Fucking great African elephant propping himself against the bar, anyone? I mean, you can’t miss him, he weighs a ton and has great big ivories sticking out of his mush and there’s a bloody great draught when he waggles his ears.
As a result, a campaign has emerged to toughen up planning legislation to save popular pubs from being turned into shops and even housing,
Yeah, right that will solve the problem, won’t it? People will come flocking back in their thousands when that happens. Legislation always solves the problem, doesn’t it? Of course, these cretins never look at the problems caused by legislation. And yes, this problem was caused by legislation. Still, never mind, just keep chucking more wood on the fire, it’s bound to go out sometime.
In all of the four and a half minutes of wittering about “something must be done” and bollocks about planning laws, no one mentioned the big grey African playing a trumpet solo in the corner. But, then, they wouldn’t would they?
That and the ~£4 a pint nowadays when we’re already being squeezed pretty tightly … yeah seriously, is *anyone* surprised? (Apart from the numbskulls in power obviously).
The twats at CAMRA should know it. If not, they might be beer nerds but are fucking clueless when it comes to pub culture. Stuff ’em, if we’re going down let’s take the hairy, pot-bellied, toss pots with us.
There are several reasons behind it but, in my opinion…
Alcohol in supermarkets is not and has never been ‘cheap’, so we can discount that.
For me, the main reasons behind the pubs closing are:
a) The smoking ban and the fact that you can’t smoke in a pub any more
b) The drink-drive regulations (that are enforced and adhered to far too rigorously, so for example even an odd pint or two at a country pub at lunchtime is completely out of the question – must be our puritanical culture and lack of decent public transport in that other European countries’ country pubs may well have been able to survive, but the lack of a decent rural transport network puts paid to that in the UK)
c) The increasingly thuggish and abusive clientele in many pubs
d) Stopping at home has become a lot more attractive than going out to the pub and has been for a long time
e) The increasingly authoritarian and killjoy attitude of many publicans – I’ve been in pubs that are littered with many hwctoring signs
f) The problem that, as pubs have become increasingly empty, they have lost most of their wittiest and funniest customers, so the ones that would otherwise come have been swept away.
g) The ‘underage drinking prevention’ police mopping up any pubs that are left because a landlord has been stupid enough to serve a 17-year-old once too many times.
I don’t think the reason that the pubs are closing (and have been for many, many years) is because of the price of beer in pubs. I think high taxation is a problem, but it’s also an enormous problem in supermarkets and off-licences as well, as alcohol is increasingly expensive.
But the main reason, for me, is that pubs have become increasingly unattractive places to spend time. Full stop. There is nothing there any more. Many pubs – where they do exist – are empty shells filled (if they are at all) with yobbish chavs, loud music, and obnoxious and undesirable people.
If I had the werewithal, I would brew my own beer myself because, frankly, the cost of decent beer in the supermarkets is not that much less than in a pub with relatively low prices.
Any more that others can think of?
Brewing your own is easy and much higher quality these days than the old kits you used to buy at Boots. I currently have five gallons of London Pride and another five of Speckled Hen on the go for around £2 per pint.
Have a look here: –
http://www.brewuk.co.uk/store/
If it’s £2 per pint, it’s not worth brewing your own. Go down the supermarket and buy yourself some decent bottled ales.
Mines about 40p a pint. Is that a typo Barman?
If you buy the partially ready made BruBoxes, it’s no cheaper than buying beer from the supermarket.
If, on the other hand, you brew properly using a brewing kit of some kind, it becomes a lot cheaper.
@ Paul
‘The problem that, as pubs have become increasingly empty, they have lost most of their wittiest and funniest customers, so the ones that would otherwise come have been swept away.’
Spot on. And the most fun were more likely to be smokers. They’ve gone and taken the atmosphere with them. The more discerning and fun non smokers have followed in their wake (including me – I didn’t smoke between 2006 and 2010).
‘Many pubs – where they do exist – are empty shells filled (if they are at all) with yobbish chavs, loud music, and obnoxious and undesirable people.’
To be fair, one could say the same for pre ban pubs (for some, at any rate). The antis would say that smokers are undesirables.
