Well, it's only a modest proposal, and falls far short of the complete repeal of the public smoking ban which I would advocate. But anything that undermines this obnoxious and intolerant piece of legislation must be good, so please sign this petition to allow pubs and clubs to apply for smoking licences.
I can’t help thinking that this article entitled Cask Ale Bouncing Back represents a large dose of special pleading. The overall market for beer is contracting, and within that market there is a continuing shift from drinking in the pub to drinking at home. There is less cask beer being drunk now than at any time in the lifetime of CAMRA. A rising share of a rapidly declining market is scant cause for celebration.
On occasions, such as family social gatherings, I have tried canned versions of premium beers such as Abbot Ale. However, compared with bottles they are always disappointingly lacking in condition. These are not the “draughtflow” beers containing a “widget” (which in my experience always taste like foamy dishwater) but it seems the manufacturers deliberately make them less gassy to try to replicate the feel of handpulled beer in the pub. However, all they succeed in doing is producing something that is just, well, flat.
Yum, yet another post about food!
While we are often told that food has been the saviour of the pub trade, I am more and more coming to believe that it has ruined it. The original purpose of a pub was a place where people could meet and socialise over a few drinks. If they wanted a sit-down meal outside the house, they would go to a café or restaurant. Back when I started drinking in the 1970s, this remained very much the case. Many pubs served food, but it was generally very much a sideline and often confined to sandwiches and snacks. Looking back, it is surprising how many of the high-profile rural destination pubs did not serve evening food at all.
In the mid-1980s, my local pub offered no food on Sunday lunchtimes, and was packed throughout the two-hour session from 12 to 2. Now it’s open all day, majors on set Sunday lunches, and sees fewer customers overall and certainly far fewer casual drinkers.
More and more, pubs have expanded their food trade in an attempt to develop their business. In the process they have encroached on the territory of dedicated restaurants and increasingly sacrificed their original character as pubs. We are left with a strange hybrid kind of business that may superficially resemble a pub but in reality is just a second-rate dining outlet. And of course with food comes “family dining”, and places where you could once enjoy a quiet pint have become infested with howling infants.
I can’t help thinking that it would have been better if pubs and restaurants had gone their separate ways, which would leave us with much more welcoming and convivial pubs, albeit perhaps fewer in numbers, and a better everyday dining experience too. This, of course, is something that remains the situation in many Continental countries.
As I’ve said before, it’s an increasingly rare experience, and one that is to be savoured, to come across a proper pub ticking over nicely and doing what it’s supposed to.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Richard Littlejohn pulls no punches in this scathing attack on the government's plans to reduce the drink-drive limit.
So the much-vaunted advance of pub food has ground to a shuddering halt.
This is hardly surprising, really, considering the overall recession in the pub trade, but it does give the lie to the claims of the antismokers that food would take up the slack from the smoking ban. They forgot that smokers need to eat too!
It's really a subject for another post, but the dismal quality of most pub food must play a part too - although as I see my fellow citizens scoffing the most appalling muck and declaring it "lovely" you do have to wonder whether they would appreciate better quality even if put on a plate in front on them.
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 and effectively cut pubs back to a small rump in urban centres.
After dealing grievous blows to the pub trade through the smoking ban, the hysterical campaign against "binge-drinking", and the savage increase in beer duty, New Labour are obviously intent on finishing the job.
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 reflected in many other people’s drinking patterns. It struck me how going to be pub was, overall, much less enjoyable and interesting than it used to be. There are exceptions, of course, but they are becoming ever rarer.
The licensed trade were widely criticised for making overly pessimistic forecasts about the effect of the smoking ban. However, new figures from Scotland show that pub closures have been running at twice the predicted level.
I wonder where all the non-smokers have gone who were supposed to be flocking to pubs post-ban!
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, however he often talks a lot of sense, as in this piece about the effects of the rise in beer duty (you'll need to scroll down the page a bit).
But the real killer of the boozer is going to be the Government's rapacious accelerator on alcohol taxes, which, as with petrol, means they will rise faster than the rate of inflation for years ahead. It is rubbish to say this is about targeting binge-drinking louts and loutettes: it is about milking respectable people who indulge in one of life's few pleasures. Not enough has been made of this outrage in last week's Budget. The easiest response for brewers is to close pubs and concentrate their activities on supplying the anti-social supermarket trade: I, and many others who like to go to a pub, would rather they organised themselves to wage war on the Government instead. The cynicism and dishonesty of the assault on middle-class drinking habits is disgusting even by Labour's standards: toast its failure today.
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, and indeed will serve to shift drinking away from the controlled environment of the pub. It will also further encourage both legal cross-border shopping and smuggling. It will simply make Britain’s perceived “alcohol problem” worse.
Yesterday I had a trip out to Chester, and was most encouraged to come across three pubs with unequivocal "no children" signs on their doors. All three, needless to say, were buzzing, with a good, lively, adult atmosphere. There are plenty of restaurants and cafés in a city like Chester, so why parents feel the need to take children into a pub is beyond me.
Sadly today it was back to normal in the local, with a four-year-old boy shouting at the top of his voice for an hour. Even if children are admitted, in cases like this we really miss the old-style landlord who would have a quiet word in the ear to say "I'm sorry, but if your lad won't pipe down I really will have to ask you to leave."
Went in what I've always considered to be a fairly decent traditional pub today, albeit one that because of its remote rural location has always been quite food-heavy.
Sign as you go in "Please wait at the bar to be seated". Sadly, not much welcome for the casual drinker there. I had my swift half and left.
Excellent article here from Chris Maclean.
I have a real affection for traditional pubs. Pubs that understand their origins. Pubs that understand their role within their communities. Pubs that preserve and maintain the tradition while others seek short term gains.Well said that man!Give me a proper pub where I can have a conversation with people without the blare of music in my ear or the smell of fancy food.
It is these pubs that need defending. These pubs that cannot be treated as one amorphous lump with the others.
These pubs are special and deserve not only our support but, perhaps as importantly, our respect.
