Losing the appetite for life

The weight loss drug Semaglutide, variously marketed as Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Rybelsus, has been much in the headlines recently. Many showbiz celebrities, and indeed some leading politicians, are rumoured to have been using it to control their weight.

While it isn’t generally available via the NHS, it has been prescribed for certain specific conditions, and more and more people away from the public eye seem to be getting hold of it through private prescriptions. The effect is reported to be a general suppression of appetite that reduces cravings for both food and drink. There are many reports of unpleasant side-effects, including diarrhoea and nausea, but for some weight loss is such a desirable objective that it overrides all of these.

As the Daily Telegraph reports, this has the potential to spill over into having a broader impact on any businesses that depend on the enjoyment of food and drink.

A star fund manager is betting against the boom in Guinness amid fears that the rise of weight loss drugs could curtail demand for alcoholic drinks. Terry Smith, the founder of Fundsmith, told investors that his £22.8bn fund no longer owned shares in the stout brand’s owner Diageo, in part owing to concerns over the impact of weight loss drugs on drinks companies.

His decision to sell follows a surge in demand for the drink, which has soared in popularity among young drinkers to the extent that supply to pubs was rationed over Christmas. He wrote in his annual letter to shareholders: “We suspect the entire drinks sector is in the early stages of being impacted negatively by weight-loss drugs. Indeed, it seems likely that the drugs will eventually be used to treat alcoholism such is their effect on consumption.”

Presumably this will also in the long term have an effect on the restaurant sector, as people no longer feel such a desire to go out for a meal, and if they do will end up picking over tiny portions in a desultory fashion. The general effect seems to be to erode people’s desire to engage in any enjoyable, self-indulgent behaviour and to strip them of their joie de vivre. It sounds like a grim, joyless future.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, as with many such “wonder drugs” there may be an element of the devil’s bargain about it. Will it prove to have a sting in the tail, with serious long-term side-effects revealing themselves in the fullness of time?

Let me entertain you

On Christmas Eve, I walked to my local pub at lunchtime for a couple of pints. It wasn’t packed, but there was a decent scattering of people in. It was, as they say “nicely ticking over”. But something that struck me was that, in the rear lounge, there were a couple of giant TV screens showing the darts, with the sound turned up. Nobody was watching, and everyone was just trying to ignore it and get on with their conversation.

Unwatched, intrusive screens are a common problem in pubs, and this is one of the reasons why I don’t go to this pub anywhere near as often as I used to. However, it underlined a wider issue, that those who operate pubs seem to believe that their customers need to be entertained or participating in some kind of experience at all times. It could be eating a meal, watching TV sport, listening to live or recorded music, playing pub sports or board games, or engaging in quizzes. But if they’re not actually doing something, why are they there?

I recently spotted a particularly egregious example of this when the Morning Advertiser reported on how chef and TV personality Clodagh McKenna saw tablescaping as a way of enhancing the customer experience in pubs:

It’s a brilliant, fun way to creatively change the atmosphere of a room. Using glassware, flowers, candles, centrepieces or other objects, you can be as elaborate or simple as you desire. People want a memorable experience more than ever before, and pubs can add lots and lots of simple accessories to enhance the space to drive customers back to their outlet again and again.

Pardon me while I reach for the sick bag. This prompted me to respond on X/Twitter with “No! I just want a decent pint and a comfortable seat”, which so far has attracted over 60 likes, so it obviously struck a chord with a lot of people.

No! I just want a decent pint and a comfortable seat 😊🍺 https://t.co/XsDSROC9yo

— Ebenezer Mudge 🌸🍻🎅 (@oldmudgie) December 25, 2024

It reminded me of a particularly pretentious refurbishment that Robinson’s carried of at the Bull’s Head in Hale Barns a few years, which involved, amongst other things, replacing tables with reused steamer trunks. “This is a pub full of theatre and intrigue,” the description went. That is really the last thing I want in a pub. This has, in fact, since been somewhat toned down.

A similar note was struck by this tweet about one pubgoer’s experiences in Birmingham city centre. (While that is from a locked account, I obtained his permission to reproduce it).

All these other activities have a place in pubs, but I have always thought what they’re fundamentally about is providing a welcoming, non-judgmental “third space” where you can escape, if only for a while, from the demands and constraints of the home or the workplace. A pub should be a kind of refuge from the outside world, where you need to do no more than chew the fat with your companions or just contemplate the world going by.

Sadly, this is a fundamental truth that so many people who design and operate pubs seem to have forgotten. And it has to be said that the oft-maligned Sam Smith’s pubs, where they can manage to stay open and build up a loyal clientele, do manage to achieve that more reliably than any others.

In the bleak midwinter

A couple of recent press articles make pretty grim reading for the pub trade. The Guardian reports that the number of pubs in Britain has fallen to a hundred-year low:

The number of pubs has fallen below 39,000 for the first time, as 412 were demolished or converted for other uses in the year to December, according to an analysis of government figures by the property data company Altus Group. Most of the closures happened in the first half of the year. The overall number of pubs in England and Wales, including those vacant and being offered to let, fell to 38,989 as closures accelerated. Some of them were converted to homes, offices and day nurseries.

More than 34 pubs shut every month on average, the sharpest fall in numbers since 2021, when the hospitality sector was hit hard by Covid-19 lockdowns and soaring energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. London lost the greatest number of pubs this year, down by 55 to 3,470. In the West Midlands, pub numbers dropped by 53 to 3,904, and in the East Midlands, 47 closed, taking the number there to 3,496. Since the start of 2020, more than 2,000 pubs have closed, under pressure from rising costs while consumers, struggling with higher rents and mortgage payments, have been spending less.

While, in the Daily Telegraph, Matthew Lynn writes that government tax policies are likely to finish off many of those that have made it to the end of 2024. (The Telegraph article is paywalled, but I can let you have the full text if you send me an e-mail).

Enjoy a few drinks if your local is open late this evening. It may well be the last time you can spend New Year’s Eve at your favourite pub. They have been closing down for years, but over the course of the last 12 months that trend has started to accelerate. It is going to get a lot worse over the next few months.

The Government is hitting pubs with higher taxes, and higher costs, at a time when many of them are already struggling to survive. In reality, this Labour government is going to kill the pub off for good, ripping the heart out of local communities and economies – and they won’t come back once they have been destroyed…

…The trouble is, pubs now face a government that is determined to do everything it can to destroy what little money a few of them still make. The steep rise in employer’s National Insurance imposed in the Budget in October will hit them very hard. After all, a pub can’t operate without bar staff, but many of them work part-time and are modestly paid.

I toyed with writing a lengthy post reflecting on these stories, but to be honest I’ve said it all before on numerous occasions. The long-term decline of pubs, as Matthew Lynn points out, is largely due to social changes over the years that have made us much more censorious about alcohol consumption, particularly in public settings. It is no longer a part of everyday life for responsible people in the way that it once was.

