I was fascinated by the fact that last week’s edition of this newspaper carried such a large number of articles that were all linked by the word ‘alcohol’.

We read of pubs closing or being at risk of doing so and such an issue even made the front page headlines. We were also told on another page of the 54 drivers arrested by Wiltshire police for driving while over the legal limit for alcohol consumption.

In other parts of our region, police chiefs were attributing the fall in drink driver incidents over Christmas to the fact that, unlike in Wiltshire, a name and shame sanction is applied to drink drivers and their names are well publicised because at long last it has been inculcated into the national psyche that to drink while in charge of a motor vehicle is shameful.

However, the article that really caught my attention was the report headed ‘We’ve made it a better place to be’.

This related to the successful efforts in Malmesbury to deal with binge drinkers on the town streets that Police Sergeant Martin Alvis led before his recent move to Melksham.

Sergeant Alvis claims that the disorderly behaviour by drunks on the streets of Malmesbury on Friday and Saturday nights is no longer a regular feature of life in that beautiful and historic town.

Surely, Sergeant Alvis has created a model for how our other towns and cities might restore the Queen’s peace to their streets at the weekends.

I read in another newspaper some weeks ago a statement by a senior police officer that, except when his duties required it of him, he would not venture into the centre of any town or city on a weekend evening nor would he allow his family members to do so.

The reason for this being that the binge drinkers made the streets at such times dangerous and very unpleasant places to be.

Senior members of the medical profession can now be heard calling for harsher fines and legal sanctions against the growing number of people who habitually become severely intoxicated as a form of recreation and amusement.

The need for them to be cared for and their disorderly behaviour controlled costs the cash-strapped NHS alone £3billion annually even before the costs to the police and other services are added.

Over the past five years, drink-related admissions to A&E units have risen by a third. At the same time fines handed out for being drunk and disorderly have fallen by 28 per cent.

These figures point to something going badly amiss. The tinkering with the licensing laws a decade ago has proved to have disastrous consequences.

Not surprisingly, the Police Federation has been quick to use the call for tougher police action against binge drinkers as a shout for help. “Stop cutting our funding” was the federation’s response, but haven’t Sergeant Alvis and his gallant colleagues in Malmesbury gone some way to pulling the rug from under the Police Federation spokesman?

If it can be done with existing resources there, why can’t it be done in Swindon, Salisbury, Devizes and in every other conurbation in the land? I pose this as an open question to Police and Crime Commissioners everywhere.

The nation must change to make it clear to the binge drinkers that, as has happened in Malmesbury, society in general will no longer tolerate their irresponsible consumption of alcohol that is a blight on modern Britain and a danger to themselves and others.

We need a national working party to produce an action plan. Perhaps Sergeant Alvis could be appointed to chair it?