Chippy about chips

Plans for a new chippy on a North Wales holiday park have met with opposition from the local health board:

Plans for a new chippy have come up against a health board's demands for fruit and veg on the menu. Betsi Cadwaladr health board wants the proposed takeaway in Morfa Bychan, Gwynedd, to sell a "good selection" of fruit and veg. It wants the menu to have less fat, salt and sugar and is worried an increase in fast food outlets is "detrimental" to people's health.

The more junk food was available, the board added, the more likely it was that people would get fat. "Increased access to unhealthy food retail outlets can be associated with increased weight status in the general population and increased obesity and unhealthy eating behaviours among children residing in low-income areas," it said. "While we appreciate this is only one extra takeaway unit, this would still be one additional takeaway than what is currently available."

But the question has to be asked what business is it of theirs anyway? Are they going to go through the complete menus and stock range of every single retail outlet to decide whether they meet with their approval?

It also isn’t made clear whether they want the chippy to also function as a greengrocer’s shop, something completely unheard of in takeaways, or whether they want more fruit and veg to be included on the menu, whether or not customers actually want them. But don’t expect them underwrite any losses incurred from stocking items people don’t want to buy.

It also seems distinctly hypocritical when many NHS facilities have vending machines full of crisps, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks, which presumably are items they disapprove of. Plus, in my experience, many NHS staff do not set a good example of keeping to an ideal weight.

This is yet another example of joyless, po-faced, Puritanical bureaucrats who have no conception of how businesses function trying to dictate how they should operate, and how ordinary people should live their lives, something that seems all too common nowadays.

And don’t mushy peas qualify as vegetables anyway?

Passing on the torch

It had been widely rumoured, but it has now been officially confirmed that Humphrey Smith, long-standing Chairman of Samuel Smith’s Brewery, is to stand down in December of this year when he reaches the age of 80. He will be succeeded by his 36-year-old son Samuel, who has already been running the company’s London estate.

It must be said that this news will not provoke many tears, as Humphrey has been, to say the least, a controversial character, and some of his actions have seemed downright perverse. He has imposed draconian and offputting house rules in his pubs, he has gained a reputation for treating his staff in an arbitrary and high-handed manner, and he has kept many properties, both licensed and unlicensed, closed for many years, sometimes stretching into decades, partly due to the difficulties he has experienced in recruiting suitable managers for his pubs.

How much of a change the new regime will bring remains to be seen, but surely there must be some relaxation in the house rules, in particular allowing the use of mobile phones and other devices. It would not be unreasonable to expect them to be kept on silent and for any animated conversations to be taken outside, but it is ludicrous to prevent a customer even checking the times of their trains home. Apparently in London this rule is largely ignored, and maybe Sam will extend this approach to the rest of the estate. Personally I would also allow well-behaved dogs into their rural pubs, as this must be a major factor putting potential customers off. The company showed that they could change in response to commercial pressures when they finally began to accept card payments in the Autumn of 2022.

The most important issue, though, must be sorting out the recruitment of managers, which is the key bottleneck that is keeping so many of their pubs closed. I have heard it said that they will only recruit child-free married couples, which must greatly reduce the pool from which they can draw, although I have seen some examples where single-handed licensees appear to be in charge. The level of remuneration is probably on the stingy side too. They could also consider using relief managers to keep pubs open, as every time a pub is closed for a prolonged period you inevitably lose some customers permanently.

The question is often raised as to whether they could widen their appeal by introducing a second cask beer alongside Old Brewery Bitter. In the past they have tried this with the lighter Tadcaster Bitter, and the strong, heavy Museum Ale, but I think have only offered OBB for a good thirty years now. It isn’t clear exactly what type of beer would sell in sufficient volumes alongside OBB. Possibly in the current climate a paler, hoppier beer in the 4.1-4.5% ABV range, rather like a diuluted version of the keg India Ale, would be the best candidate, but it has to be remembered that Sam’s pubs tend to appeal to a conservative clientele, not beer geeks.

Despite all these problems, it has to be said that Sam’s pubs, when they are open, have a very distinctive appeal that is not matched by any of their competitors. They offer comfortable seating, traditional décor with plenty of dark wood, an absence of TV sport and piped music, and only admit children if dining, making their wet-led pubs adults-only. They are oases of calm. They may not offer the widest choice of beer, or the absolute best beer, but in many locations they are the most congenial pubs around. As Anthony Avis said in his reflections on the British brewing industry: “The custom is aimed at the older person, who relishes a good pint, with home-produced food if he wants it, and the surroundings to sit down and talk with his companions in unfashionable comfort – just like the brewery industry advertising of forty years ago represented pubs to be.”

Hopefully Humphrey’s successor will recognise this uniqueness and proceed cautiously in making any changes. As I said when I wrote about introducing card payments a couple of years ago:

Humphrey Smith is now in his late seventies, and one can only hope that when the time comes that his successors will respect the company’s distinctive heritage and appeal while removing the obstacles that deter people from both visiting their pubs and working for them. But there must be a nagging fear that they will end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The Last of England

The past three months have seen a deluge of policy proposals being floated that, either directly or indirectly, would be damaging to the pub trade. While it’s likely that most of these ideas will never be implemented, some of them will be, and the desired direction of travel is all too clear.

There is a well-known quotation from Hilaire Belloc, reproduced in the sidebar of this blog, that: “When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.” This has prompted this particularly apposite and poignant article from Madeline Grant entitled When the last pub calls last orders it will be the last of England. I don’t propose to reproduce it in full (although I can send you the text if you send me an e-mail), but this excerpt is especially relevant.

Yet even here there is a melancholy sense to the average pub that has lingered since Covid. A pincer movement of cultural changes – the death of lunchtime drinking, the rise of clean living – now coupled with a government of an obvious puritanical bent, has created a perfect storm for pub owners.

Courtesy of the Government and their like-minded pals in public health we have heard pitches for two-thirds-sized pints and shorter pub opening hours – all within the last week. Rachel Reeves is reportedly considering an alcohol duty hike to plug the famed £22 billion “black hole”. Before that proposed smoking bans in beer gardens prompted ire from landlords…

…Indeed, Sir Keir and his acolytes seem unable to grasp why anyone would frequent a pub at all, ignoring their important social purpose. People come there to gossip and to moan, to make jokes and let loose, for conviviality and companionship. None of those are things the Starmers and the Gwynnes of this world can understand.