I have never suggested that the smoking ban was a monocausal explanation for the loss of pubs, although it certainly accelerated the process by a few years and disproportionately affected working-class, wet-led boozers. Without it, we would have a lot more pubs today, and many of those currently open would be in a stronger financial position.

Labour’s planned tax changes will result in a significantly harsher financial climate for pubs and hospitality in general, and we are likely to see a continued drip-drip of closures during the coming year. But fiscal burdens are not the root cause of the long-term decline of pubs, and relaxing them, while it will provide relief for those still in operation, won’t of itself reverse the trend.

The header picture is the Shield & Dagger in Southampton, the latest entry on my Closed Pubs blog, which was demolished in September of last year.

Nobody can have nice things

The Daily Telegraph reports on yet another threat to pubs from the present government:

Pubs could be under threat after the Government scrapped a scheme allowing communities the opportunity to save them. The community ownership fund, which was launched in 2021, was set to run until the end of March and keep £150 million available to help people rescue local treasures on the brink of closure. The initiative was closed earlier than planned with millions of pounds unallocated in an attempt to budget for Sir Keir Starmer’s priorities.

Sir Keir was branded a “Scrooge” for scrapping the scheme just days before Christmas as the Government blamed the decision on the state of public finances. Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said it was an act “worthy of Scrooge”, especially after Labour hammered businesses with tax rises at the October Budget.

A recurring theme of recent years is of communities being aggrieved by pub operators closing pubs which were seen as a valued facility, but were considered uneconomic by their owners. The obvious response to this is to say “well, if you feel so strongly about it, why not put up your own money to buy it and run it yourselves?” And, in a growing number of instances, communities have been doing just that. One of the most recent examples is the King’s Head at Chitterne in Wiltshire (pictured).

It’s not something that’s going to suit every pub, but if there is a local community who are sufficiently engaged, and have deep enough pockets, then it’s certainly a viable option. I wrote about this back in 2017. The lack of a need to earn a return on capital means that a community pub can survive with a lower level of trade than that required for a commercial enterprise, but it has to be remembered that the socio-economic factors that led to its previous closure have not disappeared overnight. It is also often said that actually buying the pub is only the first stage of the battle – a way has to be found to ensure it can function on a long-term basis. Communities may not be too keen to subsidise ongoing operating losses.

To encourage this process, in 2021 the previous government provided £150 million for a Community Ownership Fund that aimed to help local people acquire threatened facilities. As well as pubs, this also covered music venues, theatres, cinemas, community centres, museums, parks and lidos. So far, £135 million of the initial sum has been allocated to 409 different projects. Pubs that have been saved include the Radnor Arms at New Radnor in Mid-Wales, and the Bell at Odiham in Hampshire.

Some may question on a strict utilitarian basis why the government should be paying for pubs at all. However, they do provide funding for a wide variety of other purposes that are felt to improve “quality of life” but cannot demonstrate a direct financial return, such as sport, the arts and preserving historic buildings. These are projects where a community will enjoy a specific, tangible benefit that they may appreciate rather more than an interpretive dance workshop. The Community Ownership Fund is making grants to provide capital funding for purchase – they are not funding ongoing operations. And, in a wider content, it is not difficult to identify areas of public spending where lavish sums are provided for projects of very questionable value.

Of course government does not enjoy a bottomless pit of money, but cutting this programme short comes across as a joyless, mean-spirited piece of penny-pinching that will save very little, but make people’s lives just that little bit worse and leave a sour taste in their mouths.

Out with the old

Well, another year draws to a close, which has been very eventful both in the sphere of beer and pubs and the wider world. The idea that we are ever going to return to calmer waters seems like wishful thinking.

During the year, I have made 61 posts on this blog, including this one, the highest figure since Covid. (it’s possible, although unlikely, that I will do another one between today and New Year) I had a particular rush of blood to the head in February and October, with 8 posts in each month. By far the most pageviews were for my post about the pending retirement of Humphrey Smith, which for some reason has attracted more than three times as many as any other. Other popular topics included Fresh Ale (which never seems to have amounted to much), the perennial issue of children in pubs, and the recent one about the implications of using Digital ID for age verification in pubs. I’ve continued to attract a healthy volume of comments, many enlightening and constructive, others unfortunately less so.

I’ve continued to add entries to my Closed Pubs blog, although not at the same rate as in the past few years. As I mentioned last year, the disappearance of the Fullpint news aggregation Twitter account deprived me of a source of material, but to some extent this has been replaced by GB Booze, which also posts pub-related news items. This originated as Southampton Pubs, but subsequently widened its scope, which helps explain why there have been a number of entries from the Southampton area over the course of the year.

One interesting pub that I visited for the first time this year was the Cross Keys, a traditional canalside local in Penkridge, Staffordshire. It’s a congenial pub in its own right, but it has the distinction of still dispensing cask beer through electric metered pumps, something I don’t think I’d experienced in the previous decade. I know this is a lost cause, but I just think this is a preferable system, producing better condition and mouthfeel, and not knocking the stuffing out of the beer, as can all too easily happen with handpumps. Not to mention reliably guaranteeing full measure.

In the summer, I had a holiday in South-West Scotland. This was essentially a sightseeing trip, not a drinking trip, but even so my experience with cask beer fell short of my limited expectations. The worst was in the Good Beer Guide listed Douglas Arms in Dumfries, where in the evening of what had been a sunny but not particularly hot day, I was served a pint of cask that was crystal clear, but absolutely at room temperature. I didn’t take it back, as it would have been pointless, and I’m extremely unlikely to ever go there again. In contrast, I found a very congenial atmosphere in the keg-only Hole I’The Wa’ (pictured), a traditional pub located down an alleyway off Dumfries’ High Street, which was one of my best pub discoveries of the year.

In July, there was a general election and a universally expected change of government, although the incoming Labour administration enjoyed a much larger majority in seats than it did in votes. It is beyond the remit of this blog to stray on to wider political issues, but I predicted at the time that there was likely to be an intensification of the trend towards lifestyle restrictions that had characteristed their predecessors.

It didn’t take long to float a proposal to ban smoking in outdoor drinking areas of licensed premises, something that would have dealt a severe blow to wet-led pubs. After a wave of objections, they abandoned the idea, but the response was not that they thought it was wrong in principle, but that this wasn’t the time to bring it in. Then, health minister Andrew Gwynne, one of my local MPs, stated that pubs should be made to close earlier to address alcohol-related problems in society. He was pretty swiftly slapped down, but again this illustrates their train of thought.

