How refreshing! Someone actually noticed! Peter Oborne, the Telegraph’s chief political commentator.
The smoking ban killed the British pub. This vandalism is Labour’s defining legacy
Some people believe Labour’s defining legacy is Iraq. Others think it is the hunting ban. But the issue which has affected most people and which has damaged the fabric and appearance of British community more than anything else is the loss of the local pub.
The British pub is internationally famous. It is entirely bound with the nation’s history. Yet 26 are closing per week – more than 1,000 a year – changing the look of the nation. Town and countryside are littered with pub corpses, boarded up and often awaiting permission for conversion to flats or houses.
And it is not as if something else has come along to bring communities together. Instead, people sit in front of their televisions. This terrible process started with the ban on smoking. Labour was warned that it would result in pub closures, but went ahead regardless. The people it was supposed to protect – the bar staff – have suffered catastrophic job losses as a result (though this is rarely noticed, as so many bar staff are non-unionised, cash-in-hand foreigners). Labour knew this would happen…
In the comments underneath, there was plenty of agreement, but also plenty of disagreement. Others blamed cheap supermarket booze, or rapacious Pubcos, or changing mores.
Why do so many people (not all of whom can be pathological liars) think the smoking ban was caused by more or less anything but the smoking ban?
It’s not just non-smokers who think this way. A few months after the ban came in, and the pubs had emptied, I got talking to a couple of smokers outside the River in Devon.
“Quiet these days here, isn’t it?” I said, expecting them to pin the blame on the smoking ban.
Not a bit of it. “Nobody’s got any money,” they replied. And perhaps they didn’t.
To me it seemed obvious. I’d stopped going unless it was sunny. And a lot of other smokers I knew had stopped going too. So I wasn’t a bit surprised when pubs started going bust.
But for the 75 – 80% of the population who were non-smokers it probably wasn’t obvious at all. After all, they were being told that the ban was a great success, particularly with the majority of smokers – who actually enjoyed standing outside in rain and sleet and snow.
So when they started noticing that the pubs had got a bit quiet, they started casting round for some other explanation. Couldn’t be the smokers, because they were quite happy, and you still saw plenty of them, cheerfully standing outside.
Also, you could no longer tell, inside a pub, who was and who wasn’t a smoker. So why suppose that there were any fewer smokers than before?
It didn’t help that most smokers stopped talking about the ban a few weeks after it came in. They all hated it, but they didn’t want to talk about it. And that meant that non-smokers didn’t get to know how they actually felt about it.
And there was also a curious blindness on behalf of landlords and bar staff. One sunny day, about a year after the ban had come in, I ordered a snack at the bar of the River before vanishing outside with my beer.
“I’ll bring it over to you when it’s ready,” the bar girl said.
A bit surprised, I asked, “Where do you thinking I’m sitting?”
“Why, in the corner, where you always sit,” she replied.
“I haven’t sat there for over a year,” I said. “I always sit outside now, down by the river.”
She simply hadn’t noticed. In her mind, I was still sitting in the corner. Nothing had changed.
Anyway, determining what causes pubs to go bankrupt is a bit like determining what causes lung cancer. Probably cheap supermarket booze and rapacious pubcos and credit crunches all did have some effect. But losing many of your best customers overnight seemed to me to be the most glaringly obvious explanation, as smokers stayed home and stopped spending.
Frank Davis 
That’s what I did or drove 50 miles,then I said to hell with it and moved to where I was driving to have a social life. Bans be damned I moved for freedom and I fightem everyday to retain that freedom as do all of us.
Frank, I think someone, maybe Chris Snowdon, someone did an analysis of that “cheap supermarket booze” thing and showed it to be pretty false using year to year graphics/tables and matching it up against ban implementations. I’ve always felt that the stink about that was **TOTALLY** a creation of the Antismokers trying to hide the destruction they caused. It’d be nie to have that well-analyzed and publicized if such is indeed the case.
– MJM
In the first year of a smoking ban, the damage is less pronounced. Pubs are unlikely to close straight away—most can at least make it through the first winter. The exception here is Ireland which saw a large number of closures straight away (7.3%). Since the Irish economy was positively booming in 2004/05, this cannot be attributed to the wider economy. It would be interesting to see data for previous years.
