ARE we supposed to take Brian Derbyshire's simple solution to curb binge drinking seriously? ("Have bottle to beat binge drinking", Letters, November 22).

A benchmark which, if exceeded, constitutes an offence and whereby if a licensee fails to identify an offender he incurs an endorsement, with three of these resulting in a loss of licence.

Surely this would require so many police officers that all other offences would have to be ignored?

Let's get back to the real world.

There have been benchmarks in society to stop people exceeding safe and sociable limits for the best part of a century. They are called speed limits. Does anyone respect them? Does anybody enforce them?

Up to press, there are 30 million dead and walking wounded. In the last 20 years, 150,000 children have been killed or seriously injured.

Even now there are some 70 fatal and close to a thousand serious injuries every week.

In spite of this carnage, driving above the speed limit is largely acceptable. It is something that so-called "decent, law abiding citizens" do pretty much all the time. So why so keen to get tough on drinkers who exceed limits? How many people do they kill every year?

Allan Ramsay

Ashcombe Drive

Radcliffe