You've not been to the pub yet have you? The price of creating fear.

So I'm having a haircut, first since February, and chatting to the barber. I've known him since he opened his first barbers over the road from my house about 20 years ago. We were (I suspect like plenty of others) talking lightly about the current pandemic, its effect on businesses and on behaviour.

"So, Simon. You been to the pub yet?"

"Yep, I was there on the first day they re-opened."

The chat continued in this vein - the barber was in the same camp as me but a little concerned about getting caught in a local lockdown (and the resulting closing of his business again). But he confirmed to me a feature of this re-opening - that a lot of people are putting off going back to the pub or out to a restaurant: "going to leave it a bit" seems to be a common response. It is interesting too that this attitude seems to be more prevalent among younger people, the sort who you'd expect to provide the bedrock of business for a lot of pubs and restaurants.

I'd had this sort of conversation with others - Jo who runs The George in Cullingworth said it had been really quiet since they re-opened (we were there for a meal) and the people who I play RPGs with on-line are all mostly in the "I'm not risking it yet" camp. None of these folk are in the "Anybody Going to a Pub is a Terrible Person who Will Bring About a Second Peak" category you witness on social media sites but they all pretty much buy the idea that the second peak is a real, even likely thing, and therefore sitting home for a while longer is the way to go.

Hardly a day passes without another report of a high street restaurant or pub chain going into liquidation, receivership or announcing restructuring. Just today my local paper had two of these - from Bistrot Pierre and the owners of Pizza Express and Zizzi. We've seen pub chains close, restaurants shuttered and fast food groups clobbered. The hope had been that, once we were allowed out to eat and drink, even with the 'social distancing' controls, the result would be a flood of custom for these businesses. It hasn't happened and I fear for the future of many, for the livelihoods of thousands, and for the job prospects of millions.

Twitter though can always be relied on for a unique take on not going out to a pub or a restaurant. I challenged one person who tweeted this from their Cornish holiday let: "(w)ell, we don’t want to go inside pubs or restaurants, so we’ll make our own private bar and eating area for the week". I observed that this seemed to reflect the triumph of fear and would mean pubs and restaurants dying and got this back:


So somebody who isn't ill or affected by this virus decides not to go out for a meal when on holiday because other people might be frightened? And it's like saving the planet (or something). Anyway I asked for an explanation because it didn't make sense for someone who wasn't fearful, wasn't in a risk category and wasn't ill to stay at home to "minimise" their impact.



Got it? If you read the words it is clear that this isn't about compassion at all but about avoiding people whose "lives may be serious(ly) impacted by this virus". You can, if you like, see this as 'love and compassion' but it looks to me like a strange rationalising of what can only be called fear - fear of catching the virus, fear of the 'second peak'. And it is this fear that, right now, presents an existential threat to businesses like pubs, cafes, bars and restaurants plus all people who supply them and the jobs of people who work in them.

If we want a high street left, if we want the local pub to stay open, if we want seaside cafes and country inns, then at some point we have to stop being scared witless at the prospect of either getting the virus or creating this much talked of 'second peak'. What we see though is inconsistency everywhere - from ministers, oppostition, media and public bodies. The roadside is still brightened by flashing signs telling us to stay at home, local councils issue portentious press statements about how it's not safe out there, and ministers flip flop between get back to normal and don't go out if you don't have too it's bad out there. All urged on by opposition and media more interested in news ratings or opinion polling than the future of high street businesses, pubs, bars and restaurants.

I write this, not to have a go at those who fear going back to the pub, but to get across that our leaders - public, business, cultural - need to step up and start getting people to reassess the basis of their fears. The personal risk from the virus is very small right now (not nothing and the thing hasn't burnt itself out) especially if you are young and healthy, but near every public pronouncement is couched in terms designed to reinforce the heightened level of worry and fret created to ensure high levels of compliance with lockdown and social distancing. Until officials, ministers, councillors and media folk start saying it's safe - or at least that your chance of getting infected with the virus is very small and the chance of you being very ill with it smaller still - then we'll continue to see people opting for a rickety table and some canvass chairs on a patio rather than a little local restaurant or the corner benches in the pub round the corner. And that restuarant and the pub may just end up going bust.

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Quote of the Day: Back to the Pub

The Fleece, Cullingworth - a Proper Pub

From the Old Curmudgeon:

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.