What this report shows is that England’s rate of pub closures in 2008/09 (4.9%) was very similar Scotland’s rate of closures in 2007/08 (4.6%). Likewise, Ireland’s rate of closures in 2007/08 (11%) was virtually the same as Scotland’s rate of closures in 2009/10 (11.1%).
In other words, each country is experiencing the same phenomenon to almost exactly the same degree but in different years. The only plausible explanation for this time-lag is the implementation of smoking bans. When you look at closure rates in the context of when each smoking ban was introduced, the data fits like a glove.
It also fits all the other evidence. It fits what publicans have been saying:
The readers’ poll showed 77% of licensees think that trade has suffered as a result of the ban. Almost two thirds (63%) say business is worse than expected, and 72% predict a “challenging” or “very challenging” outlook for their business. Three out of five licensees said they had let staff go or reduced their hours. In addition, 73% want the ban lifted.
It fits what market analysts have been saying:
Pubs have sold 175 million fewer pints in the past year as a direct result of the smoking ban, according to market analysts AC Nielsen.
It fits what pubgoers have been saying:
There’s no need for any fancy statistical analysis of trends over time. Just ask the customers.
It fits what the share prices of the Pubcos have been telling us:
You’ll notice that the collapse of the share price began almost on the dot of July 1st 2007. Recession? No—that didn’t start until October 2008, by which time the company had lost 75% of its value. Supermarket booze? ‘Twas ever thus. Bad management? Perhaps, but the story is the same for all the pub companies.
It fits what economic theory predicts will happen when a externality is imposed on a business; it fits what the pub industry did predict would happen; it fits what has happened in other countries, in other states and in other cities.
The only thing it doesn’t fit is the rhetoric of anti-smoking groups like ASH:
“Smoke-free polices are not only good for health, they are good for business. Evidence shows that in countries where smoke-free laws have been introduced, trade has generally increased.”
Amanda Sandford, ASH, 2003
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2010/09/ban-damage.html
Adding to this, I would like to mention my own personal experience from a remote community in the Highlands of Scotland. This community has two hotels and each has a public bar and lounge bar. Now when I lived in the area in the 90s both bars in both hotels would be rammed on a Friday night, and I mean rammed! Move forward to 2006, one year after the smoking ban was brought in in Scotland, and I have returned on holiday to visit friends and family that remain in the area.
First place I go to on a Friday was my favoured of the two haunts only to find it absolutely dead. Maybe it had fallen out of popularity. Quick drink and on to the second venue only to find that the public bar was lights out and locked! Now that was a huge surprise to me as I had never known the public bar to be locked at any time except outside of licenced hours. Quick walk round the hotel to the lounge bar to find that there were only two other people in there (and they turned out to be residents). We doubled the numbers in there that night.
I fell in to conversation with the barman about how quiet both hotel bars were and his immediate response was that it was down to the smoking ban. It seems that practically overnight the bars emptied and the punters never returned. They had tired everything, live music, quizzes, karaoke etc. but still no one wanted to come.
In this case what points to the smoking ban being an epic fail for businesses is that in this location there is no where else to purchase alcohol conveniently. You either drink it on the premisis or you get a carry out. People it seemed were turning up to get their carry outs then going home to drink it and smoke in comfort.
I have no doubt that if it wasn’t for the fact the establishments were primarily hotels and their carry out sales had increased then they would have already closed.
I fell in to conversation with the barman about how quiet both hotel bars were and his immediate response was that it was down to the smoking ban.
Funnily enough, that is what I was told in a Bavarian hotel not long ago. And their draconian smoking ban was introduced only in 2010.
Do the Bavarians like the ban?
The fact that this highly adventurous youngster Frankenberger who gave his name to lobby the smoking ban, had since introduction of this ban car ashtrays emptied on his door step and is by now banned from entering almost every pub in his home town, speaks for itself.
I lived in Onich, near Ballachullish, for a few years, and have a VERY similar story to tell…. so I won’t.
Suffice to say, we COULD be talking of the same village.
I think you’re right. But surely cheap supermarket booze must have accounted for 1% of the loss of trade?
Yes, of course when money is tight people will buy their booze at the cheaper supermarket prices, but supermarkets didn’t drop their prices suddenly in July 2007.
