Stop all the clocks

CAMRA have stated their intention not to include any information on pub opening hours in the 2021 Good Beer Guide, which is due to be belatedly published at the end of October. The reasoning behind this is that, in the wake of the Covid lockdown, many pubs will be operating different or reduced hours and, given the impossibility of resurveying every pub, the information would thus be extremely unreliable. No details at all are arguably better than incorrect details. This is only planned to be a temporary measure, and the aim is to restore opening hours in the 2022 edition.

However, even inaccurate information does serve a purpose in a negative way by giving an indication of times when you can be pretty sure that a pub will not be open, and thus there is no point in trying to visit. It’s a fair bet that very few pubs will actually be opening longer hours than they did before. There are also many pubs, such as the Wetherspoon’s which make up about 5% of the entries, where the opening hours are firmly established and could be published without any risk of misleading readers. On the other hand, in my experience, the shorter and more unusual the hours that are advertised for a pub, the more likely they are not to adhere to them.

It’s airily said that if you’re concerned about whether a pub might be open, you can easily phone them to check. However, that shows a failure to appreciate the way many people use the Guide in practice. Rather than fixing on a specific pub and planning an expedition to visit it, they are much more likely to browse a range of entries in a town, or along a route, to see which might be worth a visit. If you find yourself in Borchester on a Monday night, you’re not going to phone round nine pubs to check whether they might be open. You’re much more likely just to go to Spoons, which you know will be open. And the information contained on pubs’ own websites and Facebook pages is notoriously inaccurate.

Some have suggested that CAMRA should simply abandon publication of the Guide this year, as the lockdown has brought about such a dramatic change in the pub landscape that it has become more a history book than something of current relevance. However, its unbroken publication over 45 years has become a key symbol of CAMRA’s efforts, and it would seem wrong to simply discard all the effort that has been put into it at ground level. Plus, in the current climate when income from beer festivals has completely dried up, the revenue is important for CAMRA’s finances.

There are cogent reasons why the decision has been taken, but the importance of reasonably accurate information on opening hours should not be understated. It will also inevitably lead some people to decide not to purchase the Guide due to the incompleteness of the information contained in it. And it will make life even more difficult for the dedicated band of tickers of GBG entries.

Maybe it would also make sense to drop the beer listings against each pub, which can be even more inaccurate than the opening hours. But at least it will bring to a temporary halt the interminable debate about whether or not to adopt the 24-hour clock!

Climate of fear

Earlier this week, the government announced, after much speculation, that they were going to require people to wear face coverings in shops in England from a week on Friday. This seems a somewhat bizarre decision, given that the virus has pretty much burnt itself out now, and people have been visiting shops right through the peak of the pandemic without them. In any case, many experts consider that masks are of very limited effectiveness.

The impression is very much that they have done this in response to public opinion, with many opinion polls showing a clear majority in favour of compulsory mask wearing. However, this isn’t borne out by people’s actual behaviour on the ground. From my observation, well below a quarter of supermarket customers are wearing masks. It seems that many people want the government to force them to do something they’re unwilling to do of their own volition. This is rather akin to those wealthy people who call for higher taxes, but never actually write out any cheques to HMRC themselves, which they’re perfectly entitled to do.

It’s important to note that the rules refer to “face coverings” rather than specifically to purpose-made masks, so it’s perfectly possible to use ones made from old scarves or T-shirts. How effective those will be is obviously highly questionable. No specification is given, so no objection could be raised to wearing the plague doctor costume shown above, or to flimsy items which were only intended as decorative costume adornments. On the other hand, the Welsh government has decided that all public transport passengers will be required to wear three-ply masks, which will need considerable skills in needlework if you want to make them yourself.

The way masks are actually worn also leaves much to be desired. In theory, the disposable ones that seem to be most popular are only supposed to be worn once. Take it off, for whatever reason, and you really should put a fresh one on. But how often is that going to be adhered to, especially since many of the mask zealots in the media keep telling us how easy it is to slip them off and on again? And how often are the home-made ones going to be washed in practice? Once a week if you’re lucky. Plus, the actual disposal of all the disposable masks is going to create an enormous waste problem. It’s also noticeable that all of them seem to have been made in China!

Many people have genuine medical reasons for being exempt from wearing a face covering. For example, experts have warned that people with asthma should not wear masks. But it is likely that they will have to endure bullying and harassment, both from staff and other customers, if they turn up at a shop without one. And many deaf people depend on lip-reading to communicate with others, and are going to be made to feel even more isolated.

People may well grudgingly put up with wearing a mask when nipping round the supermarket for essentials. But it makes going out shopping a much less enjoyable experience, and will act as a serious deterrent to more extended expeditions for leisure shopping, especially for clothing. A month after “non-essential” shops were allowed to reopen, High Streets are still seeing greatly reduced trade, and making shoppers wear masks is likely to bring any hopes of revival to a juddering halt.

Fortunately, so far pubs and restaurants have been excluded from the requirement, but what’s to guarantee that this won’t change in the future? After all, it has already happened in some Continental countries. After only just having reopened, and still struggling with reduced capacity, that would to deal a fresh body blow to the pub trade. Going to the pub is supposed to be an enjoyable leisure experience, not something you’re expected to grimly endure. And the blow to town centre shopping will have a further knock-on effect on pubs.