Since the ban I and the missus visit a pub maybe once every couple of months – solely for food + 1 pint. I’ve never been a big drinker, but she liked her beer,and darts, and meeting up with folk in a friendly atmosphere (maybe 2-3 nights/week). The latter simply does not exist in most places we have ended up in. We did one such outing a couple of Fridays ago (with daughter). First port of call – toddlers and a menu scribbled on a bit a cardboard (mostly curries). So we moved on. Next pub – didn’t serve food. Third pub – a god forsaken gastro-pub with a sea of dining tables. Relatively expensive food (for pub grub) shit beer. £35 for three meals and pints. An almost total waste of time and money. My daughter rolled a fag and dutifully made for the great outdoors. Some loud mouth at the bar gleefully announces ‘you can’t smoke that in here’.
In the car on the way home the missus said that if she ever suggests a meal down the pub again remind her of the super time we’d had that night. One really shouldn’t come home depressed. The ban has destroyed our social life and there’s no reason to think things will ever return to normal. God only knows what the future holds – at least I’m glad that I’d lived in a time when pubs were fit for purpose.
And the most fun were more likely to be smokers
Evidence?
They’ve gone and taken the atmosphere with them. The more discerning and fun non smokers have followed in their wake (including me – I didn’t smoke between 2006 and 2010)
I go to the pub for a drink, not to hear some loud mouthed twat spewing bullshit and carcinogens into the air in equal measure.
This is from over at Dick Puddlecote’s place.
It’s well worth a read.
http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-big-society-in-action.html
Sorry
Utter cosdwallop
I & quite a few people I know are going into pubs MORE OFTEN, now we don’t get kippered.
Most pubs are closing because of the ubelievable greed & stupidity of the so-called “pubcos”.
Chgarging managers & tenants ridiculous, un-meetable rents, putting restrictive covenants on sale when their “business model” fails, & deliberately restricting sales of beers to their limited, carp, tasteless balnd, overpriced ranges & refusing to acept brews from independant brewers.
Contrariwise, look at the sucess of Wetherspoons ……
Greg: Those factor in my decision not to go to the pub as well, especially the lack of interesting beer that you’d want to drink all night. When you see the same few beers (or the same variation of the same three or four beer styles) on, you really start to lose interest. Sit in a pub with unfriendly, lager-drinking oiks with loud music supping Moorhouses Blond Witch at £3.10 a pint. No thanks. Sitting at home on a strong IPA, which comes in at £2.50 a pint, sounds like a better deal to me.
It’s not even as if the bitter is particularly interesting, or the blond ale is particularly hoppy and strident – it’s all coagulated into the same boring, mostly 4%-ish mush. Pubs have become awful, bland places for me.
Greg – Having worked in pubs for years before the ban and not much longer after, the smoking ban is the main reason, not pubcos.
Nobody prices themselves out of business intentionally. Pubcos tend to charge what a business can afford to pay. The top end maybe, but not so much that the pub shuts and they get nothing.
If you are going to the pub more often then you are in a very small minority. Customers dried up in the pubs I worked in during and after the ban and the reason was the ban, nothing else.
We were promised hoardes of non smokers but they never turned up.
Weatherspoons, as your example, buy beer in bulk and buy it late so they get cheap deals. Their food is also cheap crap. Their success is down to cornering the chav and alcoholic pound.
“We were promised hoardes of non smokers…”
By whom? And on the basis of what evidence? Why the hell would people who had, up until said ban, avoided pubs like the plague, suddenly decide to visit them? They’d already have a routine that doesn’t involve pubs!
If you think alcohol is overpriced, try buying a fruit juice sometime: as a non-smoking teetotaller who hates carbonated drinks, I have, unsurprisingly, never been much of a pub-goer, but I know quite a few who were. But why would *anyone* bother when all they get are mediocre, overpriced snacks and drinks; braying morons for company (because the UK’s drinking culture seems to prize getting falling-down drunk over anything resembling intelligent conversation); throw in a forlorn, rather tatty pool table; crap music piped over a godawful PA, and the pervading, nauseating stench of stale ale, and it’s hard to imagine why anyone would ever go to a pub in the first place.
Could it be that our culture is changing and we’re no longer willing to pay through the nose for a mediocre, or downright awful, experience?
Let ’em shut down. Let them all go to the bloody wall. If a business model is failing, *let it do so!* This is economic evolution in action: it’s what’s *supposed* to happen!
Bailing pub culture out, in any way, shape, or form, using public money, is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Most of us wouldn’t agree with bailing out banks; why would we agree to bailing out any other failing businesses?