Undoubtedly many government policies, in particular the smoking ban, have damaged the pub trade, but the reality is that it has been undone by long-term social change. Pubgoing was never a specific destination social event, it was a habit that was woven into the fabric of everyday life. As I wrote last year:

In the past, a lot of drinking in pubs was centred around ritual and routine, often linked to the workplace. But all those Friday lunchtime drinks with the office team, after-work unwinders, Sunday lunchtime sessions and “I always go out with Bill and Frank for a few on Friday night” are now much diminished if not virtually extinct. If you’re no longer going to the pub out of habit, but have to make a positive choice to do so, you may well decide not to bother.

Added to this, there has been a growing trend to stigmatise even the moderate consumption of alcohol in social settings, which inevitably reduces the range of occasions on which people will consider a visit to the pub.

Some commentators may make the point that specific pubs are thriving, but that doesn’t mean that they can be taken as an example for others to follow. Within an overall declining market, the effect will not be even across the board, and it’s entirely possible that some venues that happen to be particularly well-located, or that cater for a specific niche, will continue to do well.

Many pubs have turned to food to keep alive, and indeed food has always been an integral part of the pub scene. However, there comes a point where it becomes so dominant that the pub has ceased to fulfil its original function and has become to all intents and purposes a restaurant.

Some industry representatives are keen to point the finger of blame at the rise of the off-trade, but in reality that is just the other side of the coin of the social changes that have led to the decline of pubs. Any moves to impose further curbs on the off-trade are unlikely to bring a single extra customer back into pubs. Both camps should realise they have a common interest in opposing anti-alcohol Puritanism.

It’s probably apocalyptic to talk of pubs completely disappearing by 2084. There will remain some demand for them. But it is clear that the tide is currently running strongly against them, and any moves by the government to impose new restrictions on them are only going to accelerate this trend.

Every little bit of advice helps

The Daily Telegraph reports that Tesco are contemplating using data collected via Clubcards to issue health messages to shoppers:

Tesco could use Clubcard data to warn shoppers when they are buying too many unhealthy items, its chief executive has said. The boss of Britain’s biggest supermarket said he expected to use artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor how customers were shopping to help “nudge” people into making healthier choices.

Tesco’s Ken Murphy said: “I can see it nudging you, saying: ‘look, I’ve noticed over time that in your shopping basket your sodium salt content is 250pc of your daily recommended allowance. I would recommend you substitute this, this and this for lower sodium products to improve your heart health’.” He said this was “very simple stuff” which could “really improve people’s daily lives”.

Some people might welcome a little friendly advice along these lines, but many others will regard it as a somewhat sinister, Big Brother-like intrusion into their privacy. There is also the issue of needing to see each trolley-load in context. It’s entirely possible, for example, that someone might buy fresh food at a market, and only use the supermarket for packaged items, which could lead the algorithm to conclude they had an unhealthy lifestyle. And that slab of Madri might not be all for your own consumption. I doubt whether the shopper depicted in this cartoon strip would find favour…

I regularly shop at Tesco, and have had a Clubcard for many years. I recognise that it involves some sacrifice of privacy, but as long as the data is anonymised and it doesn’t trigger third-party advertising it’s a compromise I’m prepared to make. I get a voucher for a few quid every three months, and sometimes they send me coupons for money off things I actually buy.

However, they don’t really have a proper handle on my shopping habits. From time to time, they send me vouchers offering £6 off if I spend £40, but the big catch is that this excludes alcoholic drinks. Not that I buy nothing else, but my regular bill is nothing like that, and if I’m splashing out a bit at Christmas the odds are that I’ll want to include a nice bottle of wine or malt, possibly as a present for someone else.

More recently, they have started offering in-store discounts to Clubcard holders, including the multibuy offers such as four bottles of beer for £7. This comes across as a slightly unethical tactic to encourage people to sign up for Clubcards, but as long as I actually have one it works to my benefit.

However, I’ve thought in the past that if they started sending me discount coupons for vegetables, I would cut it up. What I choose to buy is none of their business, and delivering patronising lectures on my shopping habits would be completely unacceptable. If they introduce this system, and there isn’t the ability to opt out, then I would have to accept that my weekly shopping might cost me a bit more. Although I would probably then be motivated to regularly use Aldi or Lidl, who don’t bother with loyalty cards at all.

Another day, another ban

On the morning after the General Election result I posted this tweet, which I really should frame, as I fear it will become only too prophetic.

The previous government did not have a good record on issues of lifestyle restriction, but it seems as though, as I expected, their replacements are greatly quickening the pace. It seems that hardly a day goes by without some further ban or curb being proposed. First we had the plan to outlaw smoking in pub gardens, and last week we saw both a proposal to ban “junk food” advertising on TV before 9 pm – and entirely on social media – and to prevent pubs using glasses bearing the logos of beer brands.

These are both issues on which I have commented before, and I don’t really propose to waste my breath going over the same ground again and again. The “junk food” advertising ban will inevitably encompass many foods generally regarded as “healthy”, while the alcohol logo ban is part of a much wider plan to restrict alcohol marketing and publicity.

Some of the thinking behind this plans is exposed in this extract from a report recently quoted in this tweet by Christopher Snowdon:

Rather than being welcomed as valued partners in the national enterprise, the alcohol industry and much of the food industry will be branded as “Unhealthy Commodity Industries” which are seen as a pernicious influence on public life. They will be at best grudgingly tolerated and excluded from any voice in policy-making. Huge swathes of the economy, also extending to sectors such as tobacco, gambling, car manufacture, oil and much of travel, will be condemned as essentially undesirable. The Scotch whisky industry, who are often celebrated as Scotland’s biggest export earner, cannot be remotely happy with this framing. And pubs, as retailers of alcohol, will inevitably be lumped in as well.