Some have argued that compulsory mask-wearing will encourage retail activity by instilling a greater sense of confidence, but surely human nature suggests it will have precisely the opposite effect. Far from representing any kind of return to normality, it will be an indicator of an ongoing climate of fear and anxiety.

No specific end date has been set for the measure, or any set of criteria against it will be judged. Indeed, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has stated that it may have to continue until a vaccine has been found, which could be never. As the great Milton Friedman said, “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program”. Remember that the afternoon closure of pubs, brought in as an emergency measure during the First World War, lasted over seventy years, and income tax, originally introduced to finance the Napoleonic Wars, is still with us.

A hike too far?

As pubs and pubgoers emerged blinking into the light after the long, grim months of the lockdown, they were confronted with a landscape that was unfamiliar in many ways. Most obvious were all the new social distancing and hygiene measures that had been introduced, and the widely varying interpretations that had been put on the guidelines.

More subtle were the changes to menus, beer ranges and prices that had been implemented. Wetherspoon’s, for example, seem to have increased beer prices by 10p a pint across the board, although it’s highly likely they would have done that in the Spring anyway. So John Smith’s Extra Smooth and Bud Light have now gone up in my local ones from £1.99 to £2.10, although Ruddles Best is still £1.79.

However, at first I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard what was happening in the Sam Smith’s empire, although this report from Middlesbrough seemed to confirm it. So I had to go along to one of my local ones to check it out on the ground, and in most respects the report proved correct, although I wasn’t expected to wear a face mask at the bar and both ladies’ and gents’ toilets were open as normal. Interestingly, I wasn’t asked for any contact details.

There had indeed been a swingeing increase across the board on beer prices, although it wasn’t a flat rate £1 a pint as some had suggested. The 2.8% beers – light and dark mild and Alpine lager - had increased from £1.40 to £2.20. Old Brewery Bitter had indeed gone up by £1 to £3.00, although they didn’t actually have any as apparently “none had been brewed yet”. Double Four Lager, also 4%, was also £3.00, where it had been £2.08 before. Extra Stout and Taddy Lager were now £3.40 as opposed to £2.30, and the premium Pure Brewed Lager had gone up from £3.00 to £4.20. The barmaid suggested to one or two customers that they could try an Alpine/Taddy split, which works out at 3.75% and sets you back £2.80.

It’s often hard to discern any considered strategy, or indeed sense, on pronouncements emanating from Tadcaster, and this will certainly test the patience and the budgets of many of their regular customers. On a personal level, I’m not particularly bothered, as I go there for the congenial atmosphere – comfortable seats, no piped music, TV sport or screaming kids – rather than the low prices. But if many of the other customers are deterred, much of that atmosphere will be lost, and indeed the future of the pubs themselves may be threatened.

The effect won’t be felt evenly across the board. In some of Sam’s Northern pubs in villages and prosperous suburbs, £2 a pint was effectively giving money away to customers who could comfortably, and willingly, afford more, and there may be little difference in the level of trade. Indeed, in such locations everywhere else nearby will still be considerably pricier. However, in some of their town and city centre pubs, and in some of the back street locals in and around Rochdale that Tandleman has been visiting on and off, there is undoubtedly a strong contingent of value drinkers who are likely to react against the price rises, either by transferring their business to Wetherspoon’s or by not coming out at all. Some town centres also have other value pubs that may see an opportunity.

While Wetherspoon’s are undoubtedly now much cheaper for cask beer and John Smith’s, this isn’t the case across their full beer range. Indeed the company in general succeeds in putting across an image of offering low prices that isn’t always borne out on the ground. For example, one of my local branches charges £3.05 for Carling and Foster’s, although the one nearest to the Sam’s pub is £2.69. Plus in Wetherspoon’s people end up sitting in solitary splendour on isolated tables rather than exchanging banter around a room lined with bench seating, and the management are likely to frown even more than normal on rearranging the furniture.

In general these increases will still leave Sam’s prices on a par with, or just below, those of their nearby competitors. It remains to be seen to what extent customers were there just for the cheapness as opposed to valuing other aspects of what the pubs provided. It’s not impossible that in the long term it may come to be seen as a necessary correction to prices that had become seriously out of kilter with the rest of the market and weren’t really bringing in that much extra trade. Or it could prove to be unhinged commercial suicide. Only time will tell.

It should also be remembered that Sam’s weren’t always known for their cheap prices. Going back a generation, they were on a par with the other family brewers. But a series of policy decisions in the present century have led to them overtaking Holt’s to offer by far the cheapest draught beer in tied houses. It’s certainly what Humphrey’s namesake on “Yes Minister” would call a “bold” experiment, and it will be interesting to see whether the policy holds, or whether there will be a reverse ferret once he finds some of his pubs completely devoid of customers. There is certainly a precedent for this in their backtracking on the Great Pie Fiasco.

(The photo shows a group of probable value drinking codgers in the Olde Blue Bell in Hull).

Edit: Tandleman has, entirely independently of me, discussed the same subject, and reached some of the same conclusions.

Where were you when I needed you?

Last week, I ran a Twitter poll on people’s attitudes to returning to the pub yesterday, the results of which are shown below. What is perhaps surprising, and disappointing, is that as many as 34%, from an audience presumably more favourably inclined towards pubs than the population at large, responded “Not for a long time”.