The government confirmed that they were going to press ahead with Rishi Sunak’s plan to introduce a creeping smoking ban that would prevent anyone born after a set date from purchasing tobacco. This is a measure that is not only appallingly illiberal in principle, but would encounter serious practical problems in its application. It would create a two-tier society, discriminate against the young, and over time effectively hand the tobacco trade over to the black market. While the idea had originated in New Zealand, after a change of government in 2023 they dropped it, leaving the UK as trailblazers in this particular form of insanity.

However, a much more immediate threat to the pub trade emerged from Rachel Reeves’ first budget in October. This presented pubs with a quadruple whammy of increased costs and regulation – increasing employers’ national insurance, increasing the minimum wage by well above the rate of inflation, slashing the rate of business rates relief, and giving workers full employment rights from Day 1. Offsetting this with a marginal reduction in draught beer duty was an insulting sop. The worst aspect of this was reducing the threshold for employers’ National Insurance from £9,100 to £5,000, which will hit a sector employing many low-paid and part-time workers particularly hard. So expect to see many more pubs struggling, cutting hours and closing entirely in the New Year.

The tide of beers being reduced to 3.4% ABV to take advantage of a much lower duty rate continued, with John Smith’s Extra Smooth, the country’s biggest ale brand, succumbing in February. However, it now seems to have run out of steam, and presumably all the major brands that people just drink as a matter of routine without giving it much thought have now fallen into line. Plus, as I wrote in October, despite the brewers’ claims that it is responding to a trend towards healthier lifestyles, in reality it is entirely driven by tax considerations, not consumer demand. It is significant that Carlsberg lager continues to be brewed at 3.8% for Wetherspoon’s, who must be its biggest customer by far. And there was perhaps a straw in the wind when Marble Brewery restored the stremgth of their Pint to 3.9%, having cut it late last year.

There was a steady drip-drip of negative news from the Carlsberg-Marston’s conglomerate – abandoning use of the Burton Union system, Carlsberg buying buying out Marston’s remaining minority stake, closing the Wolverhampton brewery and withdrawing a long list of cask ale brands including the once iconic Banks’s Mild. Obviously all of this was a cause for sadness, but a lot of the anger in response to it seemed misplaced. It is simply not realistic to expect a large commercial business to keep brewing systems, plants and beer brands in existence purely out of sentiment.

However, something was salvaged, as Thornbridge brewery managed to obtain one of the Union sets and proceeded to use to it brew both a version of their signature Jaipur IPA, and a dedicated English-style IPA, the latter of which I can confirm was excellent. This illustrates how what may no longer make commercial sense for a large company can attract a following in more of a niche, enthusiast market. Maybe they could also consider brewing a 4.5% Burton-style pale ale that would be a direct replacement for Union Pedigree.

As I mentioned above, my post about Humphrey Smith retiring from Samuel Smith’s Brewery gained by some way the highest number of page views over the year. In theory, this should have happened by the end of this month, but only time will tell to what extent it affects the company’s often eccentric and self-defeating approach. The two issues that need to be urgently addressed are sorting out the endemic problem of recruiting new licensees, and dropping the absurd and counter-productive mobile phone ban. But hopefully change can happen without destroying the pubs’ highly distinctive character. The Guardian recently published a very interesting long-form article looking into the Sam Smith’s empire.

There has been the usual unfathomable merry-go-round of pub openings and closings. The Swan in Holmes Chapel, which briefly reopened in the summer of 2023 but swiftly closed again, has reopened, but the Boar’s Head, in a prominent location on Stockport Market Place, abruptly closed in November of this year, and the highly characterful Queen’s Head remains firmly shut. Several attractive properties in Cheshire, such as the Bird in Hand at Mobberley and the Cheshile Midland in Hale, remain long-term closed.

But, where Sam Smith’s pubs do stay open, they can offer a very congenial and welcoming atmosphere. It was a pleasure to be able to present in November, on behalf of the local CAMRA branch, a Pub of the Month award to the Sun in September in Burnage, Manchester (pictured), where the licensees have worked hard to built a community spirit in area otherwise denuded of traditional pubs. And, the following month, a second award went to the Blue Bell in Levenshulme, the other of the two out of five Sam’s pubs in the branch area that is still open. I wonder if any other CAMRA branch has ever made two such consecutive awards.

During the year, a particularly interesting book that I read was Historic Building Mythbusting by James Wright. In this book, the author, a qualified building archaeologist, debunks many of the common myths that surround historical buildings. One chapter that will be of specific interest to pub-lovers is where he shows that many well-known pubs’ claim to great antiquity rest on very shaky foundations, but there are others, often less-known, whose origins in mediaeval times can be reliably authenticated. He also holes below the waterline the claims of many old pubs that they are built from salvaged ships’ timbers, often taken from the Spanish Armada.

Probably the single most significant point made in the book is debunking the common theory that spiral staircases in mediaeval castles were almost always built with a clockwise rotation to give an advantage to right-handed swordsmen defending them against attackers. This is widely prevalent, and is often found in official sources, but has no verifiable foundation whatsoever.

And what can we expect for 2025? I’m not going to make any predictions, beyond confidently saying that it won’t be uneventful…

Big Brother in the pub

The government have announced that they are going to trial a scheme to allow people to use a form of digital ID held on smartphones for age verification in pubs.

Young people will be able to use government-backed digital ID cards to prove they are old enough to drink alcohol under legal changes to take effect next year. They will be able to sign up to digital ID companies that are certified against Government-set standards for security and reliability and then use the app on their smartphone to prove they are over 18 when visiting pubs, restaurants and shops.

It is part of a wider effort to move more state functions online so that people can prove their identity for everything from paying taxes to opening a bank account using the government-backed app. It will use a “single sign-on”, rather than the two-step identity verification currently needed online, for all government services including applying for benefits.

It will also allow older people to avoid the need for a member of staff to confirm their age when using self-service checkouts.

It is likely to be integrated into supermarkets’ and shops’ check-out scanning systems which will end the delays for customers when they have to call over the attendant to physically confirm they are old enough to buy alcohol – even if they are pensioners.

That sounds all well and good but, despite government denials, it is impossible to avoid the thought that it is being used as a stalking horse for the general introduction of Digital ID. Such a scheme would initially be sold to the population on the grounds that it would make their lives easier.

This has long been a pipe-dream of people of an authoritarian bent, such as Tony Blair. However, many commentators have expressed serious concerns on grounds of government overreach, loss of privacy and social exclusion. These concerns are summed up here by Big Brother Watch. Some may dismiss this as the argument of a tin-foil hatter, but the experience of the Covid Track and Trace app shows these fears to be entirely valid. This was, by definition, a system of government surveillance, and many businesses chose to use it as condition of entry even though that was not a legal requirement.

