Pub is the Hub-ris.
John Healey, the ‘Pubs Minister’, has today announced a paltry £4 million in aid for struggling pubs – and a 12 point action plan, which sound remarkably like Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 step recovery plan.
Complaining bitterly that ’40 pubs are closing each week’ loosing the economy ‘millions of pounds’, he is launching ‘Pub is the Hub’ to put a stop to all this…..the crash you just heard was several thousand pub landlords, peacefully drinking their coffee and reading the Morning Advertiser, falling off their bar stools.
Healey says that there are ‘several factors’ that account for the 2,365 pubs that closed last year, putting 29,000 people out of work. Naturally, none of them are the government’s fault.
He wants to increase the ‘range of choice’ for customers. Hollow laughter. Pick yourself up off the bar floor lads, he doesn’t mean that the customers can actually make a free choice as to what they do in your establishment.
Like Smoke. Good Lord No. Though he does concede that ‘the cost of introducing smoke-free legislation’ might just have had some input into the decline of publican’s ability to stay in business.
He means that he wants to give the customers a wider choice of government approved beer.
Another factor worrying him is the increase in Publican’s applying for planning permission to change their designated use to ‘higher value uses such as housing’. This is ‘another reason’ for pubs closing……
Hmmn, Publican’s just upping and deciding to turn themselves into a desirable house for no reason at all, nothing to do with the fact that they are slowly going bankrupt, no connection at all?
What can we do about that? Ah, give the community a greater say in stopping them doing it……
So when you are going bust, the old git at the end of the road who has never set foot in your pub will now be ‘supported by strong government’ to prevent you doing that…quoting ‘Pub is the Hub’ legislation.
Where is that £4 million pounds going? To the Publican’s? Don’t be silly.
£3.3 million of it is going to an organisation called the Plunkett Foundation to support just 50 pubs which will be owned by the ‘community’. The Plunkett Foundation have a wonderous list of worthy fellows and trustees who believe totally in co-operative organisations.
So, Mr Publican, having been driven out of business by no-smoking legislation, drink-driving laws, health and safety regulations, and excessive government taxation on alcohol, the nice shinny new help you have just been offered by the government actually amounts to stopping you selling the pub as a house, and giving millions to a quango to enable the ‘community’ to buy you out at the current value of your worthless pub.
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1
March 19, 2010 at 12:59 -
Sounds about right Anna, but you’ve missed a couple of Politicians’ tricks – how about the publican’s compulsory contributions to the new quango, and that part of the Regulations empowering the local Council to place “Pay & Display” taxation machines in the pub car park? (And to answer any questions about town centre pubs with no car park, then obviously they can be compelled to pay a “Notional Equivalence Parking Balancing Fee.”) Ah, the benefits Government can bring to ordinary lives!
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2
March 19, 2010 at 13:31 -
How come more people don’t see through this sort of thing?
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3
March 19, 2010 at 13:42 -
Labour don’t want large group gatherings in public where they might plot amongst themselves to bring down the government.
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March 19, 2010 at 13:58 -
JuliaM,
They’ve been told it again, and again and again. You have organisations like the BBC who will mix up smoking in pubs with beer taxes and the recession.
The evidence is all there, though. The effect on pub closures in Ireland, Scotland and various states in the US (New York saw bar closures while New Jersey’s gained), the fact that recessions have never done much damage to pub sales in the past and that any landlord you talk to will tell you that the smoking ban did the most damage (as the effect was noticeable quite quickly).
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5
March 19, 2010 at 14:05 -
Brilliant article, Anna.
Healey has obviously been listening very intently at the meetings about pub closures … which he didn’t turn up to.
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March 19, 2010 at 14:20 -
As someone who now rarely ventures into pubs after sixty years of dedicated patronage there are a number of reasons beyond smoking. One factor is expense, the pub corp asset stripping has meant publicans have had to up their prices too high, the other is that in too many customers who only want a pint or two are now no longer welcome. It doesn’t help that most of the menus are composed of fancy factory made junk foods. Add things like amplified sound and uncontrolled kids, then why bother?
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7
March 19, 2010 at 14:39 -
Pub landlords get it in the neck from both directions. As well as being the goose that lays golden eggs for the government, they’re clobbered by the pubcos or breweries that own most of them.
Pub trade papers, last time I looked, have plenty of articles about publicans united into pressure groups against the pubco that owns their pubs. The deals that most landlords are signed up to mean they take all the risks while the pubco can’t lose.
