Every year, the Good Pub Guide is published around this time, and often courts controversy with the accompanying publicity. As I’ve mentioned in the past, it has a very specific vision of what constitutes a “good pub” – namely an unthreatening, smart, middle-class dining pub. The occasional more basic and characterful establishment may occasionally get a look-in to add a touch of colour and authenticity, but they know very well what their readership is looking for.
This year, they have chosen to celebrate the transformation of pubs in the twelve years since the introduction of the smoking ban. However, its tone comes across as smug, middle-class triumphalism. What we don’t like, nobody else should be allowed to have, especially not the scummy plebs.
12 years since the introduction of the smoking ban in England, a pub guide has credited the initiative with transforming pubs and forcing them to become cleaner, brighter places with better food and with greater appeal to women and families...However, even before 2007, there was no shortage of bright, family-friendly, food-dominated pubs. What has happened is not so much that the old working-class wet-led boozers have transformed themselves, as that they have closed down in huge numbers. The article says rather dismissively “It was predicted to be the death knell for the traditional British boozer and likely to lead to a slump in business and permanent closures,” but then goes on to contradict itself by pointing out that fourteen pubs a day are still closing. The amount of beer sold in pubs has fallen by 35% since 2007. As one commentator on Twitter says,“Those bars full of fug and male chat quickly became a thing of the past,” the guide notes. “Pubs adapted by installing smokers’ shelters and outdoor heaters, and licensees soon realised that by making their pubs smoke-free, they turned into cleaner, brighter places, and opened up a massive new customer base: women and families with young children who headed to pubs for a meal and even an overnight stay.”
It’s rather baffling how the smoking ban is supposed to have made pubs more appealing to women, when a higher proportion of women smoke than men. And the very fact that they have chosen to return to the subject twelve years on indicates that it is still a live issue that has created an abiding legacy of bitterness. We haven’t moved on and put it behind us. If people choose to constantly reiterate their argument it suggests they do not feel that they’re standing on particularly solid ground.‘It was predicted to be the death knell for the traditional British boozer and likely to lead to a slump in business and permanent closures.
— Martyn Gorse (@MartynGorse) September 5, 2019
But...’
HAVE YOU SEEN HOW MANY PUBS HAVE CLOSED YOU GUARDIAN PRICKS?
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Just imagine if smoking was as acceptable as a century ago and pubs became proper pubs again.
ReplyDelete“Those restaurant pubs full of the stench of microwave chips and chat about broccoli quickly became a thing of the past. Pubs adapted by returning to what they always should have been.
Yes their stats and ideas are in the realms of fantasy, not my fantasy I hasten to add, unfortunately the smoking ban is here to stay, that as well as beer being taxed out of the working class mans pockets as a daily routine for many. Although there are still plenty of (smoke free) proper boozers around, the death knell still rings loudly with the grim reaper hovering in the shadows for a large proportion of them.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate politics isn't done on beer blogs but with so many cards up in the air at the time of commenting, it's not outside the bounds of possibility that the bitter and rothmans loving Farage ends up as deputy PM. A zero cost bone to chuck at him would be relaxing the smoking ban. Cheaper than the cash the DUP asked for.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that thought flashed through my mind when I read an article this morning entitled "Boris, phone Nigel. Meet in a boozer and make a deal" ;-)
DeleteDumb and Dumber, eh? Like that's really going to work!
DeleteBtw, apart from the name of Rembrandt's wife, who the hell is Saskia?
Just a middle-class girls' name that seemed to go with "save". There are two actresses called Saskia Reeves and Saskia Wickham.
DeleteT'other Mudgie,
DeleteBut the Brexit Party would suggest "Boris, phone Nigel. Meet in a boozer and make a deal" wouldn't they ?
The Guardian article is full of half-truths and I long ago gave up on The Good Pub Guide, because their idea of a good pub frequently doesn't align with mine. Personally, I don't like smoke in pubs, and I also think, as we've said elsewhere, that while the smoking ban has undeniably affected pubs, to say that it is the sole factor in the changes (whether you see the changes as good or bad) is very wrong.