The period of lockdowns underlined that there was a significant subset of pub licensees who obviously missed their vocation as a prison guard, and were keen to gold-plate every regulation and add some more of their own. If they demanded that all customers check in with a digital ID, it would absolve them of any requirement to carry out age verification and thus make their life easier.

The government have said that use of these IDs would not be mandatory, but would that extend to ensuring that venues did not insist on them as a condition of entry? It seems highly likely that anyone who was either unable to have one due to not having a smartphone, or chose not to on privacy grounds, would end up being treated in various respects as a second-class citizen. Business and government departments prefer not to have to deal with awkward non-conformists.

A further consideration is what happens in the event of a power cut, which seems increasingly likely in the future due to Ed Miliband’s deranged energy policies. If it disabled digital IDs, it would bring society to a halt even more completely than it would at present.

So, while it may seem convenient to simply swipe your phone to get served in the pub or at the self-service checkout, it could be a further step down a very dangerous road. To say that “the innocent have nothing to fear” displays a touchingly naïve faith in the ultimate benevolence of government.

Not getting your oats

As a key plank of their strategy to combat child obesity, the government have announced restrictions on the advertising of so-called “unhealthy” foods, including a ban on TV adverts before the 9 pm watershed, and a complete ban online. A similar policy had been proposed by their predecessors, so I am not making a partisan point here.

Their press release makes extensive use of the meaningless term “junk food”, which can basically be taken to mean “any food items we disapprove of”. Perhaps people were expecting a ban on junk food adverts to apply only to the likes of pizzas, burgers and Wotsits but, unsurprisingly, the net has been drawn much more widely and encompasses many of what would be regarded as normal everyday foodstuffs. It’s rather like the disingenuous claim that Minimum Unit Pricing would only affect “cheap, high-strength alcohol”.

A taste of the scope of the restrictions is given by the except from the policy document shown above. Two particular examples that have received widespread media coverage are porridge and crumpets. Come on, you really didn’t think porridge was an unhealthy food, did you? Even Keir Starmer has been prompted to say that he doesn’t believe porridge is bad for children, but that isn’t going to stop him banning it from being advertised.

In any case, many of the items on the list are things that have no intrinsic appeal to children. You can’t really image a child pestering their parent for some M&S Seafood Linguine, but no, all advertising of ready meals will be banned, regardless of their nutritional content.

Christopher Snowdon has filleted the plans in his usual forensic style and points out that, even on the government’s own figures, they will result in the average child consuming a mere 2.3 calories less per day, which is neither here nor there. So, even taking the most charitable interpretation, it is a very heavy sledgehammer to crack a tiny nut. For some campaigners, though, it does not go far enough, and they object to companies being able to advertise at all if they sell any products that fall foul of the restrictions.

The ban on any form of paid online advertising is arguably far worse than the TV watershed rule, which by definition will only affect large companies. The internet is now integral to daily life, and will form a key part of many companies’ advertising strategy. Items such as cakes, chocolates, yoghurts and cooked meats may not be good for you if eaten in excessive quantities, but they are entirely legitimate products enjoyed by most adult consumers. Yet they are being treated as a “toxic trade” in a similar way to tobacco.

There is a coherent case for restricting advertising that is directly targeted at children, but surely it should be permissible to advertise legal products to adults. Advertising bans tend to result in ossification of the market they cover, with a reduction in competition, choice and innovation. They are bad news for consumers. Plus they will lead to a reduction in revenue for media organisations and could cause some of them financial difficulties.

When I started this blog seventeen years ago, I would have never expected that much of the fire of public health lobby would be diverted from alcohol to food, but that is how it has turned out. But there must be a strong chance of similar restrictions being applied to alcoholic drinks in the coming years. So don’t say you haven’t been warned!

Crying over spilt beer

Hard on the heels of the announcement of the closure of their Wolverhampton brewery, Carlsberg-Marston’s have informed us of their plans to discontinue a large number of mostly cask ales. These including, most strikingly, Banks’s Mild, the cornerstone on which the original Wolverhampton & Dudley company was built, and Bombardier, which maybe fifteen years ago seemed to crop up all over the place in the way that Doom Bar does now, and was even advertised on TV by the late Rik Mayall.

The full list of discontinued beers is:

Cask:
Banks’s Mild
Banks’s Sunbeam
Bombardier
Eagle IPA
Jennings Cumberland Ale
Marston’s Old Empire
Marston’s 61 Deep
Ringwood Boondoggle
Ringwood Old Thumper

Keg:
Mansfield Dark Smooth
Mansfield Original Bitter

However, some of these, including Banks’s Mild, will live on in keg or packaged form, so all is not entirely lost.

The combined company had inherited a sprawling portfolio of often overlapping brands, so some degree of rationalisation was inevitable. In particular, they had Cumberland Ale, Boondoggle, Sunbeam, Hobgoblin Gold and Wainwright Gold which all occupied much the same territory in the beer market. I’m not sure exactly where, but I’m sure I once went in a pub where the entire cask range comprised three beers from that list.

It is understandable that people will feel sadness and disappointment at this news, but a reaction of anger and betrayal seems misplaced. Whether it is pubs, beer brands or breweries, large companies have little room for sentimentality or considerations of “heritage”. People may feel an attachment to pubs or beers that they do not towards brands of chocolate or soap powder, but at the end of the day they are commercial products, not government services.

This applies further down the scale of size too – my local family brewer Robinson’s a few years ago dropped its Hatters Mild, to considerable outcry, and have also ruthlessly culled about a third of their pub estate, including some properties that at one time would have been regarded as jewels in their crown.

No doubt some twerp will pop up in the comments to say “You call yourself the Pub Curmudgeon, but you’re acting as an apologist for the international brewers.” However, all I’m doing is putting across the perhaps unpalatable truth. It has always been thus. If you sell your offspring to the crocodile, you should not be surprised if he ends up devouring some of them. And it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, at least subsconsciously, some people seem to feel that the British pub and brewing industry should have been frozen in about 1955, and all discontinuation of brands, takeovers and pub and brewery closures should have to go through some form of statutory process.

It also seems ironic that some of the same people who, only a few weeks ago were urging us to drink independent beers whenever possible, are now lamenting the loss of big brewery products which presumably they considered to be inferior. If you won’t stand up for Eagle IPA, don’t be too surprised when its owners stop brewing it. On the other hand, some commentators have said that we should look to the future and concentrate on the wide variety of often excellent cask ales that are still available, rather than getting too upset about the loss of beers than many people didn’t think much of anyway. Boak & Bailey definitely fall into this camp.

It’s important to remember that Carlsberg-Marston’s is now a pure brewing operation under different ownership from the Marston’s pub company. What they produce is entirely dependent on what their customers want to order and, while to some extent they can promote particular products, they can’t dictate whether they appear on bars. If they’re selling less Banks’s Mild, it’s because customers aren’t drinking it and thus pubs aren’t ordering it.