I would have to agree – “cheap supermarket booze” had little, if not NO, impact on pub closures.
When I came to England there was this thing called “North-South divide” when it came to jobs and unemployment figures.
Even though my flat mates introduced me to the concept of home brewing, we still scraped enough cash together to spend the evenings in the local pub. So did everyone else. Pubs were packed and if you got there after 9 pm there was no chance of getting a seat.
These days you go to a pub and you can choose which table/bar stool you wish to sit down on. But then, it does not matter. Smokers just don’t go to pubs anymore. And the ones that occasionally do, usually leave pretty early.
I can say Ive never had a guilty feeling about laying waste to the Nazis anytime or anywhere.
But after its all over can we even begin to forgive the bastards…………..NOT A FLIPPIN CHANCE IN HELL!
I have left a post on Toby Perins MPs blog pointing out than on the beer duty debate not one MP mentioned the smoking ban as a cause of pub closures – not one!! He was not an MP when the smoking ban was voted in , so he can’t be blamed for it. My post is still awaiting moderation.
Fredrik, MPs are, and will continue to be, in denial about the real reason for pub closures because on the one hand the only information they get is from the likes of ASH, who of course tell them that everybody just loves the smoking ban, smokers included, and on the other hand, having been the instigators of the ban, they refuse to admit that they got it horribly wrong.
But did they get it horribly wrong, or “horribly right”? The assumption regarding getting it wrong is that they acted badly but in what they perceived to be the best interest of everybody. Some, myself included, suspect they knew full well what the outcome would be and that it is/was part of a deeper, hidden, policy to intentionally destroy not just pubs but also the wider social/drinking culture.
You may well be right. The only thing that dissuades me from that version of events is that I honestly don’t think that they (MPs) are bright enough to have foreseen the outcome. That doesn’t mean, however, that the manipulators behind the scenes didn’t know what would happen. I try not to be a tinfoil hatter, but I have a deep suspicion that the unseen directors of global policy would have been very clear about what the smoking bans would engender. And they would be working through their ‘useful idiots’ in ASH et al. I think the MPs are merely incidental instruments in the larger game plan, pawns on the international chess board, as it were.
I’ve just left a comment on Perky’s blog too with a link to this: http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/new-study-finds-no-link-between.html
I think the reason that MPs continue to be in denial was summed up by Lord Browne today:
From the BBC
“Fear of being given a “public beating” when things go wrong is preventing government ministers learning from their mistakes, Lord Browne has said.
The former BP chief – who is now a leading government adviser – said ministers had to pretend “everything is a success”.
“Therefore no learning takes place – that is not right because it just cannot be,” he told an event in London.””
The problem for MPs is that they have to save face somehow.
From the BBC
“Fear of being given a “public beating” when things go wrong is preventing government ministers learning from their mistakes, Lord Browne has said.
If you can’t take a beating (and hit back!) don’t put yourself where you are most likely to get one. Common sense, really.
The problem for MPs is that they have to save face somehow.
There is a difference between MPs speaking their mind with respect to their and their party’s politics and an MP that spends a lot of time on the internet googling “private achievements” being assaulted by any newspaper.
The latter are a waste of space and public money – and public trust. Do your JOB in office!!!
Oh, well, public trust…….. That definitely is another death caused by Labour. The Lib/Cons are working on that one good style, too.
Sitting Kills. “As deadly as smoking” : Study
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/01/20/sitting-at-work-for-hours-can-be-as-unhealthy-as-smoking/
I eagerly await a ban on public sitting. Especially in restaurants and bars and of course, in parks (remove those benches), and how about a blanket ban on beaches?
And it is not as if something else has come along to bring communities together. Instead, people sit in front of their televisions.
And therein encapsulates perhaps the chief purposes of the pub smoking ban. Not only are communities further fragmented, along with all the other social engineering divide and rule techniques, but people are watching prolefeed all night (as it’s called in ‘1984’):
And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section—Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak—engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.
I guess you could call the likes of Stock, Aitken and Waterman a “versificator”.
