Pete Robinson is, as usual, spot-on here in his analysis of the effects of the smoking ban, three years on. The NewBreed customers simply don’t exist, and the idea that food can be the saviour of community pubs is a total delusion.
The Great British Pub is dead. It just doesn't know it yet.Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom initiative gives people the opportunity to make their voice heard – if you want to save the British pub, make sure you have your say.
It died three years ago when it allowed the State to dictate what goes on behind its doors. It died when it ended a 450-year-old relationship with its smoking customers.
Few at the time asked if this might be a poor idea. Instead of fighting for fairer concessions the trade instead lobbied hard for the 'level playing field'. Industry consensus went along with the plethora of bogus surveys financed at the taxpayers' expense proving beyond doubt that even smokers were desperate for a blanket ban.
Untold riches lay ahead if we converted our pubs into shrines to politically correct apartheid.
Critics such as myself were dismissed as doomsayers and conspiracy theorists. We still are, despite time proving us right.
This industry's obsession with clearing out the riff-raff was like Basil Fawlty on 'Gourmet Night'. Deep cleansing, sterilising and redecorating to remove any shred of evidence the once loyal, nasty smoking customers had ever been there. A new dawn was beginning and the promised New Breed of non-smoking customer was all that mattered.
Unwittingly the trade ripped out the very heart and soul of the pub. From that day on the customers began a long exodus that has been impossible to abate, draining the life blood from this industry.
Devoid of soul our pubs struggle on like zombies in the vain hope of a new injection of sustenance when NewBreed starts coming through the door.
When are we gonna realise the painful truth? NewBreed isn't coming. He never existed, other than in the cunning imagination of anti-smoking groups to bait the seductive hook this industry so hungrily swallowed.
Yawn. Get over it. Most reasonable people don't want some dirty bastard smoking next to them, any more than they want someone sitting next to them having a wank.
ReplyDeleteWhat an edifying exposition of the obnoxious mindset of the antismoker.
ReplyDeleteIndeed Curmudgeon, what an edifying exposition:-)
ReplyDeleteWhat a lot of utter rubbish.
ReplyDeleteGood pubs evolve and survive and even thrive.
Bad pubs with dinosaur landlords with attitudes like curmudgeon just moan about the smoking ban and die.
Barm would surely not end up sitting next to a smoker. The schemes usually proposed are either separate smoking smoking room, which have the disadvantage of smoke possibly leaking out and annoying anti-smokers; or separate pubs.
ReplyDeleteI think Barm has put it a little more extremely than I would, but I see where he is coming from - no pun intended. Smoking is a filthy habit which makes the smoker a tad smelly. Unfortunately it makes the non smoker smelly too.
ReplyDeletePete Robinson is a dinosaur in this and frankly, it shows. Let it go Mudgie.
Are anti-smokers thick? Tandleman has made the same mistake as Barm.
ReplyDeleteAnti-smokers would NOT be in the SAME pub as smokers. Whch part of that don't you understand?
Tandleman, You are of course right smoke is smelly but so is booze. Prior to the smoking ban, you could smell the booze from a busy pub much further away than you can smell smoke. I would say the smell of smoke only hit you when you opened the door. Inside busy pubs one is assaulted by boozy breath and your clothes will reek of it. You must of had a drink spill on you at one point - filthy drinkers! So what? It's a busy pub! A busy pub is a smelly pub! I could claim drinking is a filthy habit but as I drink and I smoke and am always suitably abluted I don't!
ReplyDeleteTandleman: "I think Barm has put it a little more extremely than I would, but I see where he is coming from - no pun intended. Smoking is a filthy habit which makes the smoker a tad smelly. Unfortunately it makes the non smoker smelly too."
ReplyDeleteSo you banned smoking in your pub before the government told you to, yes?
Ok, so er Barmy lad, care to explain in what way both I and my punters smoking like chimneys in a bar you're without any shadow of a doubt barred from, makes you or your clothes smell or effects you in any way whatsoever? Are you one of those dirty mingers that don't wash or something?
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