So true, so true. There is an overlap between the beer enthusiast and the pub fan but it's an overlap that exists because pubs sell beer not because the sort of person who buys sample trays or overhopped IPAs in thirds, and take all night drinking them actually likes the pub. The Proper Pub (as Old Mudgie calls them) doesn't sell beer like this and doesn't think that it its business. No, the Proper Pub sells beer in straight pint glasses - as beer writer Pete Brown put it:

"I realise the importance of the pint glass itself. It's the perfect vessel, the ideal amount. You know that there is enough for you to take a long, indulgent pull to clear the dust and cobwebs from the back of your throat and cool you down, and still have a satisfying amount left to savour more slowly after this initial greedy rush."

This comes at the end of Brown's book where, having talked about all sorts of beer, he sits down with a pint of lager. Not special, not expensive, just a pint of lager.

And this, as Old Mudgie describes, is the problem: a certain sort of person sees a middle-aged, working class bloke sitting at a fake wood table in a brightly lit boozer and instantly turn into a raging snob.

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I miss the pub

How it feels without the pub

The pub is what its name stems from – a public room. It is a place to buy alcohol of course but for so many people it’s a place of connection. It’s a place where, if you live alone, you can go there and meet friends for a convivial chat about the match, or politics, or whatever takes a fancy. If you don’t meet a friend you can still sit at the bar and enjoy the presence of others around you. For so many, it is a refuge from loneliness and something to look forward to at the end of the day.

I don't have loads of friends. If you said "name ten close friends", I'd struggle to complete one hand full. 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.

There's a lot of talk about how we're going to be in a "New Normal", no specifics just hints of new controls and restrictions. The promise of more petty fussbucketry built on the back of a disease that, by the time we're all bashing our heads against the new rules, will be history. Problem is that the nannies, jobsworths and busybodies will be out in force telling us these new rules (often not rules but guidance or advice treated as a rule by these joyless worrywarts) are for our own good. They'll be armed with convenient statistics and an untouchable moral certainty.

I hope that dragging out the reopening of pubs and clubs doesn't result in another bunch of them closing. It'll the ones serving poorer and more isolated communities. The grand ones run by TV celebrity cooks with their huge gardens, playgrounds and all the saloons turned over to dining, these pubs will be fine. The little hobby pubs in the trendy part of the big city will be fine too given they thrive on selling overpriced, overhopped beer to bearded men who drink it in thirds and manage two of these in a visit. No, it'll the remaining street pubs, the place where your working class grandpa played darts, where your dad watched memorable football matches and where today ordinary blokes with overalls and dirty boots arrive early doors for a pint before heading home, where the quiz, karaoke and psychic evening pulls in all sorts later on.

These are the places you go to wet the baby's head, to remember departed friends or family after a funeral, and to celebrate or comiserate after the cricket or football game. We keep being told by MPs and other grand folk that the pub is the "heart of the community", petitions are signed, motions passed and letters written (but not enough beer drunk - which is why they're closing). Yet those community hearts disappear, keep dying. On estate after estate, in village after village, on the edges of towns, on lost high streets the pubs are vanishing, memories captured in a house named "Royal Oak" or the old bloke telling you that curry takeaway was a pub once upon a time.

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.

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Soho is Britain's unhealthiest place? Jeffrey Bernard would be pleased!

Look how unhealthy it all is - drinking, eating. Shocking.

I don't know where the quote comes from but, as kids, we used to exclaim "give me temptation, brother" when confronted with something especially lovely - cream cakes, ice cream, warm pork pie. It would seem that the irresistible nature of these temptations - fast food, pubs and assorted other dens on iniquity - is the main reason for the UK's health inequalities:

Soho is the unhealthiest place to live in Britain...

I can hear a gentle chuckle from the grave of Jeffrey Bernard, legendary Soho denizen, at this shocking revelation - as Jeffrey put it:

"I've always been drawn to the things I was told not to do. Drink, sex. God! how I have loved sex and racing. They're against the rules and that's why I like them. I never liked anything that was good for me, like All-Bran and fresh air. I like the things that kill me."

So it is with Soho. But not, apparently, apparently with Great Torrington in north Devon. Probably because there's precious little to do (certainly in the category of "things that kill me") in Great Torrington. That being said, Torrington is a lovely little market town, especially if you like buying the crystal glasses in which to serve your champagne or malt whisky.