You have to wonder what motivates people to take this joyless and restrictive approach. Are they completely unable to appreciate the pleasures that can be gained from consuming alcoholic drinks or food, let alone enjoying these activities in convivial company? As H. L. Mencken famously said, “A Puritan is someone who lives in mortal fear that somewhere, sometime, someone is enjoying himself.” It is worth reproducing in full this well-known quote from C. S. Lewis, which is usually only seen in abbreviated form:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The final sentence is particularly important, as it underlines how this approach is essentially infantilising people rather than treating them as responsible adults who can be trusted to take charge of their own lives.

A sinking craft

Over the past decade or so there have been endless discussions around the subject of trying to define “craft beer”. Was it a question of the style of the beer, the nature of the ingredients, the size of the plant making it, whether it was free from control of big corporations, the socio-political stance of the brewery? Or maybe some kind of intangible combination of all these factors. While it was often a case of “you know it when you see it”, it was impossible to pin down a watertight definition.

I recently came across an interesting blogpost from Jeff Alworth about how the concept of “craft beer” has effectively now become misleading and redundant.

“Craft beer” is a conceptual cul de sac. We started using it with good intentions, but with a naïveté about how brewing works and how markets function. It now causes more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t have any problem with the Brewers Association using the terms in their marketing—I certainly would if I were them—but we should recognize it for what it is. I encourage members of the media to consider using different language. It will make us all understand beer better.

He also says:

It is very important for both the health of a market and for the culture of beer to have small family breweries. They don’t have to cater to lowest common denominator tastes. They develop new styles and preserve old traditions from the ravages of industrialization. I am a giant fan of little breweries!

But they are just breweries. They just make beer. And, for what it’s worth, big breweries also just make beer. In using the “craft” framework, I think people got into the habit of thinking that what happened in large plants was some kind of industrial-scale chemical synthesis, not brewing. That was wrong as well, and led to other misconceptions.

Any attempt to arbitrarily sort breweries into sheep and goats is doomed to failure. If you deliberately choose only to drink beer from small breweries, or from breweries who take a particular public political stance, that’s up to you. But don’t pretend it’s actually anything to do with the nature of the beer in the glass. It’s all shades of grey rather than black and white.

It was often implied in the early days of CAMRA that real ale came from small artisanal breweries and was made from wholesome natural ingredients, whereas keg beer was made from chemicals in plants resembling oil refineries. It was an appealing myth, but that’s all it ever was, and exactly the same is true today.

It is also important to remember that there is a significant differences between the US and UK beer markets, which means that what applies to one doesn’t necessarily read across to the other. In the US, virtually all smaller independent breweries had disappeared, whereas in this country we still had a stratum of established family breweries together a newer real ale producing microbrewery sector. Indeed the basic premise of the British craft movement, at least at first, was that it was about interesting beer that wasn’t real ale. They presented themselves as primarily tilting against not the giant corporations, but “real ale culture”.

The US retains a number of substantial craft breweries that have grown up in recent years and comprise the leading members of the Brewers’ Association. By contrast, in this country, most of the leading brands that are considered craft are now owned by major corporates, with the exception of BrewDog, who in a sense have become more gamekeeper than poacher anyway.

I also get the impression in this country that the appreciation of craft beer became linked to a much greater degree to a specific social identity, giving rise to the characteristically British derision directed at the “craft wanker”. Of course many people who don’t conform to this stereotype do drink craft beer, just as you don’t need to have a beard and beer gut to enjoy real ale, but it has certainly established itself in the public consciousness.

Can a copy beat the original?

After a successful introduction in Ireland, Draught Guinness 0.0 is now being rolled out in Great Britain. Both in canned and draught form, it has been one of the most successful beer launches of all time, and Guinness have had to expand production capacity at their Dublin Brewery to meet demand.

One report complained that it was only 55p a pint cheaper than the standard version, but surely that is about the kind of saving you would expect from not paying duty and the VAT on duty. It doesn’t cost any less to make, and indeed may even cost more due to the processes required for de-alcoholisation. Drinkers of alcohol-free beers have no right to expect a subsidy for being virtuous.

I wrote about the canned version last year, and concluded that, while it was “a triumph of the brewing technologist’s skill”, there was something of a sense of expectations unfulfilled about the experience of drinking it.

Draught or canned Guinness is certainly a very distinctive product in terms of its appearance, mouthfeel and taste, and the canned zero-alcohol version does a pretty good job of replicating that. From its look, and the first gulp, it’s just like a glass of standard Guinness. It’s only as you get further down that you realise something is missing, and by the time you reach the bottom of the glass you’re left with something rather dull and forgettable.

You end up feeling rather like this unfortunate cat.

So successful has Guinness 0.0 been that they have been suggestions that, given time, it could overtake the original alcohol-containing product. However, I would suggest this is part of the excessive hype surrounding alcohol-free beer, and there are two key reasons why it’s vanishingly unlikely to happen.

The first is that, however good Guinness 0.0 is, it can only ever be a diminished echo of the original product. It only exists because standard Guinness exists, just as decaffeinated coffee exists because of normal coffee. There are entirely valid reasons why people, in some circumstances, might want to drink alcohol-free beers, but all they are doing is part-way replicating the experience of normal beer.

And, never having known what normal beer is like, it becomes something of a meaningless activity. Someone might drink alcohol-free beer to join in a social occasion with their boozing friends, but there will come a tipping point when they think “Hey, Bob’s now the only one of us who’s actually drinking. Why are we even doing this?”

The second is that, while it tends of be downplayed in marketing and writing about beer, the key reason people drink it is not so much because of taste or refreshment, but because it has an effect on you. Not so much getting drunk as a gentle warm feeling, a slight relaxation of inhibitions and a stimulant to conversation. It can be seen as a social lubricant.

Alcohol-free beer can never do this, and so its original promise is never fulfilled. People are never going to go on alcohol-free pub crawls, unless tagging along with drinkers, and nor are they going to seek out obscure examples of artisanal alcohol-free beers. There are connoisseurs of fine teas and coffees, but those are natural products, whereas alcohol-free beer is by definition highly processed.

There is no doubt some scope for further expansion of the alcohol-free beer market, but ultimately it will inevitably hit a ceiling.

As a complete aside, a good example of the copy overtaking the original is the TV sitcom “Allo! Allo!”, which was originally a parody of the serious drama “Secret Army”, but ended up far surpassing it in terms of longevity and viewing figures.