POLL: Will you be going to the pub on July 4th?

— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) June 30, 2020

Now, I would strongly defend everyone’s right to act according to their own conscience. But everyone must recognise that action, or inaction, has consequences. If you’re someone who never much cared for pubs in the first place, you can’t really be criticised for staying away now. But if you have professed support for pubs in the past, and you are under 60 in reasonable general health, you really need to consider your position.

While the death toll from the pandemic has been appalling and tragic, it has overwhelmingly affected the very old and those already in poor health. It has killed just 300 healthy people in the UK under the age of 60. The fatality rate has been 1 in 9,000 for under-65s, but 1 in 250 for over -65s. Now, when the rate of infection is greatly reduced, you are probably more likely to be killed crossing the road on your way to the pub than from contracting Covid-19 when you get there. To still stay away on the grounds that it is not safe represents a warped and exaggerated perception of risk.

The next few months are going to be a very trying time for the pub trade, with reduced capacity from social distancing and a lack of general consumer confidence combining to limit customer numbers. The rush of enthusiasm on reopening day is unlikely to be maintained for very long. Pubs will need all the support they can get. By all means make your own decision, but don’t then complain six months down the line when many of the pubs you used to enjoy are no longer there. More than ever before, “use ‘em or lose ‘em” is a critical message.

Apart from the over-caution, I was taken aback by the wave of rancid snobbery directed on social media at people who had ventured out to the pub. Just look at some of the responses to this tweet from a Manchester Evening News reporter:

I’ve spoken to regulars Chris and Jimmy. Jimmy hasn’t gone to bed after his night shift tarmacking the roads. He had a shower and came straight here. He described the taste of his first Carling as being like an ‘angel p***ing on the tip of his tongue’ @MENnewsdesk #citybacktolife pic.twitter.com/sUAKwlstwt

— Rebecca Day (@RebeccaDayMEN) July 4, 2020

Incidentally, the pub in question was the Shiredale in North Manchester. And, while some people said it appeared grim and uninviting, to my eye it very much looks like a Proper Pub. These responses prompted several people to man the barricades in defence of pubgoers, even though it wasn’t something they personally cared for.

I don't like pubs or beer. Just as you won't like some things that I do.
But if was able to I'd be down the first pub I could find ordering a pint just to stick two fingers up to those sneering at people who are so thrilled to be able to have a pint. Or two. Or more.

— Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) July 4, 2020

Many so-called beer enthusiasts who may in the past have given lip service to supporting pubs seem to have gleefully joined in with both of these tendencies. They may well have found they quite enjoyed staying at home during lockdown enjoying supplies of draft craft beer takeouts from their local micro bar, absolved of any need to actually go out and visit any pubs and mix with the dreaded hoi polloi.

Even worse than this were the snarky comments along the lines of “you won’t be saying that in two weeks’ time” which in effect is wishing illness and death on others.

Anyway, on a more pleasant note, the post title gives an excuse for another trip down memory lane with the Bangles. And Susanna Hoffs is five months older than me!

Keeping in touch

A week ago last Tuesday, the government confirmed that pubs in England would be allowed to reopen under certain conditions tomorrow, Saturday July 4th. Later in the day they issued the detailed guidance on how this was expected to work. I have deliberately avoided returning to this subject in the meantime because everything is speculation, and we won’t really know how it will turn out until it actually happens.

However, the point that has probably led to most discussion is contained on Page 11, where it says “You should assist this service by keeping a temporary record of your customers and visitors for 21 days, in a way that is manageable for your business, and assist NHS Test and Trace with requests for that data if needed.” Clearly, there is a strong justification for this, but it is something that has never been required of pubs before for walk-in customers, and the trade has spent the following week running around like headless chickens trying to come up with ways to implement it. It also creates serious privacy implications that should not be lightly dismissed.

Eventually, yesterday the official guidance on collecting customer details was produced, which is considerably more straightforward than many people had imagined. The key details are shown below. Note that it states “No additional information should be collected for this purpose”, so pubs will be going too far even to ask for addresses.

This is pretty much what Wetherspoon’s have said they will be doing. If some people write down Donald Cummings or Dominic Duck, so be it, but in reality I’d expect a high level of compliance, as making up a false identity is actually much more hard work than telling the truth. This little pad used by a German restaurant points the way, although even the address field is superfluous.

Compare this with the diktat issued by the Prince Albert pub in Wolverhampton, which goes well over the top. In particular, demanding to see “official” ID, except for purposes of age verification, seems completely unreasonable, as is demanding a temperature check and asking for date of birth. So I think my custom would probably go to the nearby Great Western, which is a far better pub anyway. In any case, I have no current photo ID.

On a related note, the various CAMRA branches in Greater Manchester have got together to produce a very useful one-page listing of which pubs and bars are expected to be open tomorrow and during the coming weeks, which is an extremely praiseworthy effort. You should be able to find somewhere to have a pint in most areas. In particular, local family brewers Joseph Holt are opening all but 13 of their pubs, as listed towards the bottom of this page.

Sucking out all the joy

Over the past couple of weeks there has been a flurry of speculation about whether pubs would actually be allowed to reopen on July 4th and, if so, what kind of restrictions they would have to operate under. The last time I ventured into this territory in discussing the possibility of opening up beer gardens, I was shot down in flames by a negative announcement within a few hours of publishing my blog, so I’ve steered well clear of it since. Remember that, if we were to believe numerous press reports, it would have been possible to have a drink in a beer garden from today onwards.