On the other hand, a vertically integrated brewer and pub operator can decide which beers are sold in its pubs, which can provide a cushion against the fickle tides of fashion, while at the same time what appears on their bars is a reflection of the company as a whole. This virtuous circle is broken when the relationship is severed.

To some extent this is a hangover from the 1989 Beer Orders which did much to break the connection between brewer and pub operator, and have continued ever since to exercise a negative influence over the industry.

A recycled mistake

The philosopher George Santayana is reputed to have said “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. And it looks like the Welsh government are planning to test out this maxim in following the example of their Scottish counterparts in trying to go it alone with a recycling scheme for drinks containers.

Last year, the Westminster government gave the go-ahead to the Scottish proposals for a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), but only on the condition that they excluded glass, confining it to cans and plastic bottles. Rather than proceed with a modified scheme, the Scottish government in something of a fit of pique decided to scrap the whole thing so they would have to await the implementation of a UK-wide scheme later in the decade. I wrote about this here.

The UK government wanted glass removed from the scheme because of internal market concerns. It would in effect create a trade barrier between two parts of the same country, which would be bad for both businesses and consumers. Some of the respondents to my post seemed to fail to grasp this point, but every business operating the scheme would have had to introduce Scotland-specific packaging, so that deposits could only be reclaimed on containers that had paid it in the first place, pay a fee to register for the scheme, and potentially be subject to fines if an insufficient proportion of their containers were returned.

Not surprisingly, many smaller businesses decided that the cost and bureaucracy would not be worth it if they were only selling small quantities in Scotland in the first place. This would have especially affected small producers of alcoholic drinks. We could potentially have ended up with the ridiculous situation of small Scottish brewers refusing to supply Scotland, while being happy to sell beer in the rest of the UK.

Glass already had a much better recycling rate than cans and plastic bottles, and was also the medium overwhelmingly used by smaller producers, so it made a lot of sense to exclude it. Mass-market producers of beers and soft drinks, who used cans and plastic bottles, would have found it much easier and more worthwhile to come within the scheme.

The UK government have committed to introducing a UK-wide deposit return scheme from 2027, which would exclude glass. However, the Welsh government have indicated that they intend to opt out from this and introduce their own scheme that would include glass. So we are likely to see exactly the same issues of smaller producers refusing to supply Wales, and Welsh brewers deciding it is not worthwhile to sell in their home country. Wales only accounts for 5% of the total UK population, so many producers will conclude it isn’t worth the effort and expense. The range of packaged alcoholic drinks available to Welsh consumers will be drastically reduced. In contrast, the UK as a whole, with a population of 68 million, is a market worth making specific provision for.

UK Hospitality have expressed their serious concerns about the plan, and there must be a strong possibility that the story will play out the same way, and the UK government will ultimately refuse to approve the Welsh scheme because of single market concerns. But, of course, after the Senedd elections in 2026, the Welsh political landscape may look very different...

Note that this is not about the desirability of a DRS in principle, but the practicalities of how this particular scheme would actually work and its effect on the markets that it would cover.

Junk food, junk statistics

A shock report in the Guardian highlights claims of the immense cost to the British economy of health problems resulting from poor diets.

The UK’s growing addiction to unhealthy food costs £268bn a year, far outstripping the budget for the whole NHS, the first research into the subject has found. The increased consumption of foods high in fat, salt and sugar or which have been highly processed is having a “devastating” impact on human health and Britain’s finances.

“Far from keeping us well, our current food system, with its undue deference to what is known colloquially as ‘big food’, is making us sick. The costs of trying to manage that sickness are rapidly becoming unpayable,” the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) report says.

The £268bn figure has emerged from the first academic research looking at the cost of Britain’s increasing consumption of food that, according to the government’s system of assessing nutritional quality, is deemed unhealthy.

However, such an astronomical figure immediately raises suspicion that it might be a tad exaggerated, and indeed needs to be taken with a substantial pinch of salt (which of course is bad for you). It also seems to have been subject to considerable inflation, having risen from a claimed £27 billion in 2017 through £98 billion in 2021 to £268 billion now. It also seems a suspiciously exact figure. Why not quote it as £270 billion?

Any figure of costs such as this cannot be taken in isolation, but needs to be compared with something else. The alternative is not doing nothing, but doing something different. In a similar way, figures are often bandied about for the costs to society of using fossil fuels, but fail to consider what the actual result would be from not doing so.

It also commits the frequent sin of public health messaging of failing to acknowledge that people can gain any enjoyment from activities they disapprove of. The fact that people actually enjoy eating burgers and crisps in preference to grilled locusts and steamed kale needs to be considered as a benefit and weighed in the equation.

Christopher Snowdon has looked into this in more depth and reached the unsurprising conclusion that these figures have indeed been plucked out of the air by people with an axe to grind. The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission is not some kind of official body, but a private pressure group run by an individual called Tim Jackson who has a clear anti-capitalist agenda.

In the absence of any firm evidence, Jackson simply assumes that 33% of all long term health conditions in Britain are caused by poor diet because that’s what one study attributed to “metabolic risk”. Metabolic dysfunction is extremely common among the elderly — Jackson says that “70% of adults over 65 suffer from one or more metabolic condition” — and while it is linked to obesity and diet, it is also linked to medication, genes, stress, physical inactivity and other lifestyle factors, as well as old age itself. Jackson ignores the other risk factors and for the purposes of his cost estimate blames every case on “the current food system”.

This makes the maths nice and simple. He takes 70 per cent of what the UK spends on healthcare, social care and disability benefit welfare and divides it by three. This gives him a total of £92 billion in direct costs to the government. He then adds less tangible costs, including “human costs” and lost productivity. “Human costs” depend entirely on whatever arbitrary figure you put on a year of life and are the Get Out of Jail Free card of health economists who want to make it look like personal choices impose a burden on society. Jackson simply nicks the figure of £60 billion from the report commissioned by Tony Blair’s think tank (and paid for by Novo Nordisk) last year.

So, in fact, the figure is entirely made up, and does not deserve to be given any credence. I’m not denying that poor diets do impose some costs on society and the health service, but the real figure is likely to be several orders of magnitude smaller. It is also questionable to what extent this can be addressed through the usual public health playbook of taxes, restrictions and bans. But no doubt it will be gleefully used in future as a stick to beat us with.

And it seems that we are regressing to a medieval worldview where illnesses are blamed on people’s moral failings rather than being attributed to disease and infection.

Bavarian bounty

Last Autumn, there was a bout of excitement on Twitter over the appearance of the Kalea Wiesn-Tragerl ten-pack of Bavarian festival beers as a special offer in Lidl. There was something of a feeding frenzy over trying to get hold of one and, as supplies seemed to be fairly limited, many people were disappointed, including myself.