After Great Torrington, the remainder of the healthy places are in further flung parts of rural Scotland, not a thing to inspire folk who like a good time. Meanwhile, the really unhealthy places are mostly in central London. So how did the researchers arrived at the ranking:

Researchers analysed a range of lifestyle and environmental measures including levels of air pollution, access to amenities such as fast food outlets or pubs, and proximity to health services including GPs in addition to parks and recreational spaces.

It probably isn't so surprising that London fares poorly - it's densely populated, as a large city inevitably has poorer air quality than wide open Devon countryside, and - especially in the tourist magnet of the West End - is rammed full of pubs, bars and restaurants.

But why - given all the stuff about the 'heart of the community' and so forth - do these researchers cite the presence of pubs as an indicator of a place being 'unhealthy'? I'm guessing that the continued lie about drinking - any drinking - being bad for you sits at the heart of all this. The good news, despite the new puritans' best efforts to get them all closed, is that most people are still reasonable close to their nearest pub:

...on average, individuals in Great Britain are just as close to a pub or bar as they are to their nearest GP, 1.1 km [0.68 miles]

If we're talking about community then, frankly, having a pub people might visit once or twice a week is a darned sight more important than a GP surgery they might visit twice a year. And at least with pubs you can walk in when you need it rather than having to negotiate a complicated, unfriendly and unresponsive appointments system.

Our researchers (surprise, surprise - this is public health fussbucketry at its finest) also have an issue with gambling. They're shocked that most people live within "a short drive) - I'm surprised they're not agitated about folk having to drive there - of a betting shop.

What the research really shows is that things like fast food outlets, betting shops and pubs are more concentrated in densely populated urban areas. They also observe that lots of rural areas have a really lousy (on top of the deranged appointment systems and unfriendly hours beloved of GPs) access to primary heath care.

The premise for these researchers appears to be that the very presence of these bad things makes people ill. Unfortunately for our fussbuckets, either they don't make people ill or else people are resisting the temptations of booze, burgers and betting shops. The male life expectancy for Westminster (home to glorious Soho) residents is 81.4 years whereas those Great Torrington chaps down in North Devon peg it on average at a mere 79.4 years.

So it would seem that the effect of all that unhealthiness - pubs, bars, casinos, late night kebab shops and so forth - has precisely zero effect on the health of local residents. The research we're being sold here as "...an important tool for citizens and policymakers alike..." is pretty much useless as a guide to whether or not the environment in which people live is healthy (Shotley Gate, the little town across the estuary from Harwich gets fingered for unhealthiness which seems to reinforce the arbitrary nature of the model - I use this term loosely - adopted by the researchers).

And while we're about all this - central London lacks parks? Have these people never been there?

The green bits are parks. Massive parks. Soho is the redlined box.

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Scrap the duty on cask and keg beer sold in pubs

I called on a local publican (business not pleasure on this occasion) to talk about some issues with his pub. It will come as no surprise to anyone (except perhaps the idiots in public health) to know that the pub in question, a wet-led pub, is struggling - takings have halved as people drink less and when they do, drink at home. It's not so long ago when you could walk to the local with a tenner and come home an hour or so later, suitably oiled, with change.

Meanwhile politicians, locally and nationally, babble on about how pubs are the heart of the community, places to be celebrated, supported and encouraged. Or so the rhetoric goes. The problem is that it's just that, rhetoric. For sure, politicians have done idiotic things like make every pub in Otley an "asset of community value" in the silly belief that this is somehow going to help them stay in business. None of this, however fine it sounds, does anything to sell more beer and, in case all my fellow politicians have forgotten, selling beer is what pubs are for.

We can't do anything about changing consumer habits - if, for reasons of health or taste, people drink less beer the chances are that the places selling beer will struggle. But we can and should stop putting barriers in the way of those beer selling places - pubs - succeeding. Britain has the highest beer taxes in Europe. We've banned smoking in pubs. And a host of petty regulations add cost to marginal businesses. All before we get to talk about rapacious pubcos (the pub I visited isn't owned by one of these) and other popular excuses for the decline in the pub.

Right now, the best thing we could to for these vital community assets would be to scrap beer duty for keg and cask beer on-sales. This wouldn't eliminate the price differential between a pint in a pub and a pint in a supermarket but it would level the playing field sufficiently to give the remaining wet-led pubs a fighting chance of surviving. It would be good if pubs were given an option of having a smoking room but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

If we think that going to the local for a pint fights loneliness, promotes community and turns a dormitory into a place then we should do something about it. Gabbling on about "community pubs" and weeping political tears when a pub closes is all most politicians do right now (in between putting out lies and exaggerations about the impact of drinking beer on our health). It's time to put up  - let's scrap the duty on cask and keg beer sold in pubs, let's do something that actually helps pubs for a change.