Something must be done

As I mentioned in my post about the pub garden smoking ban, the government are now also threatening the drinks industry with Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP). The headline is misleading, as the pub sector would, for now, be largely immune from this, but the intention is very clear. I have written about this at length over the years, mainly in the content of Scotland, where it was introduced in 2018. The conclusion, as set out in the Scottish government’s own report, was that it had done little or nothing to reduce problem drinking and had, as many of us had predicted, led to undesirable side-effects. The main underlying motivation for the policy seems to punish and denormalise ordinary, moderate drinkers by increasing the price of a modest, everyday pleasure. It has the same logic as increasing the price of petrol as a strategy to improve road safety.

It is disappointing that many in the pub trade seem to believe that MUP would be a desirable policy. However, under any scenario it would still leave off-trade drinks much cheaper than those in the on-trade, so the idea that it might prompt a switch in drinking habits does not stand up to analysis. Indeed it could be argued that it might harm pubs by squeezing household budgets and leaving them with less disposable income.

Their motivation seems to be more a case of wanting to spite the off-trade who they perceive as rivals. However, most people divide their drinking allegiance between the two depending on circumstances, so it isn’t a binary choice between one or the other. In reality, the enemy of both is the public health lobby. It’s rather like the communists and anarchists being at each other’s throats during the Spanish Civil War, which only served to benefit Franco.

Something that tends not to be appreciated is that MUP is actually a policy that plays into the hands of the off-trade, as it in effect allows them to operate a government-sanctioned price fixing ring, something that most businesses yearn for, but is generally outlawed by competition law. The price elasticity of alcoholic drinks is well below 1, so, while they may lose some sales, they will more than make up for it through fatter margins on the drinks they do sell. It will give them more incentive to promote the sale of alcoholic drinks, as they will generate more profit per square foot, and it may also give them the opportunity to raise the prices of premium products to maintain a differential. Because of this, the drinks industry in general tends to be fairly relaxed about it. The people it really does hurt are drinkers of modest means.

The government have demanded that the industry do more to “tackle the harms of drinking”. However, as long as alcohol is sold legally, some people are going to abuse it. The only way they can completely eliminate any responsibility is to stop producing and selling alcohol entirely. In recent years, the industry has promoted a number of initiatives aimed at reducing the harms of alcohol, including setting up the Portman Group to monitor irresponsible advertising, and DrinkAware to advise on health risks. It has also reduced the strength of a vast array of beers and ciders.

But, however, far you go, it will never be enough for Public Health, and they will always want to go further. Appeasement only results in further demands. Surely all that should be expected of alcohol producers is that they should meet all the legal requirements placed on them. If government wants them to do more, that must be clearly set out.

The relationship between government and drinks producers is also likely to change over time. Health groups have demanded that the government ban MPs from receiving gifts from firms involved in “tobacco, alcohol and junk food”. Notice who they’re lumped in with? In future, alcohol producers will be increasing regarded not as valued contributors to a successful economy, but as pariahs involved in a “toxic trade”, who simply have to do as they are told and have no right to be consulted or involved in decision-making. There is no point in alcohol producers arguing that they are different from tobacco manufacturers, when Public Health regard them as two sides of the same coin. And yes, craft brewers, that means you too. Much of that will also be applied to retailers of alcohol such as pubs, not just to producers.

I made the point back in 2020 that, despite a lot of negative publicity, the drinks industry has in fact over the past fourteen escaped relatively lightly from the tide of lifestyle regulation. The duty escalator was abandoned, duty has been frozen in some years, and never increased above the rate of inflation, and there have been no significant restrictions on advertising and promotion.

But that is likely to change in the coming years so, over and above the pub garden smoking ban, expect to see MUP, above-inflation duty rises, severe curbs on advertising and sponsorship, display restrictions in shops, further attempts to reduce beer and cider strengths, and maybe even plain packaging. Buckle up, folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Another turn of the screw

The past fourteen years of Tory-led governments have not been good ones for lifestyle freedom, and I have criticised their actions on many occasions. They topped it off with the appalling generational smoking ban. However, I have always felt that Labour, whatever their other merits *, would continue where the Tories left off and indeed step things up a gear. As I said on the day after the election:

Well, what is done is done. Expect a big ramping up of lifestyle restrictions and sin taxes in the coming years. For your own good, of course. And if you think the pub and brewing sectors won’t be affected, you’re in for a big disappointment.

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) July 5, 2024

On that day, Keir Starmer said that he would lead a government that would “tread more lightly on people’s lives.” That seemed highly unlikely at the time, and so it has proved. He has now expressed his support for proposals that would extend the current indoor smoking ban to pub gardens, restaurant terraces and other outdoor areas including areas outside hospitals and sports grounds.

The ostensible reason for this is to improve people’s health and “protect the NHS”. However, it is questionable to what extent it will actually deter people from smoking, and the idea that that environmental tobacco smoke in outdoor areas, where it is rapidly dispersed into the air, represents a meaningful health risk **, is ludicrous.

The real motivation is to further demonise smokers and undermine the pub trade. There can be no doubt that this will have a significant negative impact on pubs, particularly wet-led pubs. Currently pubs can accommodate smokers up to a point, even though they are forced to treat them as second-class citizens, but now they will be unable to indulge anywhere on the premises. Pubs will find it very galling that they have invested in smoking shelters and appealing outdoor areas to cater for smokers, only to find it flung back in their face.

Antismokers often make the point that smokers now represent under 10% of the adult population, so excluding them shouldn’t make much difference, and could indeed encourage non-smokers to use outdoor areas. However, by definition, prissy, health-obsessed people are unlikely to spend much time in pubs, and in reality smokers are significantly over-represented in the pubgoing population, even after the indoor ban. After the 2007 indoor ban the sudden influx of non-smokers to pubs was conspicuous by its absence.

There is also the factor of social connections. If one or two members of a group are no longer accepted in a pub, then it is likely that the others will follow suit. This was widely observed following the indoor ban. “It’s not really the same now that Bill doesn’t come any more”. And he’s even less likely to come if he can no longer pop outside for a fag.

