The Pub Curmudgeon

So the much-vaunted advance of pub food has ground to a shuddering halt . This is hardly surprising, really, considering the overall recessi...

According to today's Daily Mail , the government are set on reducing the drink-drive limit. This will mean the end of the country pub an...

I was thinking the other day how I drink markedly more at home and less in pubs than I did ten or twenty years ago, something that must be r...

The licensed trade were widely criticised for making overly pessimistic forecasts about the effect of the smoking ban. However, new figures ...

I don't always see eye-to-eye with Simon Heffer, as he is basically a conservative while I would regard myself as more of a libertarian,...

What a disgusting decision by Alastair Darling, to raise beer duty by a punitive 4p a pint. This will do nothing to reduce problem drinking,...

Yesterday I had a trip out to Chester, and was most encouraged to come across three pubs with unequivocal "no children" signs on t...

Went in what I've always considered to be a fairly decent traditional pub today, albeit one that because of its remote rural location ha...

Excellent article here from Chris Maclean. I have a real affection for traditional pubs. Pubs that understand their origins. Pubs that unde...

Interesting to see a couple of articles in the press debunking two widely-held but erroneous beliefs: Healthy people place biggest burden on...

There was an excellent article in the Telegraph recently in which Charles Moore took a very sober and sceptical look at the current hyster...

In February’s Opening Times column I commented on the increasing rarity of finding a cosy, traditional pub offering a welcome to all comer...

Yet another local pub - the Plough in Heaton Moor - has recently been refurbished and had all the remaining bench seating stripped out in fa...

This week’s Spectator features one of the most coruscating attacks on the smoking ban I’ve yet seen from the ever-outspoken Rod Liddle. Ma...

LibDem MP Greg Mulholland has been reported as seeking to require pubs and bars to offer wine in 125 ml glass sizes, as the widespread adop...