gifted individuals who fully deserved a place at university who behaved totally idiotically at times and are now probably treating some of you in hospitals or teaching your kids.

As a shy and serious-minded young woman, I would have found Carnage, had it existed, as completely alien to me and I feel for those young people who are expected by peer pressure to take part in this nationwide student event. I feel for those who are enouraged out of their comfort-zone to drink excessively - and yes, there are still 18 year olds who don't get ratted every weekend. I feel for the young women who will be seeking out the morning-after pill and those who don't remember enough to ask for one, and those whose night out ended in date rape or in a STD. Going to university and leaving home for the first time is stressful and tough without this sort of pressure to conform.

I can't for the life of me understand why there is an organisation called Carnage UK promoting this sort of event with the universities' compliance. It doesn't fit with the ethos of any university I have ever visited. Freshers' Weeks are about meeting and mixing and settling in, and I simply can't see the point of it turning into a drunken binge.

CarnageUK

Gwyn

[Kate Wills]

What next on this forum. Accepting people nick the brass plates from memorials as they are hard-up and need scrap to feed their kids?

Views expressed on this forum of those of its indidvual members, not the Forum as a whole.

Personally, I feel this debate has a place here, as the war memorial was raised as a consequence of war, and this is part of the ongoing history of the memorial, and society's attitutes to the Great War generation. Ditto for the gentleman who was upset by the student's actions.

[Steven Broomfield]

I am baffled with the defence of this students actions. Just because he was drunk does not make the "crime" justifiable.

I, for one, am not trying to justify his actions: there is a much deeper question here than what one drunken idiot did: it is that, quite simply, as a society we need to ask why in the name of God we allow events such as Carnage to happen? Why do our young people (and some of our older ones) think that a night out isn't a night out without getting bladdered?

Incidentally, quite a few of the threads on this Forum about battlefield touring seem to include remiscences of some pretty heroic drinking bouts: why does a lads' weekend away have to include loads of booze? And why, afterwards, is there so much jolly banter about how many bottles of Leffe were downed? Although I know no Forum member would dream of piddling on a war memorial, I suspect we have all done the occasional strange thing - as Nigel said, we all live in glass houses, and I have been reminded several times of things I did while in my cups when a younger man.

Frankly I have no time for Mr Laing, but I have even less time for the actions of the organisers of this event - a nationwide event, it seems - and very little time for a society which sees drunkenness and loutish behaviour as soemting worthy of attainment.

I also have little time for pillorying the sympton rather than the cause.

[Gunboat]

I am sorry but I find the calls to have the lad expelled from university and his whole future blighted for what was act of stupidity totally disproportionate. Let the courts deal with the matter let him get community service let him clean up cemetries, clean up streets, whatever is the best to show this person the error of his ways...that is proportionate to the offence, but to be have his future blighted is wrong. He shouldn't be tried by, the press, not by we on here, on facebook or anywhere else save the courts.

[Salfordian]

Views expressed on this forum of those of its indidvual members, not the Forum as a whole.

Personally, I feel this debate has a place here, as the war memorial was raised as a consequence of war, and this is part of the ongoing history of the memorial, and society's attitutes to the Great War generation. Ditto for the gentleman who was upset by the student's actions.

Kate, I take back "The Forum" and just add Views.

[squirrel]

I am sorry but I find the calls to have the lad expelled from university and his whole future blighted for what was act of stupidity totally disproportionate. Let the courts deal with the matter let him get community service let him clean up cemetries, clean up streets, whatever is the best to show this person the error of his ways...that is proportionate to the offence, but to be have his future blighted is wrong. He shouldn't be tried by, the press, not by we on here, on facebook or anywhere else save the courts.

I quite agree with you Gunboat.

The chap has admitted what he has done, apologised profusely and is willing to take any punishment meted out by the Courts.

Those responsible for organising this "event" are entirely reprehensible.

[Dragon]

I find the calls to have the lad expelled from university and his whole future blighted for what was act of stupidity totally disproportionate.

I agree. This is a system failure, not a reason for wrecking someone's future.

[Jim Clay]

I am baffled with the defence of this students actions...

I have read this thread again from the start. Nowhere in this thread has anyone defended this lad's actions.

[Salfordian]

I have read this thread again from the start. Nowhere in this thread has anyone defended this lad's actions.

By blaming beer and saying its the promotors fault I find a form of defending. I am not saying anyone condones his actions, but offer a reason, when in my opinion there is no reason. I have been drunk, I have never p*ssed on a poppy wreath. Millions get drunk each weekend and they seem to find a place to wee thats not a memorial !

This is my opinion - but I am appeciate other views.

[Seadog]

Perhaps not an overt defence but a lot of “its somebody else’s fault”, he has apologised, willing to take his punishment”etc etc, I believe that he has insulted the memory of those who gave their lives for this country and by doing so have granted him the right to the standard of living that he obviously enjoys now plus the chance of a higher education with hopefully the rewards that such an education will eventually bring. By his actions he has proved that he is unable to even grasp this simple concept and has also proven to be very weak-willed insofar that he was as we all are in control of our own actions. I agree with those who state that he had some control and personal choice over his disgusting actions which have been widely broadcast both in the UK and aboard. I fail to see how much worse this case can be impacting as it does on himself, his Uni, the City and the Country not bad for a night out. Throw the book at him and expel him from the Uni for the disrepute that he has brought upon it.

Norman

[Ian Murphy]

Mods,

Can this thread please be moved out of Skindles to chit-chat?

Best regards,

Ian.

[Matt Dixon]

It was moved from Chit Chat to Skindles.

[Ian Murphy]

It was moved from Chit Chat to Skindles.

Matt,

IMHO I do not understand why it was moved as "Skindles is for OFF TOPIC discussion only" and I fail to see how this thread is off topic given that is, in the main, about Remembrance. My opinion only.

Best regards,

Ian.