The proposals refer to “pub gardens”, but will that be extended to include any property belonging to a pub? Will it be made illegal to smoke in a pub car park? And will it be illegal to smoke while sitting in your own car in a pub car park? In the case of a country pub, what if a farmer decides to allow people to smoke in his nextdoor field?

There is also the obvious implication that, if people can’t smoke in pub gardens, they will inevitably then move to the street outside the pub. It’s already very evident that, where urban pubs have no external smoking area, smoking customers cluster on the street around the door, which a certain category of people find annoying. Will there then be a demand to create “smoking exclusion areas” around pubs? Near me, Wetherspoon’s Gateway in East Didsbury occupies a site in the angle of two roads with outside drinking areas on both sides. Would the smokers just move across the boundary on to the public pavement?

This leads on to the issue of enforcement. The indoor smoking ban is largely self-enforcing, given that the responsibility rests on licensees to ensure that no smoking is allowed on their premises. But it will be much more difficult in outside areas, particularly if pubs have extensive beer gardens. A couple of staff busy serving on the bar can’t be expected to regularly do an outside patrol. And if someone is found smoking, all you can do is ask them to stub it out or move outside the boundary.

The proposals also extend to banning smoking on areas of public streets, such as outside hospitals and sports grounds. The question has to be asked how this will be enforced. It’s hard to see that this will be a police priority when people are routinely being stabbed. And if councils recruit officials to deal with it, wouldn’t there be a whole list of better things for them to do, in particularly clearing up litter? No doubt “Smoking Warden” will prove an attractive opportunity for the kind of people recruited a few years ago to act as “Covid Marshals” and scream at anyone not wearing a mask.

It’s also obvious that in many urban areas nowadays there is a pervasive smell of cannabis, which is illegal anywhere. If this law is not enforced, what are the chances of enforcing localised prohibitions against tobacco?

The Labour Party was founded to represent and speak up for the working class. But their modern incarnation seems to regard them with a mixture of incomprehension and contempt. This proposal demonstrates a total ignorance of working-class preferences and lifestyles. As stated in this article:

The second reason this ban will anger ordinary people is that it involves an awkward element of class. Few of the middle class now smoke: smoking is concentrated among those who do trade and manual jobs, the unemployed. Working-class people do not want to be patronised by middle-class MPs. Once, Labour MPs with direct links to working-class life would have been immediately aware of this. No longer. The Labour party, in Parliament and outside it, has for some time been a middle-class caucus.

Tory leadership contenders have been quick to express their opposition to this plan. But this comes across as opportunistic weasel words when they voted for the original 2007 smoking ban, for plain tobacco packaging, and for the generational smoking ban. Would they really reverse this when in office? It’s funny how they seem to rediscover a love of freedom when no longer in government. (It’s worth mentioning that both Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick voted against the generational ban).

Many policy proposals are floated in the media but end up not being actually implemented. This idea has attracted a lot of opposition, including some on the political Left, and there is no certainty that it will happen. But it is only the first in a series of lifestyle restriction measures that we are likely to see, which include:

• Greatly increased restrictions on so-called “unhealthy” food
• Minimum alcohol pricing in England
• Reducing the drink-drive limit in England and Wales

We shall see. But if they decide not to turn the screw, it will be from political expediency, not any concern for individual freedom. And as if on cue, between drafting this post and publishing it, they have threatened the drinks industry with minimum pricing.

* Do they have any other merits?
** For the avoidance of doubt, I do not accept that environmental tobacco smoke in indoor areas represents a significant health risk. Some people just don’t like it. But we are where we are.

Forward to the past

I recently saw an interesting report that young drinkers have started to rediscover the delights of traditional pubs. I have to say I see very little evidence of this happening from my own experience, but if it’s being reported there must be some truth in it, and it’s happening in London, which always plays to different rules from the rest of the country when it comes to pubs. And it’s not just pubs in old buildings, it’s what are often disparagingly referred to as “old man pubs”.

You know the place: crown glass windows, button-back banquettes, patterned carpets curling at the edges. A flyer boasting about the Premier League football coverage. Five pints on tap, three of them ales. No food, save for scampi fries, pork scratchings and something indeterminate pickled.

And this is presented as a reaction to the “industrial chic” brewery tap look:

McIntosh cites it as a reaction to the “millennial” aesthetic that took over bars and pubs in the 2010s. “[Those] stripped-back bars with exposed brickwork and industrial lighting. Very moodily lit but ultimately quite boring,” he says. “Where these pubs are a bit more maximal, they’re more interesting — you’re transported back to another time.”

One of the key motivations behind the rise of CAMRA was a rejection of the modernising, rationalising spirit of the 1960s in favour of a much greater emphasis on tradition and individuality. This was mirrored in other trends of the 1970s such as Small is Beautiful, The Good Life and the rising interest in railway and canal preservation.

It was certainly the case when I was a “young drinker” that many of us would make a conscious effort to seek out the less prominent pubs that were unspoilt, quirky and characterful. These pubs often had better and cheaper beer too. For example, we would travel out from university in Birmingham to the Black Country, where unknown beers from breweries such as Batham’s, Holdens and Simpkiss could be found. But it wasn’t just the beer, it was the pubs and their atmosphere too. I blogged about this back in 2009:

It was a journey of discovery – we would find grotty pubs, snooty pubs, dull but welcoming pubs, interesting but unwelcoming pubs, and plenty of pubs of genuine character that we would return to again and again. We knew we had to be respectful to the locals and regulars, so we moderated our behaviour accordingly. One pub in particular, hidden away up a rural cul-de-sac, with two tiny rooms, a quarry-tiled floor and beer straight from the cask, really sticks in the memory. It isn’t like that now, of course.

Back in those days, many people would specifically go to visit particular “character pubs” on the grounds that they were quaint and unspoilt. It was a key part of their appeal. In 1989, Nick and Charlie Hurt wrote a book called In Search of the Perfect Pub, in which they said of the extremely unspoilt Barley Mow at Church Ireton in Derbyshire that it:

“is often packed with young people from the nearby cities of Derby and Nottingham, where most of the pubs are now amusement arcades. They learn how to play dominoes, love the beer and the atmosphere, and revel in the quiet simplicity to be found here.”