This year, the same pack made a reappearance, again priced at £24.99 for ten 500ml bottles of beers varying between 5.4% and 6.3% ABV, which is pretty good value, although oddly it was not made available until the middle of October. This time, supplies seemed to be more generous, and I succeeded in getting my hands on one. Having now sampled them all, I thought I would offer some tasting notes.

Boak and Bailey wrote about this pack last year. I’m perhaps rather more enthusiastic about the overall style than they were, but they make the important point that these are beers that very much arise from a particular region and season of the year. Each year, in the early Autumn, towns and cities across Bavaria stage their own folk festival, and the local brewery produces a special beer, stronger than their normal ones, to celebrate. But only the six Munich breweries are allowed to call it “Oktoberfestbier”.

• Bischofshof – Original Festbier (5.4%) BB 14/02/25: Standard mid-gold colour, deep and persistent head, carbonation noticeably less vigorous than some. Relatively crisp flavour, with subdued maltiness and a slight fruity note. One of the better ones, and quite distinctive. Had a more contemporary and stylish label than some of the other more elaborate “Gothic” designs.

• Erl Bräu – Erlkönig Festbier( (6.1%) BB 28/01/25: Pale gold in colour, probably the lightest of the batch, although one of the strongest. Thin but persistent head, vigorous carbonation. Fairly subtle in flavour and not overtly malty, with a dry aftertaste, although a fuller feel developed as it warmed up.

• Ettl Bräu Teisnacher – 1543 Festmärzen (5.4%) BB 03/05/25: This one is labelled as “Naturtrüb”, meaning it still has some yeast in suspension (although not bottle-conditioned). Allowed it plenty of time to settle, and managed to pour with only a mild haze. Dark gold colour, deep head which subsided after a while, but persisted down the glass, strong carbonation. Full, rounded, malty flavour, considerably richer than some of the other beers. I agree with Boak & Bailey that it had “just a dab of welcome rustic character.”

• Falter – Pichelsteiner Festbier (5.9%) BB 28/12/24: Standard golden lager colour, good carbonation but didn’t form a dense head. Characteristic rich, sweetish flavour, with a bit of dry maltiness creeping in later. Good, but not an outstanding example. Possibly a bit lacking in freshness.

• Hofbräu – Oktoberfestbier (6.3%) BB 27/03/25: People may debate the merits of the various Munich Oktoberfestbiers, but surely this is the exemplar of the style. Mid-gold colour, dense, lasting head, vigorous carbonation. Rich, full, malty flavour, but with a distinct dryness there too; not excessively sweet. Splendid stuff!

• Hohenthanner Schlossbrauerei – Märzen Festbier (5.6%) BB 26/03/25: Light copper in colour, more like the traditional Märzen hue. Thin but persistent head, decent carbonation. Sweetish, malty flavour with a hint of caramel.

• Kuchlbauer – Gillamoos Bier (5.6%) BB 01/03/25: Much paler than others, almost Pilsner-pale. Good head formation and vigorous carbonation. Fairly subtle in flavour, less sweet and malty than some. Dry aftertaste. Gillamoos is a folk festival held since 1313 in early September in the town of Abensberg, which is north of Munich and just south of Regensburg.

• Irlbacher Premium – Gauboden Volksfestbier (5.6%) BB 04/07/25: Mid-gold colour, thin but persistent head, good carbonation. Rich flavour, full mouthfeel, but not particularly sweet. Not really the quasi-Pilsner described by B&B “something like a strong pilsner: pale, powerfully bitter, and our favourite of the bunch”, although still one of the best of the set. One of the latest BB dates.

• Schneider – Festweisse (6.2%) BB 15/03/25: This one differs from the others in being a Hefeweizen, and thus intentionally cloudy. The yeast didn’t come anywhere near settling despite being stood for three weeks. Poured opaque and cloudy, with a thick lasting head and vigorous carbonation. Dark gold colour. Characteristic spicy flavour, with full malt body and a slight alcohol kick. Not, to be honest, one of my favourite beer styles.

• Wildbräu Grafing – Kirtabier (5.7%) BB 03/04/25: Dark gold in colour, which was lighter than I had been expecting from Boak and Bailey’s description. Thin but persistent head, adequate carbonation. Notably sweet and malty flavour, although not heavy; not really lager-like at all. Doesn’t really drink its strength. B&B said: “dark, orangey and syrupy, almost like Spingo Special.”, but this wasn’t really like that at all. It’s paler than the Perlenbacher interpretation. This one had the plainest and simplest label.

I also tried the Perlenbacher Festbier which Lidl were selling at a bargain £1.49 for a 500ml can.

• Perlenbacher – Festbier (5.5%) BB 07/08/25: Dark gold colour, good carbonation and head retention. Malty flavour with little hop character, but a slight “off” note. Probably what you would expect from a cut-price interpretation of a Festbier.

So there you are, ten beers (plus one ersatz knock-off), all basically variations on a theme apart from the Schneider Festweisse. All good beers, and it was interesting to see the differences in flavour and character between them. I’m guessing that most were unpasteurised, hence the shorter shelf-lives, although the Falter was the only one that gave the impression of being a bit stale.

I would certainly buy the pack again if it reappears next year, but it has to be said that Festbiers are an interesting diversion from the core theme of lager, which in general I would expect to be crisper and hoppier. If I had to pick favourites, apart from the Hofbräu, I would choose the Bischofshof and the Irlbacher.

Overall, though, I would say that the Oktoberfest beers from the classic Big 6 Munich breweries are better. And I still have examples of all six of those to drink, bought from the Bottle Stop in Bramhall for a rather higher price per bottle, plus Festbiers from Giesinger and Weihenstephan.

Beat the clock

A central London branch of the O’Neill’s chain has been in the news for imposing a surcharge on drinks prices after 10 pm.

The Soho branch of the Irish-themed pub states on a sign that it operates a “a variable price list” – what that means in reality is that after 10pm, the price it charges for drinks increases.

It is reported that this results in the price of a Brewdog IPA going from £7.40 during the rest of the day to £9.40, while a 500ml bottle of Budweiser goes up from £6.05 to £8.05. Even a tonic water goes up by £1 under the system, with the price rising to £3.15. Drinks purchased in the evening are also served in plastic cups, rather than glass.

This has met with a pretty hostile reaction with consumer rights expert Scott Dixon saying “The hospitality industry needs to rethink their business model instead of inventing new ways to rip people off, there needs to be more transparency.” One commentator even rather hyperbolically declared that it amounted to price gouging and would lead to the extinction of the institution of the pub.