However, the weight of speculation is now very strongly that pubs will be able to reopen from July 4th, and indeed many brewers have restarted production of cask beer. An official announcement is expected tomorrow. It is likely, though, that they will have to adhere to a variety of onerous restrictions which include, if we are to believe press reports, expecting customers to order and pay via an app, requiring them to book pub visits in advance, and making them sign in and out each time they go to a pub.

As Tandleman points out here, some of these ideas give the impression of having been dreamed up by people who have little idea how pubs actually work and imagine they are something very like table-service restaurants. I asked my Twitter followers in a quick poll whether they would find being expected to order via an app would be a significant deterrent to visiting pubs for a drink. Wjhile a majority thought it was OK, a substantial minority considered that it would be offputting.

POLL: Would being expected to order via an app significantly deter you from going to the pub for a drink?

— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) June 21, 2020

Restrictions of this kind may to a greater or lesser degree be workable, although clearly they would be much easier to implement in large chain pubs than small independent ones. Signing in would inevitably lead to a sudden upsurge in pubgoing by Mickey Mouse and Mike Hunt. And they may go completely against some companies’ established business models ;-)

I look forward to the Sam Smith's app https://t.co/zuWqbTHEpJ

— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) June 20, 2020

Some licensees have expressed concern that, if a single customer ended up testing positive, they may be forced to close their pub for fourteen days, thus putting their reopening plans back to square one. And is it reasonable to expect customers, even if they have an up-to-date smartphone, to download a separate app for each pub they visit? It may be acceptable for regulars, as indeed signing-in would be, but it would reallyput a dampener on chance pub visits.

The whole thing transforms pubgoing into a much more considered and premeditated activity rather than something spontaneous and fun, which is what it should be. During 2019, I visited 207 different pubs, more than half of which were new to me. Many of those visits weren’t even planned an hour ahead, let alone days. In plenty of cases it was just a case of coming across a likely-looking pub in an unfamiliar town. And I do not see why I should be required to identify myself or explain my purpose if I just wander into a pub at random.

During the lockdown we have had to endure numerous unpalatable restrictions, such as queuing for shops, keeping well apart from each other and being strongly urged not to pay in cash. We have gritted our teeth and put up with it, because those were things that we needed to do. But going to the pub for a drink is a discretionary leisure activity. Nobody actually has to do it. And if it is reduced to such a joyless, regimented process it is highly likely that many people will simply conclude that it’s not worth bothering with.

Edit: it seems that Telegraph cartoonist Matt has spotted the potential pitfalls of customer registration:

A breath of fresh air?

There have been a number of reports that the government is planning to give the go-ahead for pubs to open outside drinking areas from 22 June, which is less than two weeks away. This has been backed up by several breweries such as Black Sheep and Palmer’s announcing that they were restarting brewing cask beer. This has to be seen as good news, and a significant step on the long road back to normality. It was always likely that outside areas would be allowed to open first. However, it’s important not to get carried away.

The first potential problem is obviously the notoriously fickle British weather. While we’ve all been in lockdown, we’ve enjoyed about the driest and sunniest Spring in living memory. But what’s the betting that, as soon as outside drinking is permitted, the heavens will open for weeks on end? And, even if it’s dry, outdoor drinking isn’t that much fun if it’s a bit chilly with a stiff breeze. Plus, unless the social distancing rule is relaxed from 6’6” to 3’3”, the drinkers in the beer garden are going to be pretty thin on the ground.

While some pubs have large outdoor areas, realistically most don’t, particularly in urban areas. So it’s only a very partial benefit for the pub trade. The suggestion has been made that streets could be converted into temporary pubs with seating spilling out on to the road. However, in reality the locations where that could work are pretty limited. Many town-centre streets with pubs on them have already been pedestrianised anyway. Roads fulfil an essential economic function and, with shops reopening next week, are going to be not far off normal levels of traffic. Even if this could be achieved, it would require expensive and time-consuming traffic diversions. Maybe pubs could put a few tables out on the pavement, but is that really going to generate a worthwhile return on an urban street?

Shoppers might not appreciate having to run the gauntlet of boisterous pub regulars who are generally safely confined inside. And, even if you could get hold of it, would it really be worth investing in a stock of outdoor seating for what was likely to be only a few weeks’ trade?

Whether you like it or not, TV football is one of the biggest draws in pubs, and the Premier League is scheduled to restart next week on 17 June. But, even if you could, there’s not much point in showing the football for which you’ve paid an arm and a leg to all and sundry in the street. A large chunk of your normal trade won’t come back until they can go indoors to watch the telly.

So, by all means welcome it and take advantage if you get the opportunity. But don’t imagine for a minute that outdoor drinking alone is going to be the salvation of the pub trade. We won’t be able to say we’ve truly returned to normality until we can huddle together with our friends with a few drinks inside a pub.

Beer lines

Over the past eleven weeks of the lockdown, queuing, especially to get into supermarkets, has become an unwelcome fact of life for most of us. While nothing has yet been definitely announced, it is looking as though, even if pubs are allowed to reopen next month, it will be under some kind of social distancing rules that will limit capacity. This creates the possibility of having to queue to get into pubs and other hospitality venues. So I created a couple of polls on Twitter to see what people thought of the idea of queueing for pubs and restaurants.

