Phil Laing: was it just another case of wrong place and wrong time?

"Phil Laing is an idiot. He is certainly a disgrace. But he's not the only one."

On Friday October 16 , 19-year-old Phil Laing's life took an unprecedented turn. As photographs of him urinating on a war memorial in Sheffield appeared across the British press, he became the target of a hate campaign.

Laing was photographed at the end of a Carnage UK bar crawl, in which groups don matching t-shirts, ticking off the bars they hit on the way as well as the drinks they consume. It would seem to us all that Laing more than rose to the challenge - first urinating on the memorial before falling asleep in a doorway, belly and boxers hanging-out.

Now a notorious public figure, Laing is at the centre of a hate campaign launched in the papers and also through social networking sites like Facebook. The group 'Phil Laing - what a c**t' currently has 6,988 members and is still attracting posts branding him "an idiot". The Sheffield Star printed comments from Sheffield locals in its Saturday October 17 edition, with one Charles Farleigh calling him "a disgrace".

It's very hard to disagree with so many disgruntled people. So I won't entirely. Phil Laing is an idiot. He is certainly a disgrace. But he's not the only one.

Go to any university town and you'll see much of the same behaviour. Girls getting their kit off and crying on the pavements, boys urinating in public and throwing up in bushes. This, as they say, is England.

I've known university rugby players be cautioned by police for weeing on a world heritage site, girls ending up in Accident and Emergency for trying to do the limbo and inadvertently knocking themselves out.

Whilst I fully understand and respect the gravity of Laing's actions and the shameful disregard he has shown for our war heroes and their families, I can't help but think he was just a victim of bad luck.

Think of how much other 'carnage' must have been going on that night across Britain. Elsewhere in Britain people were probably passing out in the street and indecently exposing themselves, the only difference is that they weren't caught.

As I attended a meeting at the Sheffield Star on Thursday, just as the story was breaking, I heard that a newspaper photographer had happened to be in the area to get a few shots of the Carnage UK bar crawl, probably as a student archive image. What he captured however was dynamite, and probably afforded him at least a decent upgrade on the train home.

What I'm saying is that Laing is merely a representation of student culture in this country, and that he is not alone in his actions. He perhaps took it further than some others and has brought shame on himself for disrespecting those who lost their lives fighting for our freedom. But instead of victimising Laing, should we not turn our attention instead to the state of our culture?

As I have said in a previous post, 'Britain needs to tackle its binge-drinking culture', and in light of this recent scandal, I think this message rings ever true.

If we don't want people acting in this way then something needs to be done about our attitude towards alcohol and drunken behaviour. Events such as 'Carnage UK' should simply not be allowed to exist. Promotions like 'buy a pint, get two free shots' should not be supported either.

Gradually the government is thinking more and more about the problems our country has with binge-drinking, and until they do something about it, I don't think Laing should be victimised in such a way.

We are all products of our culture, and with the best will in the world, it is hard for students to break the mould when there is such overwhelming promotion of binge-drinking.