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The pub, the cafe and the diner - the fraying of social capital

One of the features of society has been the shared social institution. Except this all sounds like some sort of terribly pompous concept in social anthropology. What we really mean is the sort of place that The Fureys sang about in the Red Rose Cafe:

Down at the Red Rose Cafe in the Harbour
There by the port just outside Amsterdam.
Everyone shares in the songs and the laughter.
Everyone there is so happy to be there.

Salesman, poet, dosser, docker, farmer and banker all enjoying the fact that they're sharing something - even something as mundane as a beer or a coffee. And, in a lot of places - perhaps even Amsterdam too - these 'shared social institutions' are dying out. Here's Aaron Renn on one of them - the American Diner:

But there are many other forces at work, including changes in the structure of our society. One thing the disappearance of diners illustrates is the loss of shared social infrastructure spanning across social classes.

Something I’ve always liked about diners is that they are the kinds of places that you could find people from all walk of life. There were cops and blue collar workers, college students, professionals grabbing breakfast, etc. It was the kind of institution that was broadly patronized across social groups.

These kinds of institutions are in decline. There has a been fragmentation of the shared American common culture that existed as recently as 1990 into a multiplicity of niche markets.

I touched on this when I wrote recently about the decline of rural Italy - every village with a tatty little bar at its heart serving up coffee, sweets and the occasional stiff drink. And plenty of people having been variously waxing poetic or raging with anger at the decline in the traditional English boozer. The thing here is not just that these places are going but that there are no new 'shared social institutions' replacing them, no new places that transcend barriers of class and age without it looking forced. Worse still we adopt a snobbishness about blue-collar institutions - either dismissing them as bad places, or else creating pretentious pastiches.

When McDonald's opens a new restaurant round the corner from St Peter's Square in Rome there's an outcry. I mean McDonalds - entirely the wrong aesthetic for such an iconic place. Yet the reality - as the video here reminds us - is that McDonalds is comfortable, welcoming and understood. The same goes for other places - the Pub Curmudgeon writes about those old estate pubs that only sell keg beer and what food they have comes in bags saying 'ready salted', 'salt and vinegar', and 'cheese and onion'. Not the sort of place you and I would ever go to, far too rough and common.

I've a feeling that, in places with fewer places to eat and drink, the sort of social mixing Aaron Renn sees dying in Manhattan still persists. But it's also true that richer folk have become more separated from their lower class cousins - not just the grandees who always lived a sort of sheltered life but all of what we'd call the better off:

There’s also been a gulf that has opened between the consumption and cultural practices of the upper middle class (the top 20% by education and income) and everyone else. They shop in different stores, eat in different restaurants, drink different beers...

I was in a restaurant in Shoreditch recently. Nothing too fancy just a bar-restaurant that has some live music. I joked to my wife that I was the only bloke in the place without a beard. I could also have said that I was the only bloke there over 50. Yet I'm pretty sure that, with a little effort, I could travel a short distance from that bar and find a pub where the reverse would be true - instead of well-off middle class thirtysomethings, I'd find poorer working class fifty- and sixtysomethings.

The problem for that traditional pub is that the agenda - social, political and cultural - is not being set by its customers. The agenda is set by that top 20% Renn refers too - a set of folk who are excited by trendy artisanship when it's done by their mates but not at all excited by the possibility of visiting the sort of place where those working-class folk are going (as an aside, the achievement of McDonalds has been to get beyond this class division despite the best efforts of food snobs to stop them). We tut a little at Wetherspoons, dismiss Pizza Express, and wouldn't be seen dead in one of those steakhouse type places run by regional breweries. But these places - chain restaurants and the like - work.

Does all this matter? And even if it does matter, do we care enough to do something about it? After all there's a little bit of romanticism in the idea of lords and peasants sitting down together sharing a foaming pint of ale. Those shared social institutions didn't remove class barriers but rather they permitted a little bit of understanding to trickle in either direction. And the traditional pub, those Italian cafes and many other such places were the haunts of men with the only women serving beer or filling up coffee cups. This probably isn't true of the American diner but even there we see a sort of rosy folk memory derived from old movies and TV shows more than from the reality (a lot of poor quality food served badly in a dirty environment).