POLL: How long would you queue to get into a pub? (Assuming there was no alternative queue-free option)

— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) June 3, 2020

POLL: How long would you queue to get into a restaurant? (Assuming no nearby alternative)

— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) June 3, 2020

As you can see, the general reaction was not enthusiastic. The results were fairly similar between pubs and restaurants, although in theory you might expect people to be more willing to do it for restaurants as eating is a necessity, while having a drink isn’t. Indeed there were more people prepared to do it for as long as it takes for pubs than for restaurants.

I can quite understand this reaction, as I detest being forced to queue for anything, and have been known to walk out of pubs if I have to wait too long to be served. There is also a conceptual difference from queuing for a supermarket or drive-thru fast food outlet, as in those situations the is a steady throughput of customers, so you can expect to make steady progress, whereas with a pub the customers already inside the building might be settled in for a long session, especially given that pub-crawling will become impossible.

However, even before the lockdown, people were prepared to queue for a long time to gain access to venues like beer festivals or nightclubs where there was a one-out, one situation. And, in recent weeks, we have become inured to queuing in a variety of situations where we never expected to. So the enthusiasm for queuing to get into Wetherspoon’s might well turn out to be greater than the polls suggested. And, when the “non-essential” shops reopen a week on Monday, I would expect to see some very long queues outside the likes of Next and Primark.

I’m not going to comment on the realities of the socially distanced pub until we have a clearer view of what to expect, and when we can expect it.

Striking a happy medium

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote how taking a whole population approach to the “war on obesity” could have many undesirable consequences. One aspect of this is that the higher the number of calories in any food item, the more it is considered to be a bad thing. However, to a large extent, calories are what food is all about. The quantity of calories is a rough approximation of the total amount of nutrition it contains. We need a certain number of calories to survive, and chomping away at celery and lettuce isn’t going to provide much sustenance. It shouldn’t be forgotten that, until maybe three generations ago, for the majority of the human race getting hold of sufficient calories to sustain them was a daily struggle.

Now, of course, we are in general more fortunate and prosperous, and more people find they’re eating too much than too little. If you want to control your weight, then obviously it is desirable to know how many calories your food contains. But publication of calorie information can be a double-edged sword, with people who are less weight-conscious using it as a yardstick to judge how much value for money various dishes offer.

Very often, a lower-calorie alternative to a standard product is simply less appetising, and eating a smaller portion of the full-fat version may be a better option if you can exercise the necessary self-restraint. Many products that boast of being low in calories actually achieve this simply by containing less in the first place. This is particularly true to some potato-based snacks that can be puffed up to appear bigger while weighing no more.

A parallel can be drawn with the alcoholic content of drinks. The fact that they contain alcohol is, by definition, the feature of alcoholic drinks that distinguishes them from soft drinks. That is their fundamental point. Yet it is not a simple case of people either gravitating towards those with the highest alcohol content, or indeed the lowest.

Wine and spirits tend to come in a relatively limited range of strengths, and little is made of the differences between them, although I have seen some complaints about the high alcohol content of some full-bodied red wines. Beer and cider, by contrast, are available across a wide spectrum of different strengths.

However, it’s certainly not the case, as some commentators seem to imagine, that most drinkers gravitate towards those with higher strengths. Indeed, it’s only really a subset of problem drinkers who take that attitude, and most beer sold is of relatively modest strength. Beer is not just a method of delivering alcohol, it also offers flavour and refreshment and, particularly in social settings, there’s a strong incentive for the effects of alcohol to only be felt subtly and gradually.

People tend to view beers as falling within particular categories, so wouldn’t be particularly bothered about choosing a 3.7% ordinary bitter over a 4% one, or the other way round. This explains how the brewers of Stella Artois were able to reduce its strength from 5.2% to 4.8% with very little consumer kick-back (prompted, of course, by a certain amount of government arm-twisting). The fact that it is widely considered to be not what it was has much more to do with cheapening the recipe. But cut it to 4% and few would be interested any more. On the other side of the coin, it its dying days the strength of Boddingtons Bitter was upped to 4.1% in a bid to reverse its decline, only for it to lose more sales as drinkers felt that took it out of the ordinary bitter category. Indeed, the dining pub chain Brunning & Price dropped it as a house beer because their customers, many of whom were drivers, found it just that bit too strong.

2.8% might be an acceptable strength for a mild, but the various pseudo-bitters that were introduced at this strength to take advantage of the lower duty rate found few takers. If you essentially wanted an ordinary biter, the low strength was a deterrent, while those seriously wanting to cut consumption would go the whole hog for an alcohol-free beer. It is possible to brew a tasty light mild at around 3.0%, but none of these beers really cut the mustard as bitters.

As with food, if you’re aiming to limit your alcohol intake, it may well be a better option to drink less of the normal-strength version, than the same quantity of the less appealing one that has a lower alcohol content. While we have alcohol-free beers, which provide at least some of the sensation of drinking the normal variety, it’s very hard to conceive of calorie-free food that would be remotely appetising.

If you reopen it, will they come?