But a total breakdown of society combined with propaganda and junk “entertainment” to numb us proles into submission go a long way to the ‘demoralisation stage’ in bringing down a culture (H/T Yuri Bezmenov, former KGB subversion agent – check him out on YouTube, like I keep saying. He gives away the whole plan. For KGB, read Fabians, Frankfurt School Marxist-Leninist doctrine enacted via Common Purpose and thousands of other fake “charities” who are paid by the Government to “advise” them to destroy us through “facts” and manufactured “public opinion”.
Many people say that recent governments have been using “1984” as an instruction manual and they’re not wrong – that’s why I believe that Orwell, with his connections, knew what was going to happen…
…They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant.
Yes, 1984 finally becomes reality in 2014….
If we continue to take away peoples’ past times, watching paint dry will become an interesting activity.
Even that will be banned because of the fumes. We’ll have to watch raindrops running down the windows…
XX We’ll have to watch raindrops running down the windows…XX
HA! You think the green shite will allow us to still have GLASS!?
Tony Blair: bar worker attempts citizen’s arrest on former PM at trendy Tramshed restaurant
“The Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 gives citizens the right to detain a person whom they believe has broken the law. Mr Garcia is the fifth person who has attempted to make a citizen’s arrest on Mr Blair.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10585280/Tony-Blair-bar-worker-attempts-citizens-arrest-on-former-PM-at-trendy-Tramshed-restaurant.html
Tony Blair’s 10 Years Of Tobacco Control – June 2007
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/75557.php
That amused me, Rose, about the citizens arrest. Can you tell me much about this stuff khat that they’re banning? (I think for no other reason than that other countries have and so the UK’s becoming a bit of a ‘dumping ground’?) I am sorry for the Somalians who like it.
Unfortunately not Margo, but if other countries have banned it, I’m sure we will follow.
XX Can you tell me much about this stuff khat that they’re banning? XX
Normally it acts similar to opiates. A calming effect. BUT(!) When mixed with other drugs, which is more and more the case, they go beserk.
Then it is like PNPs. These lab made things that drive people fucking nuts, and gives them the strength of twenty people because they feel no pain, even when the muscles are over expanded, and would bring you or me down for months in uncontrolable cramps.
Hahahaha, I did read about that today. It entertained me until I got to the point that Bliar still walks free.
XX Town and countryside are littered with pub corpses, boarded up and often awaiting permission for conversion to flats or houses.XX
Or, as here in Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, etc, where the corner pub was just as world famous as those in Britain, conversion into “Kabap shops” run by the very shites (muslims. Probably Wee shi’ites) who had the pubs closed down in “their areas” because they objected to the sale of alcohol.
Now, as “Kebap shops,” they are mostly the ONLY places whereby you can get beer, wine, spirits 24 hours per day! (Plus salmonella in prodigious amounts.)
(OH!!! And as a kind of “P.S”, they are 100% smoking, “Cus iz der kultur innit!”)
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/0001/11/30/study-says-laws-help-people-ban-smoking-cars-and-h/1480771
Jan 20, 2014 · Study says laws help people ban smoking from cars and … then paved the way for more Mainers to voluntarily ban smoking in their cars and homes. …
THIS IS A SMOKING ESTABLISHMENT
The Surgeon General has made claims that cannot be backed up by Proof of actual Harm.
Osha has since stated:
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA.
This establishments seating area is________________________. After formulating OSHA Pels we have determined that it would take on the average 50,000 smokers continuously smoking to meet the lowest level of actual harm from the miniscule chemicals in second hand smoke.
From the SG REPORT 1989 PAGE 80. we find that the chemical composition of Passive smoke is:
About 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a minor amount of carbon dioxide. The volume of water vapor of second hand smoke becomes even larger as it quickly disperses into the air,depending upon the humidity factors within a set location indoors or outdoors. Exhaled smoke from a smoker will provide 20% more water vapor to the smoke as it exists the smokers mouth.
4 % is carbon monoxide.
6 % is those supposed 4,000-7000 claimed chemicals to be found in tobacco smoke. Unfortunately these supposed chemicals are more theorized than actually found as only around 800 chemicals have actually ever been trapped and identified. What is found is so small to even call them threats to humans is beyond belief.Nanograms,picograms and femptograms.
You can be safely assured that after visiting our establishment for 120,000 years to receive an equivalent dose of 20 years of smoking you can still donate your Pink Healthy lungs!