To be fair, this is why I don’t go to pubs. I’ve avoided them like the plague since working in one back in the seventies. That smell causes my stomach to churn to this day. Hate the places and will never willingly set foot in one.
“…Let ‘em shut down. Let them all go to the bloody wall. If a business model is failing, *let it do so!* This is economic evolution in action: it’s what’s *supposed* to happen!…”
That’s a bit of an unfair argument.
It’s not a case of the business model failing so much as the level of tax (both duty and then VAT applied on top of the duty) that makes the business model less effective. Then throw in the fact that legislation forces the publican to usher his best customers outside, whatever the weather, into a shelter not fit to house pigs and what you’re left with is more a case of legislating a business model out of existence rather than the begging for subsidy you subsequently suggest.
In addition to my points above, I think it’s also worth pointing out that our culture really *has* changed over the last few generations. The traditional flat-cap-and-whippets working class of old – at least as it existed right up to the late 1970s – has gone the way of British Leyland. Another market, university students, simply doesn’t have as much spending money as it used to: the old grant system is gone, replaced by massive debts; many students will be holding down at least one part-time job. When are they going to find time to drink?
So, where are pub-goers supposed to come from? Their traditional markets have been systematically destroyed.
Many people today are fine with only an occasional drink or two a week. We’re also still struggling to drag ourselves out of recession, so spending eye-watering sums of money just to get a round of drinks in is often not an option for many. Taxes may be a large part of that price tag, but that doesn’t change the fact that pubs are increasingly just too expensive for what they offer.
All of which might be great points if it weren’t for the fact that pub closures rocketed from October 2007 in England, and were replicated in Wales and Scotland when their pubs were imposed upon.
From a personal point of view (yes, it’s anecdotal but ..) I have no problem with the price of any drinks. I lived in a pub for 10 years and they were luxurious to me. I tried them with the missus, as we had done for years, after 2007 but we did it only once. My 20 year+ love of pubs has been beaten out of me.
Ironically, when I do go to one now, I spend massively more (£5 a pint, min £19 a bottle of wine) and travel a long way for the privilege of a superb smoking area. The best in London, which cost over £40k to build, not something a majority of pubs can afford.
If it was solely cost or derogation of the experience, you’d see a mild decline over a number of years, not the dramatic and instant cliff fall which is clear from pub closure figures from all sources.
There is no reason why some pubs could not have been classed as smoking pubs, in fact it was in the Labour manifesto 2005 to do just that.
LR is correct, there is a big elephant which everyone seems to like ignoring. The ban isn’t the only reason for the huge increase in pub closures since winter kicked in in 2007, but it is most definitely the main one.
You miss the point entirely. Pubs used to be a social centre, somewhere to drop into knowing that there was a fair chance that you would see a few friends in there and / or meet someone new and perhaps interesting.
Yes, the Wetherspoons of this world tend to be chav-havens, but the village pub, or indeed many town pubs used to be buzzing with conversation and bonhomie.
Since the smoking ban and the subsequent departure of the characters who were their natural denizens, they have taken on all the appeal of a doctor’s waiting room, but with the added bonus that instead of smelling of tobacco smoke they now smell of stale beer and urine.
Pub owners were gullible fools to believe the zealots when they said that non-smokers would flock to the newly smoke-free pubs. It was obvious to any fool that it wasn’t going to happen like that. Smokers made up something like 60% of regular pub goers. The surviving pubs are only doing so because a) they have re-invented themselves as nurseries cum eateries, and b) because the pub stock is so dramatically reduced that there are less businesses clamouring for the little trade there is left.
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that it is the smoking ban that has destroyed the hospitality industry in UK. Anybody who tries to say otherwise is deluding himself.
Since the smoking ban and the subsequent departure of the characters who were their natural denizens, they have taken on all the appeal of a doctor’s waiting room, but with the added bonus that instead of smelling of tobacco smoke they now smell of stale beer and urine
Have you considered ever going to a better pub? The pubs I go to are still very well patronised. There is clearly a place for well run pubs that serve good food and provide a comfortable atmosphere. The sticky carpet pubs that stank of stale beer were doomed anyway. If they’ve lost custom through the smoking ban, because only smokers with no sense of smell could tolerate them, then what would they have done when those smokers died off in the next ten years? At worst, the smoking ban simply accelerated something that would have happened anyway.