However, provided that it is properly advertised (which reports suggest may not be the case here), is it really any different in principle from pubs offering cheaper prices at slack times, such as “happy hours” or discounts early in the week? Yes, it feels psychologically better to get a discount from what is perceived as the standard price, rather than a surcharge, but the basic concept of varying the price according to the time of day or day of the week is the same.

It is a principle well-established in other markets where pricing of services delivered and consumed immediately is varied according to the time. The most obvious example is peak pricing on the railways, which is directly comparable as the lower price applies most of the time, with a surcharge imposed when it is busy. And it is common, for example, for buffet restaurants to charge several pounds more at weekends for what is exactly the same offer of food.

This practice has been described in some quarters as “surge” or “dynamic” pricing, but that isn’t really accurate. These terms are applied to situations where the price is varied unpredictably in response to the level of demand, such as with the recent furore over Oasis concert tickets. Here, in contrast, the higher price is predictable and announced in advance, and applies to a specific, defined period. The licensing authorities, particularly in Scotland, would take a dim view of any pub that varied prices suddenly and arbitrarily during the course of a single session.

I can’t say I’m very keen on this concept, and I’d think less of any pub that applied it. But time-based pricing is a well-established concept in service businesses, and some of the objections to it seem greatly overdone. Having said that, I’m not sure I’d really be keen on paying £7.40 for a pint of Punk IPA, let alone £9.40.

A morsel for the masses

Well, Budget Day has come and gone, and there has been the usual phenomenon of various unpalatable measures being trailed in advance, and a sigh of relief being breathed when some of them at least are not implemented. There is also usually at least one surprise pulled from the Chancellor’s hat, and this year it was the decision to reduce the rate of duty on draught beer and cider by 1.7%, equating to about 1p on the sale price. The duty on packaged beer and all other alcoholic drinks will increase in line with RPI.

This comes across as a pointless empty gesture that will achieve nothing. Even if pubs see a small reduction in price from their suppliers, in pretty much all cases they will take the entirely understandable decision to slightly widen their margins rather than passing it on to the customer. Virtually no drinkers will see any reduction in the price of a pint over the bar. This was unsurprisingly met with widespread derision, and realistically the optics would have been much better if the rate had simply been frozen. Yet they have the brass neck to shout it from the rooftops as though it is a significant benefit.

Any effect of this will be vastly outweighted by a whole raft of other factors that will increase the costs incurred by pubs. The first is that the 75% discount on business rates that they have enjoyed since the period of lockdowns will be reduced to 40% from April 2025, pending a comprehensive revamp of the system in 2026. This will more than double a pub’s business rates bill. The Morning Advertiser reports that the rates bill for the average pub will increase from £3,938 to £9,451.

The rate of Employer’s National Insurance contributions will be increased from 13.8% to 15%, and the minimum threshold on which they are charged will be reduced from £9,100 to £5,000. This will greatly increase the cost of employing staff, and will hit hospitality, where there are many low-paid and part-time workers, particularly hard. For the very smallest businesses, there will be some relief from raising the exempt band, but the vast majority will still suffer.

Meanwhile, the main adult rate of the National Living Wage is being increased by 6.7%, over three times the rate of inflation, bringing it to £12.21 an hour, while the 18-21 rate will be increased by no less than 11.6% to £10 an hour. Again this will have a particularly severe impact on hospitality due to the profile of their workforce. Some idiot on Twitter opined “why shouldn’t workers be paid a fair wage?”, but you can’t pluck a figure out of the air without any regard to employers’ ability to actually pay it.

On top of this, the government are planning to implement changes in employment law to give workers full rights from Day 1, which will make it much more difficult to dismiss unsatisfactory employees, and make businesses much more reluctant to take anyone on without a proven track record.

One publican reckoned that, to recoup the cost of all these changes, she would need to increase the typical price of a pint by 30p. But then you run into the problem of your customers, who are experiencing similar financial pressures, being unable or unwilling to pay that, resulting in a vicious circle of diminishing returns.

The inevitable result will be that, after the Christmas and New Year period, we will see a rising tide of pub closures, and many of those still standing will be reducing staffing levels, opening hours and food service times. But the joyless wowsers, never missing an opportunity to kick a man when he is down, will still no doubt go ahead with their Dry January campaign.

And, while I have done my best to avoid making wider political points that go beyond the drinks and hospitality industry, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that we are being consigned to four and a half years of Britain being a high tax, low growth and low enterprise economy.

State of independence

“Craft beer” started to become a widely-used concept in the UK around fifteen years ago. But ever since then it has been dogged by the issue of how it is actually defined. Is it the type of beer, the kind of ingredients used, the size of the brewery, the independent status of the brewery, the ethos of the brewery, or some kind of nebulous combination of all these factors?

And then a fly in the ointment appeared, as the major international brewers started to buy up what were perceived as “craft” brands such as Camden and Beavertown. Punters might think that pint of Neck Oil comes from a hip, edgy brewery, but in fact it’s an offshoot of Heineken.

This process was described by a newspaper article as How Big Lager Crushed Britain’s Craft Beer Revolution, but that is something of a misrepresentation of describing an entirely normal business process. In any industry, when a new product category appears on the scene, existing companies will attempt to get a share of the action, either by developing their own competing products or taking over the innovators, and that is exactly what has happened in beer. Sometimes a start-up emerges from the pack to became a major competitor in its own right, as has happened with BrewDog, although I would expect them to also sell out to a major corporate in the fullness of time.

To counter the confusion created by these craft takeovers, SIBA (the Society of Independent Brewers) have launched an initiative to highlight breweries’ independent status, using an Indie Beer badge. It is open to all breweries to use this, not just members of SIBA, provided that they are genuinely independent from the control of larger corporations, and account for no more than 1% of the British beer market, indicating a production level of around 220,000 barrels a year.

There’s a lot to be said for transparency, but the question has to asked to what extent this is something that drinkers class as important. They may say in opinion surveys that they prefer beer from small independent breweries to that made by giant corporations, but their revealed preference often indicates otherwise. All they want at the end of the day is a decent pint. And this is a beer market where the majority of sales are accounted for by UK-brewed versions of international lager brands. This is not to say that people are stupid, just that independence and authenticity are not in practice given a high priority. I’d guess that most of the people to whom it really matters that Neck Oil is brewed by an offshoot of Heineken are already well aware of that fact.

It also needs to be remembered that independent status is not of itself necessarily a mark of quality, and, to be fair, it isn’t really being suggested it is. Over the years, I’ve encountered no shortage of poor products from micro-breweries, and indeed “this tastes like home brew” is a common criticism. On the other hand, while not all of their products may be to your taste, Asahi/Fullers at Chiswick, Greene King at Bury St Edmunds, and Carlsberg-Marstons at Burton and Wolverhampton are all pretty competent brewers who know what they’re doing. Beer isn’t purely a functional product, and people often take into account the wider connotations of a brand when choosing which one to buy, but it takes a certain amount of perversity to deliberately opt for an inferior product purely because it comes from a small company. There will be plenty of items in your house that were supplied by major corporations and which you have bought for practical reasons.

