It looked at the experience of countries as far apart as Iceland and New Zealand to see what difference changing licensing laws makes on alcohol consumption and violent crime. It looked at the UK too, and discovered that in major city centres such as Manchester, the police experienced two surges in disorder – 11pm and 2am: chucking-out time for pubs and then clubs.Tens of thousands of people were coming out on the streets at the same time, looking for taxis and take-aways and, too often, fights. At the same time it was simply impossible to round off an evening out, at, say, a cinema or a theatre, with a pint. In short, the current law is both restrictive, undemocratic and, as that CCTV footage so often shows, it simply doesn’t work.

So in 2000, the Home Office began a study and public consultation to look at how our licensing laws could be made more sensible.

During the First World War, Lloyd George was determined to stop munitions workers turning up for their important and delicate jobs drunk from the night before So he hurriedly introduced a national curfew And that’s the law we live with today. What Government has said to its adult citizens for nearly a century is: “You cannot be trusted to drink alcohol in public after 11pm.” And decisions on what alcohol licences were granted were made without involvement from the local community. To show how scientific knowledge grows through a never-ending quest for a better understanding, providing us with more certainties in some areas, and more uncertainties in others.It is therefore reassuring that the slimmed-down GCSE curriculum from next year will focus more sharply on the learning of the scientific method. This will hopefully better equip future generations to grapple more effectively with the scientific controversies that they face, and allow them to be better placed to recognise whether the purported benefits and risks of new medicines or technologies are supported by hard evidence or just empty claims.Lord May of Oxford is president of the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science. The history of the British people’s relationship with alcohol is hardly a happy one. From Chaucer, through Shakespeare, right up to the CCTV footage of staggering, spewing teenagers in our city streets, the message is the same: treating alcohol with respect is not something that some of us do well.

This is not how science proceeds, particularly at its frontiers where new knowledge is being acquired.It would be much better if school science lessons offered a better reflection of how science actually advances, and gave a sense of the scientific method. To make pupils aware of what we do not know as well as what we do know. At school, most science lessons concentrate on the learning of facts and figures, a set of certain answers to clearly defined questions. But if he is to be seen as having achieved anything beyond exchanging a despot, Saddam Hussein, for nameless chaos, his administration will have to stop pretending that things are going to plan.We can hardly expect an admission of the ignorance and arrogance behind most of America’s errors in Iraq, though an honest admission of the mistakes themselves, beginning with the disbandment of the Iraqi army and continuing with the botched proconsulship of Paul Bremer, would be a start. But when I asked Mr Zagorov if he’s being checked, he laughs. “What do you mean they’re checking me? I took my own temperature.” Alexander Yurlov is an ornithologist with the Russian Academy of Sciences.