What does matter, however, is that we think a little more about spaces and places where we're able to share something with whoever else is there. And that - like the pub, the diner and the cafe - those places contain the part of our culture that we all share. I've a feeling that those campaigns to save pubs are as much driven by that folk memory, the idea of the pub as the beating heart of a community, than by the reality of the pub being saved - a myriad of Vics, Rovers Returns and Woolpacks where the neighbourhood's shared events are mulled over, debated and laughed about.

There's a tendency to consider that bringing communities together requires some sort of publicly-owned place, yet the reality of cafes, diners and pubs is that they served this role (at least in part) while being straightforward for-profit businesses - and none the worse for all that. And a further tendency - I suspect Aaron Renn falls into this trap in his focus on Manhattan - for us to see the lack of social capital in densely populated cities as somehow the norm when, once we get out into suburbia, this starts to change to the point when we reach the exurbs of small towns and villages as see those very institutions we thought were dying actually thriving.

Yet again the thing that is driving the collapse of these social institutions, that is fracturing brittle social capital, isn't people no longer wanting these things but rather the brutal necessity of urban densification and the rejection of the suburb. Planners, designers, developers and cultural pundits see everything as a stark divide between urban and rural - it's either a city filled with breathless, high velocity living or else a bucolic rural idyll, gentle and somnolent. The death of the shared social institution is its death in the city where people quite literally don't have the time for such things and the nearest we get to such interaction is in the queue at Starbucks - assuming we're not the sort who goes to that really special coffee bar round the corner run by a bloke with a splendid beard.

If we're to have the strong society we always say we want, we need to pay heed to what these changes tell us - the decline of the pub, the cafes that close, the deserted Italian village, all send a message that the bindings of community, the relationships that make society real, are fraying. And on-line messaging, international travel and facetime don't begin to repair the tears in those bindings. We talk a great deal - or those of us in and around local government do - about how everything is local and how we need to build community. Yet the truth of our polity, culture and social approach is quite the reverse, geared to serving the economic needs of the great city rather than the lives of people in those communities.

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Smoking bans - "you've taken away one of the few nice things in the lives of people you've never met."

From Old Mudgie (or his comment section to be accurate):

It is this type of pub that has been murdered by the smoking ban. Not the sort of place that the ban's advocates would deign to visit. Not the sort of area where people talk about hop terroir or food-pairings. But the last community back-bone of already depressed areas where me and my mates would meet for a few beers, a chat and yes maybe a ciggie. Pubs that don't get in the guides, don't get covered by the self-appointed double-barreled beer gurus on the internet. Pubs that provided a meagre living to one or two people who've put their whole life into keeping them open.

The group who've been hardest hit among my acquaintances are working single men, often middle-aged (not a demographic that the crafterati think about very much) for whom the local was often the only social outlet they had. This has led to more loneliness and isolation in this group and, by their nature, they aren't a group that get covered very much.

So as you sit in your smoke-free gastropub commenting on how delicate Pierre manages to get those organic scallops you can rest easy knowing that you've taken away one of the few nice things in the lives of people you've never met.

The smoking ban was unnecessary, illiberal and killed more jobs and maybe people too than it ever helped.

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(Depressing) Quote of the day....

Leg Iron on the smoking ban - and what's to come:

I still laugh like a hyena with a nitrous oxide overdose at every business out there who claims to have a ‘no smoking policy’. No, you have no such policy. You do not have the choice in this matter, you are not allowed to decide. The Righteous have take that decision from you.

You do not decide your own policy. That is not your choice. The option resides with a higher power – your business is now their business. Just do as you are told and act as unpaid smoke police. Suck it up and get used to it, you don’t have the balls to fight it.

Next you will be unpaid booze, salt and sugar police. You don’t have the balls to fight that either. Just get used to it, your business has to pay to enforce it and it’ll ruin you eventually but who cares?

I'd like to hope that this won't come to pass. But it will. Jobs will be lost. Businesses will close. All because of the public health fanatics and the supine media and government that indulges their lies.

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Bars, birth rates and gentle decline - Europe's left behind places

Every Italy village has one of these. This one, Bar Centrale, is in Fontanelice a village in the Bolognese Appenines and it's pretty typical. Go inside and there's a bar (and a barman or waitress) dominated by the obligtory coffee machine and, sitting on the cheap plastic chairs around rickedy tables are a bunch of old men. They probably won't be drinking, it's not an Italian thing really, but may be playing cards, reading Corriere dello Sport or one of the seemingly endless local papers Italy enjoys, and talking in that 'putting the world to rights' way loved of men in bars everywhere.