If you work in our establishment for 2400 years even our workers can donate their Pink Healthy healthy lungs too!
Precautionary principle again
Cross the Street!
Caution is great as a political sledgehammer. Carefully formulated, you can ban anything. But this is unreasonable. Here’s what politics should learn from kids crossing the street for ice cream
Something deeply problematic has happened to the environmental conversation, and it could easily end up costing the EU, and eventually the rest of the world, in food security, wealth, well-being and health benefits. It is the ever-increasing abuse of the precautionary principle. From being a smart, simple concept it has turned into a destructive sledgehammer for certain policy agendas.
The original Rio Earth Summit version of the precautionary principle states roughly: if threats could be significant, don’t wait for complete information to avoid cost-effective actions. This is smart, and what we do everyday. If something is dangerous, we don’t wait to have the complete information before we act – if our kids are trying to cross a busy road for ice cream, we don’t wait to forbid it until we have a complete model of all the traffic and a precise estimate of the risk of accidents. We make a quick assessment, and if there is too much traffic, we send them down to the pedestrian crossing down the road, even if they grumble and think we’re being over-protective.
It can’t be condoned
But since then, the precautionary principle has been progressively vamped up or weaponized. It is now being used to say you can’t do stuff unless you can prove it won’t be dangerous (guilty until proven innocent). The problem is almost nothing can be proven to be un-dangerous. What if there is no car in sight on the road? An especially fast car could still mow down the kids as they cross for ice cream. Send them down to the crossing? – still dangerous, as more than 800 pedestrians died on US zebra crossings in 2010. With the abused precautionary principle, crossing the street for ice cream simply can’t be condoned.
http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/bjorn-lomborg/7875-the-abuse-of-the-precautionary-principle
OT. 14 year old Lillymae’s First Solo Glider Flight
It’s her birthday. She casts off from the tow plane somewhere round the 10 minute mark. She’s humming some little tune to herself the whole time, and she’s not even wearing a crash helmet. Mom gives her a big hug when she lands.
Health & Safety would be having fits. They’d probably take her away from her parents. But at least she wasn’t smoking a cigarette or anything really dangerous like that.
Her mother would not have hugged her if she had been found smoking out the window of her bedroom. “Smoking kills”, the mother screeches….
Catch a heat vortex and SOAR with the eagles……………..I took a few glider classes in Floriduh back in the 1980s and then just gave it up. My buddy who I went with went on to become a navy jet fighter pilot on FA-18 HORNETS……………
BTW fighter pilots smoke in the cockpits,the floor is full of butts. They just flip the mask to one side and huff away with 100% o2 flying away!
Antis claim that smoking is the leadibg CAUSE of preventable, pre-mature death.
I wish that the politicians would notice this.
Here, smoking or tobacco use is not ever mentioned.
Deaths: Leading Causes for 2010
(note; USA)
Click to access nvsr62_06.pdf
A very good point, Gary!
if they had added tobacco smoke to the list, we’d demand proof of tobacco use being THE direct cause of death which ‘can-be-prevented’.
(I personally believe that you cannot prevent any ” premature” death – to do so you need to know the EXACT date and time this person would die otherwise!)
There has never been a Death Certificate that states that the primary cause of death was smoking or tobacco use.
Such a thing can not happen.
Smoking might contribute to; but, it can NEVER be the cause of death.
This is American; but, WHO directions are about the same.
Click to access blue_form.pdf
“Instructions for Completing the Cause-of-Death Section of the Death Certificate”
32. PART I. Enter the chain of events—diseases, injuries, or complications—that directly caused the death.
DO NOT enter terminal events such as cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, or ventricular fibrillation without showing the etiology. DO NOT ABBREVIATE.
Enter only one cause on a line. Add additional lines if necessary.
IMMEDIATE CAUSE:
a (Final disease or condition resulting in death)
Due to (or as a consequence of): Sequentially list conditions,
b. if any, leading to the cause Due to (or as a consequence of): listed on line a.