I suspect this was significantly reduced by 1989 compared with ten years previously, and now it won’t happen at all.

The general climate began to change in the 1980s, with the growth of the “yuppie” culture and the brief rise of the “fun pub”. And this trend has continued in subsequent years, with the modern craft beer movement being characterised by modernity, innovation and iconoclasm. Tradition is very much left behind.

The kind of pub we are considering may variously be described as “old man pubs”, “traditional pubs”, “proper pubs” or whatever, and these categories, while overlapping, may be defined slightly differently. But, by and large, you know one when you see one. However, even if you want to go to an “old man pub”, they can be increasingly hard to find.

The past forty or so years have seen a steady attrition in their numbers. There has been a dramatic reduction in inner-urban areas, with the smaller pubs that have received less investment often being the first to go. This has spread to the fringes of town and city centres. In more rural areas, again many have closed, and those that remain have often been converted to a food-dominated formula where anyone who just wants a drink and a chat is made to feel out of place.

The simple fact of being located in a old building retaining much of its original layout and fittings does not necessarily mean that a pub qualifies. An “old man pub” can serve straightforward food, but if most of its customers are there to eat expensive, elaborate meals then it fails the test. The same is true if it has turned itself into a self-conscious beer exhibition with ten cask lines and six craft kegs. And, even if most of its customers are old men, no modern micropub is truly an “old man pub”. *

Another thorny issue is that of TV sport. Sport on pay-TV has revolutionised the pub scene over the past thirty years, and there are now relatively few wet-led pubs that don’t have it. To insist that no “old man pub” can have TV sport is greatly restricting the category. It’s more a question of how the sport is managed – whether it’s in every room, and whether the volume is turned off except for big events. It should still be possible to chew the fat over a few drinks. Holt’s brewery rather fall down on this, as they own many pubs that are very traditional in their general appearance and layout, but have an enormous screen in every room.

Of course there is one pub operator where the vast majority of their pubs fall into this category, when they are actually open, namely Samuel Smith’s. But their rigid policy of no mobile devices may deter younger customers, although I understand that it isn’t as strictly enforced in London as it is in the North.

As I said in the introduction, I have seen very little evidence personally of younger drinkers seeking out traditional pubs again. Some people on Twitter did suggest, though, that it was starting to happen in Liverpool and Manchester. The Peveril of the Peak in Manchester was given as an example, of a pub of highly traditional physical appearance that attracts customers of all ages. But I don’t think they’ve spread to the Hare & Hounds yet.

Many social trends turn full circle in the end, although it isn’t a given. There does seem to be a growing feeling that making everything automatic and digital has gone too far. I remember a few years back in the break between Christmas and New Year being heartened by the sight of a group of what I assumed were university students meeting up and enjoying a few drinks and a chat in a traditional multi-roomed pub in an urban fringe location. That’s the kind of thing that pubs should be about. But that particular pub has now become entirely dominated by dining, so that social meeting would not be possible any more.

* For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with other categories of pubs. But they’re not “old man pubs”.

Putting me out of a job?

X/Twitter have recently improved the functionality of their Grok AI application, in particular enhancing its ability to produce images. The image below is of a grumpy old man reading the newspaper in a pub. It may not look all that much like me, but it does catch the spirit.

On a more serious note, it will readily produce articles on various topics, and you can ask it to write them in the style of particular authors. So below is its attempt to write a piece on Why Painting Pubs Grey is a Bad Idea, in the style of the Pub Curmudgeon. This is reproduced verbatim.

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The Grey Menace: Why Painting Pubs Grey is a Misguided Trend

In the ever-evolving landscape of pub decor, a new trend has emerged that threatens to drain the very soul from our beloved establishments: painting them grey. Now, I've seen many a fashion come and go in the pub world, from the ghastly '80s neon to the pretentious '90s gastropub chic, but this grey wave might just be the most soulless yet.

The Aesthetic Argument

Firstly, let's talk aesthetics. Pubs are not just buildings; they're sanctuaries of character, history, and warmth. Grey, as a colour, does nothing but chill the atmosphere. It's the colour of a cloudy day, of office cubicles, of the mundane. When you step into a pub, you're not looking for the ambiance of a corporate meeting room or the sterile environment of a modern art gallery. You're seeking warmth, perhaps the glow of wood, the comfort of reds, greens, or even the occasional daring blue. Grey? It's the colour of indecision, of neutrality, and it does nothing to invite the soul to linger.

The Psychological Impact

Psychologically, grey is often associated with depression, boredom, and a lack of creativity. Now, imagine walking into your local for a pint, only to be greeted by walls that might as well be saying, "Feel as dull as I look." Pubs are where stories are told, where laughter should bounce off the walls, not be absorbed into them. Grey walls might as well be soundproofing against joy.

The Historical Disconnect

Pubs, especially in Britain, are steeped in history. They're not just places to drink; they're community hubs, historical landmarks, and repositories of local culture. Painting them grey is akin to stripping them of their heritage, their stories, and their personality. It's like putting a Victorian-era pub into a modern art gallery frame – it's out of place, out of time, and out of character.

The Practicality of Colour

From a practical standpoint, grey might seem like a safe choice, but it's anything but. Grey shows dirt more than you might think, and in a pub, where life happens, where spills and smudges are part of the charm, grey will soon look more like a dirty dishwater than a sophisticated choice. Moreover, if you're looking for a timeless look, grey might seem neutral now, but in a decade, it'll scream '2020s' just as loudly as any other trend.

The Economic Angle

Let's not forget the economic implications. Pubs are businesses, and atmosphere is part of the product. A grey pub might appeal to the fleeting trend of minimalism, but it won't hold the charm that brings in regulars. Regulars are the lifeblood of any pub, and if your local starts looking like every other grey-walled, soulless space, why would they return? The cost of repainting when the trend dies out? That's not just paint; that's lost character, lost customers, lost revenue.

Conclusion

So, to all pub landlords, designers, and anyone with a say in pub decor, think twice before you reach for that grey paint. You're not just choosing a colour; you're choosing the mood, the memory, and the very essence of what a pub should be. Let's keep our pubs vibrant, alive, and anything but grey. After all, in a world where everything seems to be turning grey, the pub should be the last bastion of colour, warmth, and life. Here's to keeping our pubs as colourful as the stories told within them. Cheers to that!