The wall behind the bar will feature a large poster, maybe framed, of a football team - usually from some victorious season long, long ago rather than the current team. In Fontanelice it was a black and white framed photograph of a Juventus squad from (judging from the hairstyles) some time in the 1970s. I'm guessing that, like bar decor everywhere, it's just there not causing offence but gradually losing both definition and relevance as the years pass by.

Just as for us in England, the pub was the heart of the world, these bars represent that old Italy of community, the shared experience of the place we live. It's true that little Italian towns and villages also have trattoria and even full blown restaurants but the bar, its decor and regulars slowly fading, is the common factor, the thing that every little place has. And I guess that, just like the English pub, these bars are finding times tough. I'd note that the slightly posher place we stayed - Dozza just outside Imola - didn't have a bar of this sort in the old town (an osteria served this function in the evening but during the day there was just the cafe and gelateria in the public park).

There are lots of demographic factors driving this decline - the bars may still be there but for how much longer? The most important though, like a lot of other places in Europe, is that Italians are quite literally dying out:

Italy’s birth rate has more halved since the ‘baby boom’ of the 1960s, with the number of births falling to 488,000 in 2015 – fewer than in any other years since the modern state was formed in 1861.

“If we carry on as we are and fail to reverse the trend, there will be fewer than 350,000 births a year in 10 years’ time, 40 percent less than in 2010 — an apocalypse,” the minister, Beatrice Lorenzin, said in an interview with La Repubblica on Sunday.

“In five years we have lost more than 66,000 births (per year) — that is the equivalent of a city the size of Siena,” the minister added. “If we link this to the increasing number of old and chronically ill people, we have a picture of a moribund country.”

Italy has Western Europe's lowest birth rate - just 1.39 well below the accepted replacement level of 2.1 - which is why you see so few children in these little towns and villages. The wonderful culture of these places - relaxed, welcoming - that us visitors want to celebrate is threatened by this low birth rate. And the result - just as we've seen in Japan - is that villages and small towns depopulate and are eventually abandoned:

The phenomenon is happening across the country, from mountain-top villages in the Alps and the Apennines to tiny terracotta-roofed hamlets in the sun-baked valleys of Sicily and Sardinia.

Nearly 2,500 villages are at risk of turning into ghost communities, with a startling two million homes abandoned or left empty by their owners, according to the report, which was compiled with the help of the National Association of Italian Councils.

We will see this process repeated elsewhere in Europe, at least in places that either don't attract or don't welcome immigrants. And, as we know, the problem with those immigrants is that they arrive without the cultural legacy that might sustain the bar, the cafe and the pub. Moreover they're not heading to those deep rural areas of Europe but to the towns, resorts and cities that provide the work they came here for. In France it's clear:

The visible decline of so many historic city centers is intertwined with these anxieties. Losing the ancient French provincial capital is another blow to Frenchness — tangible evidence of a disappearing way of life that resonates in France in the same way that the hollowing out of main streets did in the United States decades ago. A survey of French towns found that commercial vacancies have almost doubled to 10.4 percent in the past 15 years. As these towns have declined, voters have often turned sharply rightward. Albi is traditionally centrist, but the same conditions of decline and political anxiety are present, too.

Politics aside (although this sense of decline is an important factor in the kick-back against the Great City of the West and its denizens) we're seeing the same problems. A glance at the people walking the high street - older, wearier, less content - in an English provincial town will be matched in France, Spain and in that lovely little bar in Fontanelice. We tend to talk of these people as 'left behind' which is unkind and largely untrue. What we should talk about is how the places themselves are left behind, victims of the ageing population, too few young people, out-of-town shops and the World Wide Web.

In Italy, with a sclerotic economy, high unemployment and Europe's lowest female participation rate (just 37%), the problems are reflected everywhere - in the deathly quiet daytime streets of small towns, in the industrial zones littered with empty factories, rotting teeth in the once mighty bite of Italian manufacturing, and it the desperation of a government offering payments of eighty Euros a month as a 'Baby Bonus' for new mums.

If we're seeking Europe's problems we shouldn't be looking at immigrant ghettoes in Montpelier or Rotterdam, nor should we be screeching about house prices in Central London or Barcelona, rather we should be turning our attention to the left behind provincial places where the things we treasure in our cuture are at their most profound. The slow death of the English pub, the struggles of the French provincial high street, and the decline of the Italian village's cafe-bar - these are what people see and don't understand even if, as we know, they are partly to blame.