It was noticeable on the day that this campaign was launched that one of the first brewers to use the badge was Timothy Taylor’s, who brew the second best-selling cask ale in the country. They were followed by Arkell’s, Felinfoel and Palmer’s, three of the most conservative family brewers in the country, and known for the (in some people’s eyes) brownness and boringness of their beers. All the remaining family brewers fall comfortably within SIBA’s definition of independence, but no doubt some people will feel a little uncomfortable with this. I ran a Twitter poll showing that 85% of respondents thought they should be included, but 15% didn’t.

POLL: Would you classify long-established family brewers such as Holt’s and Robinson’s as “independent” brewers?

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) October 22, 2024

In the early days of the British craft beer movement, many of those who were most committed to it as a kind of ideological crusade saw the family brewers as embodying everything they were opposed to. This attitude has mellowed somewhat in more recent years, and only last week Timothy Taylor’s been promoting a stout made in a collaboration with Northern Monk. But it still persists, and is perhaps particularly prevalent in Greater Manchester, where the four surviving family brewers perhaps have a greater share of tied pubs than anywhere else in the country.

Only the other day, I saw some twerp on Twitter saying “I hate Robinson’s”, and the attitude is exemplified by the response to this column that I wrote for Opening Times five years ago. Some people are going to continue lumping Batham’s and Hook Norton in with “big beer”, and when they see Shepherd Neame using the Indie Beer badge will mutter darkly “this isn’t what it’s supposed to mean!”

And it would be a splendid piece of trolling if Samuel Smith’s, who describe themselves in their publicity as being “a small, independent brewery” also decided to adopt the Indie Beer badge.

A bit of sprucing up

Earlier this month, the Nursery Inn in Heaton Norris, Stockport, reopened after a £250,000 refurbishment by Hydes Brewery. This, which is my local pub, has a splendid unspoilt interior dating from 1939, and was CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year in 2002, one of the very few brewery tied houses ever to win this award. It is also one of the handful of pubs to retain its own bowling green still in active use.

I wrote in 2013 about my experiences of visiting this pub on Sunday lunchtimes over the years. It was once extremely popular but, despite receiving an earlier refurbishment in 2014, for various reasons its fortunes seem to have declined more recently. A couple of years ago, I remember one of the Hydes directors telling a CAMRA meeting that they would have to make major changes to the pub to revive it, but were being held back by planning constraints. Several of those present expressed concern about what this would mean for its historic interior.

However, as a Grade II listed building – and also meriting a three-star entry on CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors – the scope for structural change was very limited. It seems that what Hydes have done has respected the pub’s fabric, and could best be described as a general refresh and reupholstering, although there may have been more far-reaching changes behind the scenes, such as in the kitchen.

The two photos above show the main lounge and the vault. The lounge retains its wood panelling, bench seating and original stained glass windows, but has acquired some overlarge rectangular tables, although I suppose that is seen as necessary for the food trade.

However, it’s hard to see what difference the changes are going to make to the pub’s fortunes. The pub is in a tucked-away location and thus has no passing trade*, so it depends on a combination of either being a local or attracting customers as a destination for attractions such as food or live music.

The cask ale range has been cut back to Hydes’ three regular paler ales, Original, Hopster and Lowry, and the number of handpumps reduced. Neither of their two milds, Dark Ruby and 1863, are now sold and there appears to be no room to add seasonal beers, which it also sold in the past.

The initial food selection seems to major on variations on a theme of pie, mash and gravy, which is fairly limiting, whereas previously it had an extensive and varied menu. Whether a wider choice will be introduced in future remains to be seen, but I would say an attractive food offer is important to the pub’s appeal.

As the photo of the lounge shows, the pub also to my mind suffers from the presence of a large screen for TV sport in every room. I recognise that sport does bring customers in, but surely in a pub with three large rooms there should be scope for one of them not to have a screen, or for it not to be generally used. As I said in the blogpost, I don’t want to have to check the football fixtures before venturing out to my local pub. It also seems incongruous in the context of the historic interior.

So it remains to be seen whether the changes at the Nursery are going to do enough to bring customers flooding back in.

Meanwhile, a few miles away in Cheadle Hulme, Star Pubs and Bars have recently spent no less than £350,000 on refurbishing the Hesketh, which had been closed for over a year. This is anpther large suburban pub, in this case Edwardian, that once had a bowling green until it was replaced by a car park in the 1970s. I have to say that I hadn’t been in for many years prior to its closure, but I got the impression that it was a mainly food-oriented operation.

It now comes across as a fairly standard contemporary pubco refurbishment, with hard wooden floors, wide open spaces, pastel colours and an abundance of posing tables. This extract from the news story gives a flavour of what it is like.

Meanwhile, the layout will include a new games area with illuminated darts, pool table, HD TV, open fire and high tables and stools; a dining area with wood burner; and a bar with a mix of free standing and new leather button back banquette style seating.

The pub's food menu will feature pub classics such as burgers, fish and chips and grilled steak, gammon and chicken. A home comforts section will include dishes like Steak & Ale Pie, Hunter Chicken and Mac n Cheese. There will also be a choice of 'world favourites' such as Singapore Noodles, Tacos and Chicken Tikka Masala, lighter bites, and a small plates offering with a mix-and-match tapas style way of eating.

The drinks offer will include a range of beers, from Fosters, Amstel and Birra Moretti to Beavertown. There will also be cider, wine, an extensive range of spirits, zero alcohol and soft drinks and fresh coffee.

Nothing particularly objectionable, but on the other hand nothing to make it stand out from many other pubs either. Cheadle Hulme is a prosperous, leafy area with many long-established residents, and I can’t help feeling that the potential clientele might expect something a little more sophisticated, such as might be found in three nearby J. W. Lees pubs, Duttons, the Pointing Dog or the Aviator.

The cask ale offer is Theakston’s Best and Taylor’s Landlord. Some in CAMRA grumbled about the limited choice, but arguably it makes sense to tailor the range to suit the level of trade, and the pint of Theakston’s I had was pretty good. As in many pubs of this kind, there is something of a tension between TV sport and dining.

So, while a tidy sum of money has been invested, it still comes across as a “pub by numbers” without any distinctive USP, and it remains to be seen whether it will prove to be a success in the longer term. Being the only pub for half a mile in any direction is no longer a guarantee of success, if indeed it ever was.

* the concept of “passing trade” refers not only to chance customers happening to pass a pub and thinking they will call in, but passing it on their regular journeys and thus being aware of its existence.