One landlord I know took on a failing pub, turned it round into a flourishing, popular – and award-winning – local, only to have his rent increased in line with the increased takings.
Another bugbear is residents who buy a house near a pub – and this is usually in a conservation area, so fairly up-market – who then decide they don’t actually like living near a pub that’s probably been there for centuries. and seize on every opportunity to complain. The complaints usually amount to nothing more than the fact that they don’t like living near a pub (so why move there?). But there are always local councillors, or would-be councillors, ready to take up their cause and make a nuisance of themselves to the landlord.
Incidentally, it’s not usually landlords (in the peculiar, pub sense of the word) who apply for change-of-use planning permission. It’s the breweries, who stand to make a profit on the sale and cut competition – albeit from themselves – at the same time. -
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March 19, 2010 at 15:32 -
this might be an example of how it could be done when a new labour minister doesn’t get hold of it
http://www.beauchamparms.co.uk/home.php
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March 19, 2010 at 16:57 -
“He means that he wants to give the customers a wider choice of government approved beer.”
I’ll have a Victory Gin instead if that’s ok.
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March 19, 2010 at 17:01 -
“to support just 50 pubs which will be owned by the
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11
March 19, 2010 at 18:38 -
Law of unintended consequences.
Ban smoking in pubs.
All pubs buy outside heaters (to add to the energy already used to keep the inside warm).
Global Warming!
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12
March 19, 2010 at 18:57 -
That’s what ‘we’ get from listening to pressure groups made up of do-gooders who have achieved nothing else in their worthless lives but climb aboard a self-righteous bandwagon for ‘our’ benefit. (point to note: I have yet to meet anyone who can think of my interests better than I can myself) If somebody had told us 20 years ago about the smoking ban and the demonisation of smokers we wouldn’t have believed them. I wonder what current right will next be taken from us? Salami slice by salami slice we as a nation are losing our rights and privileges. Are we really so supine and brainwashed that we will do nothing about this?
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March 19, 2010 at 19:57 -
Ee bah gum thassa reet goodun. Back int’ olden tarms we ad working mans club, the youngun’s wouldna believe it, we ‘ad work in them days!
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March 19, 2010 at 21:46 -
Going by the accounts available on the Charity Commission website The Plunkett Foundation appear to get the bulk of their funding before this, from regional development agencies, a number of Government departments and the Big Lottery fund.
They are a fake charity.
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March 19, 2010 at 23:21 -
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March 20, 2010 at 00:21 -
I don’t understand the attraction of pubs. Once they were smokey and noisy, now they are just noisy and they stink because there is no longer a smell of tobacco to mask the smell of BO and stale farts.
I only ever go to pubs if there is music, or if I am on the road and have no choice. As for food, it is a rare pub that serves anything decent, and if it does, the chances are, the next time you go it’ll be under new management.
There are plenty of pubs to go to. Most of them near me are either puffed up pretentious affairs with nasty food and stale beer, or merely hostels for sad, single old gits who sit forlornly at the bar, nursing a pint and watching Sky Sports. Why should I subsidisze this?
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March 20, 2010 at 07:09 -
Need to align on what we’re talking about here.
We’re not, generally, talking about town centre establishments.
In the small (military) town I live in in rural Hampshire, there are about 5 more ‘drinking establishments’ on the high-street than there were when I moved here 12 years ago.
Half the shops on the high street are now either drinking establishments or bookies.
The cinema is now 2 bars. The old bank next to it is a bar. Three shops on the high-street have been converted, and one underway, not to mention the 6 old-coaching inns that all still trade. Once I hit the top of my road I can pub crawl without having to walk more than 5 yards between drinks all the way to the top of the high street, about a mile.
I admit that three pubs have closed, but they are neighboured by other drinking establishments. And they all closed, at the start of the recession, to be redeveloped. Redevelopment on hold.
Different story when you go round the villages.
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March 20, 2010 at 07:21 -
The Beeb news had a puff piece on this last night – an interview with Healey during which the smoking ban wasn’t mentioned, an interview with a pub customer during which the smoking ban wasn’t mentioned, and interviews with two publicans during which the smoking ban wasn’t mentioned.
You used to have to get very good at spotting the elephant in the room. It’s a lot easier now that it isn’t an elephant. It’s a diplodocus…
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