Earlier this week, I blogged about a Twitter poll I was running about people’s attitude to returning to pubs post-lockedown. This has now finished, with the following outcome:

POLL: As the lockdown is gradually eased, how do you feel about returning to pubs and restaurants?

— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) May 18, 2020

Ye Olde Fleece Inn in Kendal ran a similar poll with perhaps surprisingly different results:

We are interested to see how #coronavirus has change your attitude to #pubs a big part of British Culture.@GoodPubGuide@caskaleweek@FeatureCumbria@CAMRA_Official

— Ye Olde Fleece Inn, Kendal (@fleecekendal) May 16, 2020

The figure for “I would go now” is 43% in my poll, but only 32% in theirs. However, if you take the first two options as being equivalent, it’s 64% in mine but a full 81% in theirs. Even so, if two-thirds of customers are willing to return, it should provide a reasonable foundation for business.

I speculated on whether attitudes varied according to how often people went to pubs, which could potentially distort the result. This prompted me to create a two-dimensional poll on SurveyMonkey breaking down the answers according to frequency of pubgoing. However, the result was that it made virtually no difference, with 71% being willing to return to pubs in July, with or without the weighting. Realistically, pubs aren’t going to open before then anyway.

(It should be pointed out that the free version of SurveyMonkey limits the total number of responses)

Front or back of the queue?

A concern that has been expressed by many in the trade is that, even when pubs are allowed to reopen, many of their previous customers may be very wary of returning to them due to continued fear of contracting the virus. A number of surveys have been created to gauge the strength of this feeling, including one I did myself that finishes tomorrow.

POLL: As the lockdown is gradually eased, how do you feel about returning to pubs and restaurants?

— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) May 18, 2020

However, a drawback of surveys of this kind is that they make no allowance for how often people actually visited pubs in the first place. This is something we saw at the time of the smoking ban, when a number of surveys showed that a majority of people would visit pubs more after it was implemented. This may well have been true, but if you only went once a year before, but then stepped it up to twice a year, it wouldn’t make much difference overall. And, as we all know, the actual effect on the trade of pubs was the exact opposite of what these surveys suggested.

So I thought I would create a two-dimensional poll that identifies people’s responses depending on how often they visited pubs before the lockdown, as shown in the panel below. It’s limited to a maximum of 100 responses, so I’ll attempt to analyse the results once it’s complete.

Edit: I have now closed the survey and removed the web form as it has reached the maximum number of responses.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Over the past couple of days, I’ve spotted a couple of eloquent and poignant blogposts about what we are currently missing through our pubs being forcibly closed, and what we stand to lose forever if we’re not careful.

First, by Simon Cooke on A View From Cullingworth, I miss the pub:

I miss the pub, the changing set of folk who I have a passing chat with, even the occasional full on row. I miss thinking at nine o'clock, "I'll go to the pub for a couple of beers", then picking up a magazine or a paper and heading there. Some days that magazine won't get opened because there's folk to talk to, maybe a joke or two, but other days you'll just spend a quiet hour there. For so many, it is a refuge from loneliness and something to look forward to at the end of the day.

As yet the government hasn't told us how it's going to reopen the heart of the community, whether there'll be as Head Rambles describes in Ireland, a set of ideas that involve no standing, restricted sitting, half closed loos, no live music and no football. I fear that government, trapped in the shining headlights of this virus, will chose cowardice and condemn pubs to a soulless oblivion and those of us for whom that pub was a big part of our social engagement to a life stood looking out the kitchen window wondering what to do.

I miss the pub. And will miss it more when it's closed for good.

And, from The Bar Biographer, You’re on your own:

Davy has been at his bedroom window most of the day for the last eight weeks. He goes out for a walk sometimes but can’t be bothered others; there’s nothing happening, nowhere open. Of course. But still he stands there, looking out from his second-floor tenement flat.

The main reason is maybe because he can see both the Alexandra Bar and The Crown Creighton from there. His real favourite, The Duke Bar, is just out of sight but two out of three isn’t bad. In normal times, he pops in to one or more of those bars most days. Just a couple, mind, he’s not a heavy drinker. He goes for the chat, maybe some dominoes. Not too many folk frequent both the Alexandra and the Creighton but Davy is a non-denominational socialiser; for him, the thing is to get out and about, for its own sake...

...No, the prognosis for the bar, club, hotel trade is not at all good (I claim the prize for the understatement of the decade) and pub lovers – whether punters or licensees – are on their own. Don’t expect any help from politicians, Twitter’s circuits of self-congratulation, the Edinburgh-based lobbyists, and most academics. The only way they will bend is under sustained pressure.

My prediction – and I fervently hope to be wrong - is that, as bars across Europe gradually open their doors again, those in Scotland will be at least 3-4 months behind, and probably the last in Europe to reopen. And with restricted trading likely to continue for a while after that, a reasonable estimate is that more than half of Glasgow and Scottish licensed premises will be gone for good by the end of 2021.

Pessimistic maybe, but that is where the present evidence points. Who knows how long Davy will be standing at his window?

Hard cases make bad policy

In contrast to smoking, there has been a growing weight of evidence of a strong correlation between obesity and being at risk of dying from coronavirus. This has sparked a number of reports that Boris Johnson is planning to abandon his alleged “libertarian” instincts and promote an action plan to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis. A number of people have suggested that his own experience of the disease has somewhat spooked him, both into resisting a swift unwinding of the lockdown, despite the adverse consequences to the wider economy, and now into wanting to crack down on obesity. He has certainly struggled with his weight over the years, apparently scaling 17½ stone before being hospitalised, and there does seem to be a whiff of the zeal of the reformed smoker about this conversion.