Enter the UNDERLYING CAUSE
c. (disease or injury that Due to (or as a consequence of): initiated the events resulting in death)
For instance:
CAUSE OF DEATH =(line a) Rupture of myocardium
(note: laceration or tearing of the walls of the ventricles or atria of the heart, of the interatrial or interventricular septum, of the papillary muscles or chordae tendineae or of one of the valves of the heart)
Due to= (line b) Acute myocardial infarction
(note: heart attack)
Due to (line c) Coronary artery thrombosis
(note: restricted blood flow)
Due to (line d) Atherosclerotic coronary artery disease
PART II. Enter other significant conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause given in PART I.
(Note: this is where smoking would first show up.)
Then there is:
35.
DID TOBACCO USE CONTRIBUTE TO DEATH?
Yes
Probably
No
Unknown
You forgot to mention the aortal aneurysms…..
The smoking ban didn’t just close the public houses. It closed the Bingo halls, the clubs, and quite a lot of cafes and snack bars. In all these cases, it was not so much the smoke-free requirement that killed off their business, it was the demand that proprietors must provide no seperate shelter or comfort for smokers to retire to.
Yes, it’s refreshing that at last someone has come out in the MSM print and pointed the finger at the foremost reason for the thousands of pub closures, but I fear that it’s too little, too late.
To be honest, I think that the British pub is essentially a doomed species – real British pubs, that is, not ones which have morphed into trendy restaurants or cavernous bars, which don’t qualify as pubs in the true sense of the word. A pub, after all, isn’t just anywhere where you can buy an alcoholic drink, it’s a very specific kind of place where you can buy one, although defining exactly what makes a pub a pub and not a bar or a restaurant-with-a-bar is actually quite difficult.
But no business can survive without customers, or with very few customers, or with customers who don’t spend much money. It’s obvious that smokers, finding pubs now to be unwelcoming and unfriendly places are not likely to be going in as much, but even non-smokers, who in theory shouldn’t be affected by the ban in any way, don’t stay in them as long as they used to. My (never-smoker) OH is a case in point. His “stopping for a pint after work” these days rarely stretches to more than a couple of drinks before he heads off. This isn’t a conscious decision on his behalf, but I’ve noticed it very distinctly over the last couple of years. He just doesn’t seem to want to stay down there for the extra drink or two that he used to in the past if he was embroiled in a good chat with someone. Maybe, with all the interesting people gone, the good putting-the-world-to-rights conversations have, too!
In essence, I think something’s died in the pub world, and when something’s died it can’t be brought back to life again. I actually think that even if the smoking ban were lifted, completely, tomorrow, it’d be too late. There’s too much resentment amongst smokers for them to go flooding back into pubs in the numbers they used to, and even non-smokers now seem to have found other things to do with their time that they prefer – like going home. I’ve only felt this in the last couple of years or so – for the first few years after the ban I tought there was still a chance that pubs could recover if the ban were relaxed. But not now. Quite simply, it’s too late. Those few which have survived may stagger on for a few more years, but after another decade or so, I’d predict that little local pubs as we all know and love them will be as rare as, today, are the kind of real little corner shops that used to pepper the entire country and be found at the end of virtually every residential road but which are now pretty much all converted into houses.
In essence, I think something’s died in the pub world, and when something’s died it can’t be brought back to life again. I actually think that even if the smoking ban were lifted, completely, tomorrow, it’d be too late.
I don’t think we can know in advance what might happen. I didn’t know in advance what would happen when the ban was introduced. And I don’t know what would happen if and when it was lifted.
I think that what you’re saying is that you wouldn’t go back. Leg-iron is the same. But I would go back. And I think that the smokers who still frequent pubs, if only to sit outside in summer, would be more than happy to go back inside. There’d just be fewer of them than before.
XX In essence, I think something’s died in the pub world, and when something’s died it can’t be brought back to life again.XX
Note what happened in the 70s and 80s, where they ripped traditional, and origional Victorian pubs apart, to turn them into fucked up versions of what wankers in suits thought was REALLY meant by the origional builders, and tried to recreate it in plastic and chintz.
Once had a “new” pub open around our way. Big adverts “BIKERS PUB!!!”
Empty.
Then they came around the club houses and asked why.
“WE say when it is a fucking bikers pub, NOT you!!”
So, exactly, you can ot create a pub. A pub develops over decades.
XX defining exactly what makes a pub a pub and not a bar or a restaurant-with-a-bar is actually quite difficult. XX
You know one when you see one.
Pingback: So Long, Peter Oborne | Frank Davis