LICENSING laws are soon to be shaken up by the Government - but will this boost the price of a pint?

A White Paper was issued in April this year, promising to sweep away the 1964 Licensing Act and let grown-ups swill lager into the early hours - even if that means rowdy yobs plaguing residents trying to get some shut-eye.

Few people are willing to stand up and defend the existing legislation. It is widely regarded as anachronistic and inconsistent. For instance, while pub licensees need approval from magistrates to sell their wares, wholesalers do not because they are regulated by Customs & Excise.

Worcester City Council's view appears to be that there's nothing particularly bad about letting JPs award licences, although officers and councillors think the current drinking laws should be improved.

They are wary about accepting responsibility for supervising the licensing trade, complaining that the proposed fees for new licences and inspection charges will not cover the authority's additional overheads.

Worcester's head of environmental health, Roy Fidoe, believes licensees ought to foot the bill, especially if liberalised licensing means his staff are called out to curb noisy revellers.

That would probably mean a hike in prices for drinkers. The alternative is for the famously-prudent Government to leave Worcester City Council to find the cash - and no doubt increase Council Tax as a consequence.

Calling for

cuts in prices

CALL centres seem a tedious feature of modern life.

But in the quest for profits, bored employees located in a dismal location such as Sunderland could one day be a thing of the past.

More than 80 per cent of an average call centre's cost comes from that most obsolescent of components - people.

Most people will be familiar with being asked for a postcode and street name when they are connected, so databases can be brought up on screen before the company's "agents".

A company called Vocalis is now touting advanced speech recognition software to reduce the time callers spend talking to humans.

The technology matches caller responses to automated questions against customer records, before finally connecting them to an operator. According to Water magazine, the software could lead to "potentially huge productivity gains".

So will customers see a cut in their bills as a result, I wonder?