of Assembly for their consideration and passage. We had hoped that the members of the Senate would take the opportunity to strengthen the act and to clear up what are obvious gaps. Yet it appears that Senators were very divided in their opinions on the amendments.

There are many people who have recognised for a long time that the Liquor Licensing Act as it stood no longer served Bermuda well and that changes were necessary, not least those to allow restaurants to relax and serve outdoors.

However there were other sections of the act which were clearly out of line with just about everything else.

First of all, it would seem that in a free enterprise society there should not be any distinction between the licensed hours of restaurants and night clubs, no matter what night club owners say. This is a service industry society and if owners want to stay open until 3 a.m. then that should be generally allowed. However there should be strong objections to premises being allowed to open and close at will within their hours. Bermuda is a service society.

Liquor licences are a public service in a very real way. If we allow premises to close at will, we think Bermuda will soon have a reality where licensed premises stay open for the full extent of their hours when it suits them and then close when it does not. We are a visitor resort and we have to provide service. It is easy to forsee Bermuda failing to provide service for both locals and visitors for several months in the winter and that is certainly no way to expand the visitor year or to encourage off season cultural tourism business. We already have a problem with too many facilities being closed for six weeks or two months beginning in early January.

We can also see no reason why members' clubs should stay open for hours in excess of 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. Parliamentarians do not seem to have understood that there have been severe problems with some supposed members' clubs becoming general after hours bars. There is no better example of that than the now defunct staff club at the Elbow Beach Hotel which caused endless problems for the Police and the courts and had very little to do with being a club for Elbow Beach staff members.

Aside from that, we had hoped that while they were banning miniatures from licensed grocery stores, Parliamentarians would come to grips with the problems associated with cold take-out alcohol which is almost inevitably consumed illegally in vehicles and too often results in wayside litter.

They have also not faced the hard choice of excluding people who are too young to drink being allowed in night clubs. Inevitably that leads to some people breaking the law and seems to be unnecessary. We do agree that they should be allowed in licensed restaurants because that often involves a family occasion but attendance in bars seldom involves family.

There is a problem involved in not dealing fully with these amendments. For years it has been clear that the Liquor Licencing Act needs a complete overhaul. This is a patch job yet in the way Parliament works it may be years before such legislation is looked at again. It would be a shame to waste this opportunity to enact a good set of regulations.