However, on an international scale, things aren’t necessarily so clear-cut. Lower rates of obesity in France, Italy and Spain are often given as an example we should follow, but all of those countries have suffered very severely. In contrast, New Zealand, which has a higher rate of obesity than the UK, has hardly been touched, while the USA, often singled out for its high obesity rate, has still done considerably better than us overall, with the areas of the South and Midwest frequently seen as obesity hotspots being among the less affected regions. Germany and Sweden both have obesity rates little below ours, but both have had a much lower rate of coronavirus deaths.

The track record of measures using the price mechanism to affect eating and drinking habits has not been a good one. Neither minimum alcohol pricing, now in force in Scotland for two years, nor the sugar tax, have had any noticeable impact on the problems they were claimed to address. Indeed, very often the main impact is to put further strain on the budgets of poorer households.

If the price of one category of food or drink is increased, it is likely to lead to substitution with another, opening up the possibility of all kinds of unintended consequences. And attempting to divide food into “good” and “bad” categories can all too easily have perverse results, such as banning the advertising of natural and wholesome items such as orange juice, cheese and meat.

Another front in the war on obesity is the reformulation of food to make it contain fewer calories. However, the experience of recent years has shown that the potential here is fairly limited. If you reduce one undesirable item, you just end up increasing another to compensate. Less fat is more sugar and vice versa. Attempts to change the recipes of products such as biscuits and chocolate have simply made them much less palatable. Making food taste like sawdust is a pretty crude way of putting people off eating it. In reality, very often the only option is simply to reduce the portion size, and if you go too far with that people may just choose to eat two.

We may end up seeing new restrictions placed on businesses that make it harder for them to operate and make a living. One that has been proposed in recent years but so far rejected is requiring all food businesses, however small, to provide calorie counts on their products, which could be well-nigh impossible to achieve and drive them out of business. And there’s little evidence that calorie counts actually affect people’s choices. Indeed, in some cases people may choose higher-calorie options as they feel they’re getting more “bangs per buck.” Actually containing less food as such isn’t really much of a selling point.

It’s also likely that takeaways, which are a traditional bête noire of anti-obesity campaigners, will come under fresh assault. There’s no reason why takeaway food should be any less healthy than that eaten in restaurants or cooked at home, and this all too easily comes across as a snobbish condemnation of working-class diets and preferences. Indeed, there’s a strong whiff of class prejudice about the whole project. Clamping down on takeaways will also disproportionately affect ethnic minority communities.

If you look at the actual figures, the higher risk from coronavirus isn’t spread evenly across the whole population of overweight people; it is very strongly concentrated at the higher end. The widely quoted figure of a 37% additional risk applies to those who are morbidly obese, with a BMI of over 40. It’s not people just carrying a few extra pounds. Yet the danger is that the “war on obesity” will mainly comprise indiscriminate, broad-brush measures that affect a huge swathe of the population.

There is a clear parallel with alcohol, where consumption guidelines have been adopted and widely promulgated that tar even pretty light drinkers with the same brush as those with a major problem. Of course morbid obesity, just like alcoholism, is a serious health issue. But it needs to be tackled through a targeted approach, not by making everyone feel guilty. And nobody who enjoys a few drinks but is currently pointing the finger at the fatties should imagine that their pleasure will be left undisturbed.

Last week, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of VE Day. Throughout the whole of human history, it has only really been in the period since then that most people have easily been able to get enough to eat. Worldwide, there are now more overweight people than malnourished ones. This age of abundance is completely unprecedented , and it’s not surprising that the human race is taking some time to adjust. But, over time, it’s likely that obesity will tend to decline. The rate of obesity has already plateaued or begun to fall in most developed counties, and now there is a strong stigma against being seriously overweight amongst higher income groups. In the future that is likely to spread through the entire population.

It has to be questioned what right the State has to seek to control the behaviour of adults purely for their own good. As the great philosopher of liberty John Stuart Mill said, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

Against this argument is inevitably set the burden put on the NHS – and thus on taxpayers – by health problems arising from obesity. But it’s important to remember that the NHS was created to serve the people, not the other way round. The social compact on which it is founded depends on the assumption that people are fallible human beings, not saints, and it will be there for them whatever the cause of their illness. If we start making a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving sick we embark on a dangerous slippery slope. And it should always be remembered that, in terms of whole life healthcare costs, it is actually the clean-living who live into extreme old age who end up costing the public purse more.

So my prediction is that any “war on obesity” started by the government will be largely ineffective, will get a lot of people’s backs up, and will create a whole raft of unintended and undesirable consequences.

Something in the air

With discussion about coronavirus now moving to talk of the programme for unwinding the lockdown, one idea that has been floated is to allow pubs to open their beer gardens, but not inside bars. It’s doubtful how many pubs would find this viable, especially if the customers were expected to adhere to strict social distancing, and in any case it’s likely that, as soon as it was permitted, we would end up with a prolonged spell of rainy weather.