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It’s not quite there, but it’s not far off, and you could certainly take some of the points and phrases to use in your own piece. It isn’t going to put me out of a job, though. But it does reinforce the point that if you want to write convincing, authentic opinion pieces it helps if you refer to specific examples and personal experiences rather than just dealing in generalities. And rest assured I’m not going to start regurgitating a series of pieces written by Grok.

I’ve also been playing with the image generator on some pub-related topics. While it can produce some high-quality images on general themes, it can make some rather odd mistakes on specifics. For example, it seems to produce images of pubs without any kind of pub sign. The image below is “traditional English country pub”. An attractive building, redolent of Kent or Sussex, but with nothing whatsoever to indicate that it is a pub.

It also seems to have an odd tendency to place pub customers on the staff side of the bar between the counter and the bar back. Another quirk is that it always seems to show pub landlords and landladies wearing an apron or dungarees, which presumably is an American thing. The images below are of a jovial landlady and a grumpy landlord.

It needs to be remembered that what it is doing is producing a mashup of existing online images relating to the keywords you have specified; it isn’t working from first principles. But one thing it is good at is producing images of cats, possibly helped by the fact that about 50% of all images on the Internet are of cats. This is “attractive young cat lying on the bar of a pub.” All together now: “Awww!”

A historical poser

Last month, I wrote a review of Historical Building Mythbusting by James Wright. In this book, the author debunks most of the familiar claims for various establishments to be the oldest pub in England, the British Isles or wherever. But he also comes up with some genuine examples of pubs that have been extensively researched and found to be of great antiquity. Some of these, such as the George at Norton St Philip in Somerset and the New Inn in Gloucester, are fairly well-known, but one that slightly surprised me was what is now the Henry Tudor Inn in Shrewsbury.

I’ve visited Shrewsbury many times over the years, but I have never been in this place, and indeed I hardly knew of its existence. It has had a chequered history, but in recent years became the Lion Tap, associated with the next-door Lion Hotel. This was once one of Shrewsbury’s smartest hotels, but in more recently years was controversially used to house illegal migrants, and is now closed.

It has now been taken over by Market Drayton-based brewer and pubco Joule’s, who have carried out an extensive refurbishment and also extended the premises forwards to provide a frontage on the main street, Wyle Cop, which it previously lacked. While this wasn’t the sole purpose of my visit, on a recent trip to Shrewsbury I took the opportunity to take a look.

It’s a long, narrow, half-timbered building with overhanging upper storeys running along the left-hand side of a narrow alleyway off Wyle Cop. It’s obviously of considerable antiquity, although it was only possible to date it specifically to the early part of the 15th century through dendrochronology. Joule’s have a distinctive style of refurbishment, which can produce some very congenial interiors, although it can come across as a touch arch and self-conscious.

In this case, I’d assume that the interior has been much charged over the years and owed little to the 15th century, but they needed to work around and respect what historical features remained. Essentially it’s in two sections, with a “pub” part at the front, a central bar running athwart the property, and more of a restaurant area at the rear which opens out on the left. As is typical with Joule’s, there’s extensive use of wood panelling and flooring.

However, immediately on walking into the pub, I was struck by how all the seating in the front part, which extends the original pub forward to the street, was comprised of the dreaded posing tables. I have written about these before, on how they are divisive and offputting to the elderly and disabled. They may have a place in trendy bars, but certainly not in what aspires to be a traditional historic pub. Joule’s deserve praise for their work in conserving this unique historic building, but the posing tables are seriousky out of character. I did manage to find a more comfortable berth on the only row of normal-height bench seating, but the general impression was of a pub interior where I did not want to linger.

Fortunately, salvation was near at hand. A short walk down Wyle Cop and across the Severn via the Greyfriars footbridge brought me to the splendid Cross Foxes on Longden Coleham, which is a must-visit every time I go to Shrewsbury. This is a traditional wet-led proper pub with wood panelling, bench seating and carpet, offering Draught Bass, Three Tuns XXX and Wye Valley HPA and Butty Bach. It was pretty busy in mid-afternoon, with plenty of banter flowing from a mainly more mature clientele. It may not be as historically authentic as the Henry Tudor, but I’d much prefer to spend an hour or two there.

On my way back to the station, I called in to the Three Fishes, an old pub on a narrow cobbled street which has a sign on the wall proclaiming that it was “The original smoke-free public house”. I’m not sure that’s really anything to be proud of. Ironically, in the pub I overheard a customer saying that the smoking ban had been one of the main reasons for the decline of the pub trade.

Proof of Age

There are a number of pubs around that make claims to be the oldest, whether in their own city or county, in England or in the whole of the British Isles. One of the best-known is Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, which allegedly dates from King Richard the Lionheart setting out on Crusade to the Holy Land in 1189. Then there is Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans, which hit the headlines in 2022 when it was reportedly threatened with closure, bringing to end a record of trading as an inn dating back as far was 793.

These claims add a bit of colour and help enhance pubs’ appeal, but it’s generally recognised that they need to be taken with a pinch of salt and do not necessarily stand up to rigorous historical analysis. And indeed this is shown to be the case in a new book by buildings archaeologist James Wright entitled Historic Building Mythbusting. In this he casts a critical eye over many of the popular beliefs surrounding our inheritance of historic buildings.

For example, there is no evidence that the actual building of the Trip to Jerusalem is older than the 17th century. It was not mentioned as a public house until 1751, and was originally known as the Pilgrim, only gaining its present name in 1799. There are two other nearby pubs, the Bell and the Salutation, that actually have a better claim to be the oldest in the city of Nottingham. Likewise, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks began life as a monastic dovecote around 1400, and was relocated to its present site around 1600. It was first mentioned as a pub in 1756, and at the time was known as the Three Pigeons, receiving its current name in 1807.

On the other hand, there are a number of pubs that have a much more valid claim to great antiquity, but which are not so widely celebrated. Probably the oldest is the George at Norton St Philip in Somerset, still a rather magnificent and commanding building, parts of which can be reliably dated to the late 14th century. Others that can definitely be dated to the early part of the 15th century include the Bull at Ludlow, Henry Tudor House in Shrewsbury and the perhaps better-known galleried New Inn in Gloucester.