ReplyDeleteTaxation plays it's part, but IMO social changes are the biggest factor. Lunchtime and post-work drinking has fallen massively, Sunday lunchtimes in the pub for the blokes, while women cook at home has all but disappeared. Eating out is much more commonplace- when I was growing up, it was a special occasion thing, now it's just part of life for many, which is why food pubs, from 'spoons to the kind of places The Good Pub Guide is so keen on to full-on posh gastropubs and all points in between are doing comparatively well. Personally, I find them either a bit soulless, or downright unpleasant if filled with noisy children, but I suppose this is market forces at work.
I think the biggest casualty has been the suburban wet-led pub, because it's core customer base isn't as large as it was, whereas in towns and cities they survive quite well.
I have never (as I'm sure you will recognise) claimed the the smoking ban has been the sole factor in the decline of pubs over the past twelve years. However, it can't be denied that it has been a significant factor, especially amongst working-class pubs.
DeleteA lot of what were once multi-purpose pubs with a balance of wet and food trade have shifted decisively in the food direction.
More money in food than beer.
Delete- Well strangely on that front in one area I frequent competition is tough & some including a dominant brewer with a pub estate,report to me that margins are lower in the food outlets as oppose to decent turnover wet pubs,given the additional costs staffing & chef wise. One thing they do like selling as I have said previously is coffee because of the terrific mark up. On the main topic I'd go for social changes as 70% of the problem with 20% smoking ban- but in certain types of pubs I acknowledge the smoking ban has been disastrous.I still think optional smoking rooms with an airflow gradient would have been better. Deemed as costly at the time,the trade promptly installed phenomenally wasteful external heaters,so internal gradient extraction fans could have been afforded all along.
DeleteI can believe "that margins are lower in the food outlets as oppose to decent turnover wet pubs" although not always. Marstons have stopped building new family dining pubs and from those to expensive gastropubs there are many staff of duty which will take the sales of a great number of moderately priced meals, for example "two for a tenner", to break even - and thst strikes me as far less viable than a busy Sam Smiths pub where one manageress or barmaid manages to serve several dozen customers wanting nothing more complicated than a pint of OBB and a bag of crisps.
DeleteThere still seems to be this peculiarly British obsession with class clouding the debate, which in a way sums up the root cause of many of the nation's problems today.
ReplyDeleteDo people still regard themselves as middle, or working class? If so, the latter group has virtually disappeared; certainly in this neck of the woods.
Like several other commentators here, my feeling is that socio-economic factors are far more to blame than the 2007 Smoking Ban, for the continuing closure of wet-led pubs. Smoking as a habit, is in terminal decline anyway, helped along by punitive taxes more than anything else.
Twelve years on it can no longer be considered a relevant factor, even though it may well have been a decade ago. Coming home after a night's drinking, with my eyes stinging and my hair and clothes reeking of stale tobacco smoke, is not something I miss, and I strongly suspect I am not alone in this.
You certainly are not alone!
DeleteBefore 2007, there were plenty of pubs with no-smoking areas if that mattered to you. This business of "every time I went to the pub I had to incinerate all my clothes when I got home" really is the most ridiculous antismoker nonsense. Most normal people really weren't bothered, as shown by the collapse in trade of all the Spoons that jumped the gun on the ban.
DeleteAnd surely all these people who sneer at "macro lager drinkers" and pubs with Sky Sports signs outside, and describe others as "gammon", are demonstrating that the British class division is alive and well. Do you remember Emily Thornberry posting a picture of a house with a white van and a St George's flag just down the road from you at the time of the Rochester by-election? What was that about, then, if not class?
I only said I agreed that I didn't like smelling of smoke after a night out. You go on about no smoking areas, but surely the sensible way would have been to provide smoking areas rather than an outright ban. The 'working class' boozers were always going to end up in terminal decline as the whole way our society takes its leisure has changed dramatically.
DeleteI stand by what I said Mudge, and as for "normal" people not being really bothered, that simply isn't true. It was a case of put up, or shut up.
ReplyDeleteThe comment about coming home with clothes reeking of smoke, came from my wife who, until last year, was a regular smoker- so don't accuse me of being anti-smoking.
The simple fact remains that being in a room full of second hand tobacco smoke, is bound to taint clothing and for most "normal" people is NOT a pleasant experience. I might have put up with it for 35 years between the ban and when I first started going to the pub, but I certainly don't miss it.
Time to let this one go, my friend- especially as you are a non-smoker.