However, this has prompted MP Mark Pritchard to call for restrictions on smoking in beer gardens if it is implemented;

If cafes, restaurants and pubs with outside areas open next week, then new rules on smoking in external public areas should be introduced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. "Outside seating should not be dominated by smokers exposing customers to secondary smoke.”

Not surprisingly, Simon Clark of smokers’ rights group Forest has criticised this demand:

Mr Clark said businesses should be free to choose their own policy on smoking outside.

"Imposing new rules that may reduce the number of customers who are tempted back after the lockdown restrictions have been eased could hinder their ability to get back on their feet," he said.

"If Mr Pritchard has evidence that smoking outside poses a risk to non-smokers he should produce it.

"Smokers should obviously be considerate to those around them, but we don't need more rules to govern our behaviour."

Mr Clark added that in the past Mr Pritchard had expressed a personal dislike of breathing in cigarette smoke.

"It is quite wrong for Mr Pritchard to use the Covid crisis as an opportunity to tackle one of his pet hates, especially when there is no risk to the public."

It should be remembered that smoking continued to be permitted in outdoor areas because it was felt that there was little or no risk to others from environmental tobacco smoke. (The same is true indoors, of course, but that’s another matter). If people don’t like it, that’s up to then, but it seems a warped sense of priorities to be more worried about the risk from second-hand smoke than from coronavirus. There’s also plenty of evidence that smoking actually acts as a prophylactic against the disease.

For most of the year, the only people in beer gardens are smokers, and their tolerant friends, because they simply have no alternative. Then, every year, as regular as clockwork, antismokers see that the sun has come out, emerge blinking into the light, and to their horror find that there are already smokers in the beer garden.

There’s nothing to stop licenses voluntarily choosing to ban smoking in all or part of their beer gardens, if they feel that their business will benefit. But they should remember that smokers, over the course of a year, are the people most likely to use beer gardens in the first place. Can they really afford to lose that trade? Despite the ban, smokers on average still spend more time and money in pubs than non-smokers, presumably because many non-smokers are prissy, health-obsessed people who don’t find pubs attractive in the first place. On cool, overcast days, non-smoking sections of beer gardens are deserted.

If smoking in outdoor areas was to be wholly or partly prohibited by law, it would make it much harder for the pub trade to recover. And what’s the betting that, once imposed, it would never be relaxed again?

Making a rod for your own back?

Although we in the United Kingdom are still awaiting any kind of official announcement, countries around the world are now publishing their programmes for the progressive relaxation of the coronavirus lockdown. Last week it was the turn of Ireland, which has many economic and social similarities. Their lockdown was somewhat more severe than ours, particularly in terms of travel restrictions, and they are proceeding very cautiously, and certainly much more slowly than the Czech Republic, which I reported on a couple of weeks ago. However, arguably any light at the end of the tunnel is better than none, as the sheer uncertainty of its duration has for many been the most stressful aspect of the lockdown.

It is noticeable that pubs and bars will be right at the back of the queue, not being allowed to reopen until August 10th, while restaurants will be able to trade from June 29th. As I have set out it in the past, it’s very doubtful whether such a distinction would be workable in this country, where many pubs effectively trade as restaurants, and many restaurants have identical licences and planning status to pubs.

However, the trade bodies representing Irish pubs have written to the government proposing a set of measures that would allow some pubs at least to open six weeks earlier, as set about below:

At first sight, this seems to strip pubs of most of what makes them attractive in the first place, and has been pooh-poohed by many in the trade in this country. However, they could well be workable for many food-oriented establishments, and for Wetherspoons, who already have a remote ordering app and table service in place ready to go. Surely some pubs being able to open is better than none at all.

On the other hand, there must be a risk that such restrictions, if they prove workable for some pubs, will be kept in place for much longer than six weeks, thus ending up delaying, or even permanently preventing, the remainder from reopening. And there is a question mark as to what extent the trade should get involved in devising restrictive regimes to operate within. Wouldn’t it be better to await government proposals and then respond to them? As I have said before in connection with the Portman Group’s heavy-handed approach to advertising regulation, “If you’re going to be crucified anyway, it’s little consolation that you’ve been allowed to build your own cross.”

Some in the British pub trade seem to have reacted to the lockdown simply by wringing their hands and saying it’s all too difficult. But pubs are going to reopen eventually and, being realistic, it’s highly likely that initially they will have to operate under some restrictions, so it makes sense to plan for that rather than dismissing it out of hand.

It’s hard to see any pubs – or restaurants – being workable under the strict social distancing guidelines currently in operation. But the two-metre rule was something plucked out of the air, rather like five-a-day and fourteen alcohol units per week. It perhaps served an initial purpose, but it’s not really a sensible yardstick to use going forward.

It’s not difficult to envisage a somewhat relaxed social distancing environment under which pubs were required to operate for a period, including measures such as an overall capacity restriction, no standing at the bar (and possibly a post office-style queue for ordering), no more than four people at a table and groups required to be at least a yard apart. Presumably by this time relatives living in different households, and friends, will be allowed to meet socially in small numbers. The issue of toilets which is often raised is a red herring – the risk of transmission from very fleeting proximity is negligible, and no more than that from passing in a supermarket aisle.

And I have to say that in many of my local pubs, at lunchtimes when there’s no football being shown, it wouldn’t really be too difficult for the customers to keep six feet apart anyway.