Two of the other themes often have a resonance for pubs – “There used to be a secret passage from the pub cellars to the church”, and “This pub was built from old ships’ timbers, you know.” However, both of these are revealed as being largely old wives’ tales. If you think about it, the difficulties in the pre-modern era of excavating and hiding lengthy underground passages, or of transporting large quantities of wood over poor-quality roads, make them both inherently unlikely. But they make a good story!

Amongst the other topics, one of particular interest is the common view is that mediaeval stonemasons would insert the occasional sexually explicit carving into the decoration of churches either because they were disgruntled at not having been paid properly, or because they just wanted to see what they could get away with. But in fact these carvings are so common, and there is so little evidence of official disapproval, that the conclusion has to be that they represent a mediaeval frame of mind that the modern association of Christianity with po-faced Puritanism finds difficult to comprehend.

Maybe the most significant point made in the entire book is debunking the extremely common view 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 guidebooks produced by the likes of English Heritage, but has no verifiable foundation whatsoever. A substantial minority of spiral staircases were in fact anticlockwise, including many in Edward I’s famous castles in North Wales, and there is no reference in the Middle Ages to this being a factor in castle architecture.

It’s a substantial and attractively-produced paperback of 228 pages, with an insert of 16 pages of colour photographs to illustrate its themes, and retails at £20. While a book of proper academic rigour, with a full set of references, it is written with a light touch and well leavened with humour,, making it accessible for the general reader. One minor quibble is that it uses a sans-serif typeface and grey rather than black lettering which makes it slightly harder to read than it otherwise could have been. I’d thorough recommend it to anyone interested in old buildings, history or folklore, and it would make an excellent Christmas present for anyone that way inclined.

James Wright is also undertaking an extensive speaking tour to promote the book, which is currently on hiatus, but will resume in the Autumn.

A Utopia of lager

My recent post about authenticity in lager reminded me of Devon-based Utopian Brewing, who specialise in making classic lager styles using local British ingredients. This prompted me to buy myself a mixed pack of their beers as a birthday treat. This comprised six different beers, all in 440ml cans, namely:

• Premier British Lager (4.7%)
• Unfiltered British Lager (4.7%)
• Bohemian British Lager (4.2%)
• Akoya British Pilsner (5.0%)
• Augsburg Export Lager (5.5%)
• Wondrous Isles Modern Pale Ale (4.4%)

I don’t propose to give a detailed review of each one, but the five lagers were all clean-tasting, well-made beers with a genuine lager character. Unlike many “craft” lagers, they did not fall into the traps of either using inappropriate New World hops or being overtly sweet and malty. My favourite was probably the Akoya British Pilsner. The Unfiltered Lager was only lightly hazy, not murky – fairly similar in opacity to unfiltered Stella. The Bohemian and Augsburg lagers were both a credible take on those respective styles, but not quite on a par with the best beers from the Czech Republic and Bavaria.

The odd one out was the Wondrous Isles, which was a slightly hazy, hoppy IPA in the modern style with a more pronounced fruitiness than many others in that category.

They don’t come cheap, however, with the six-pack coming in at £18.00, or £23.50 including postage, which is over twice the price per can of a four-pack of Stella or Heineken in the supermarket. On the other hand, they are clearly competing in the craft market, not the mainstream, and I am regularly paying around that for authentic imported German lagers.

A further drawback is that they are all in the 440ml size, which always leaves me feeling slightly short-changed compared with a 500ml. But it is interesting how the craft sector, having initially decided 330ml was the future, has increasingly embraced 440ml. Maybe eventually they will go the whole hog to 500ml to differentiate themselves from supermarket slabs.

At those prices Utopian are going to remain a niche producer rather than challenging the mainstream, but it is good to see a modern craft brewery pursuing a different niche from the usual hoppy IPAs and pastry stouts.

However, as I said in my previous post, beer is not solely a functional product, and it is impossible to drink a beer in isolation from its heritage and cultural associations. For that reason, most drinkers will feel that a replica, however good, will never be on a par with the authentic original product from which it takes its inspiration.

Interestingly, it has been reported this week that Utopian are opening their own pub in the Devon market town of Hatherleigh, featuring their own beers alongside those of other independent brewers. However, it also seems they have chosen this moment to unfollow me on Twitter, although I won’t use that as a reason to slag them off.

Protesting too much

The Co-op convenience store chain has come under fire for an advertising campaign urging people to watch the European football championships at home with beers from the fridge rather than going to the pub. The retailer has put out a series of TV and radio adverts claiming “It’s hard to see the screen in the pub, stay in with two pizzas and four beers” linked to promotional offers during the Euros 2024 tournament.

This has been widely attacked by representatives of the pub industry, being described as “disgusting” and “ridiculous”, and with one commentator saying that “the company’s ethical approach has long been forgotten.”

However, this response comes across as distinctly thin-skinned and precious. Pubs are commercial businesses, not sacred institutions, and have no right to be shielded from the rough-and-tumble of competition. Nobody would object to an ad saying “don’t watch the footy at home, it’s much more fun down the pub”, so why is there a problem with the opposite?

The venues that benefit most from the football will tend to be knocked-through drinking barns where most of the customers are on Stella or Madri, not chocolate-box locals or trendy craft bars, many of which won’t even show it in the first place. In any case, if you are looking for good-value beer offers to drink at home, the Co-op is far from the cheapest place to go.

Being referred to in your competitors’ advertising is generally regarded as a sign of strength rather than weakness, as pointed out by licensee Joe Buckley, who took the ad as a compliment to the pub sector. For many, pubs have come to be seen as essential venues for big sporting occasions in a way that they weren’t a generation ago. The pub trade is fully entitled to respond by pointing out that, not only do pubs offer much more atmosphere, they also have a far wider range of beers, including cask, which is not an option at home.

Pub operators would be well advised to accept the realities of a competitive market rather than just whining that life is unfair. And, yet again, the anti-drink lobby will be laughing into their sarsaparilla as the two segments of the drinks industry are at loggerheads.