International 'anywhere' people - Flat Earthers as geographer Harm de Blij called them - may be right about global trade and business (and my head tells me they are) but when I look at those quiet, backwater places once comfortable and thriving my heart tells me we've got something wrong. And worse that the only people talking about that feeling in my heart are those blaming others - immigrants, foreigners, Muslims, bankers - for the problem rather than looking for a way forward. If this doesn't change, if the Flat Earthers continue to see the Great City of the West as the answer, then Europe and America's political divisions will only worsen and deepen.

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Scribblings - on pubs, snooker, loneliness and the curse of time

I don't know about you but I think pubs are pretty important. Mostly because they sell beer and people I like go there but also because these things are central to English culture. A while ago the Joseph Rowntree Foundation conducted a study in the South Pennine village of Denholme (which for the record has a fantastic pub - one of the best - called the New Inn) that looked at loneliness. For all that this was a good study - I've blogged about it a couple of times - Old Mudgie reminds us that the pub is a sovereign remedy against being alone:

Until various illnesses put it beyond him, my late dad used to go out for a pint or two at lunchtime a couple of days a week. My mum would ask “what’s the point of that if you never talk to anyone?” but that is missing the point. If nothing more, it provides a change of scenery, a bit of mental stimulation and something to look forward to. Sometimes you exchange a bit of conversation, other times all you do its talk to the bar staff, but anything’s better than nothing.

And our resident pub grump went on to suggest that maybe pubs need to think about design and layout - perhaps to better allow the chance of interaction between those like his Dad on their visits. It's a pity (and I blogged about this too that the smoking ban gave people - men mostly - an excuse never to leave the armchair in the shed).

This neatly takes us to pub games on the telly - snooker and darts mostly - and Frank Davis's gentle rant about how the presentation of these sports has been sanitised. No longer do we see Bill Werbenuik downing a pint a round or Alex Higgins inhaling 20 Bensons during a match:

But what really made it popular were the cast of characters it introduced to the world. And none was more flamboyant than two-times snooker world champion Alex Higgins. If any single person made snooker popular, it was him. And he was a bad boy. He picked fights with people, and threw TV sets out of windows, and got fined and banned. And he’d sit in his chair by the snooker table drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.

The smoking bit was finished by the ban but I can't see - other than wanting to make snooker even more dull than it is already - why players can't drink. Indeed Bill Werbenuik famously drank enormous quanitites of booze so as to correct a tic that affected his game.

In the end the deal here is how we spend our time. And, as you all know I hope, the 'protestant work ethic' shtick needs putting to bed. It's not that when we commit to doing something, we shouldn't put in the effort to do it well but rather that we're not put on this earth to slave our guts out putting food on the table, clothes on out backs and a roof over our heads. Or if you're not a fan of the god stuff - that stuff used to be the fate of man (and it remains so for many millions in the world) but technology, specialisation and the wonders of neoliberalism have made it possible for us to spend a little more of that time of the things we get pleasure from.

That's when we get to grips with time maybe?

Since Einstein we have come to realise that everything is relative. Place a clock in a space craft and whisk it away at close to the speed of light and the on board clock would keep different to time to an identical clock placed in my study. Actually the clock in my study hasn't worked for years but I'm too damn idle to change the battery. Thus it seems that time, and everything else for that matter, is simply a problem of perspective; a relationship to a frame of reference. This is not to say that 'time' does not exist. In fact Einstein believed in the concept of time, but a time married to the universe. His concept of time could only exist within the reference of space-time and could not be divorced and act as an independent entity.

Got that? Not sure whether this explains how slowly time passes when your team's a goal up with five minutes to go. Or how quickly time goes when you've a 12 noon deadline for a funding application. But as they say time waits for nobody.

Might as well party then!

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Scribblings VI: Old lags, metaphysics, arts funding, pubs and public health

Trying to keep up with assorted Scribblers is challenging and this is a selection that tries to avoid stuff about the US Presidential Elections, Brexit and the leadership of the Labour Party. Not that these things are unimportant but that they've a tendency to crowd out other stuff that's just as interesting (and maybe important).

On the latter point, this post from Anna Raccoon is definitely important - what do we do with elderly and ill (even terminally ill) prisoners?

The number of older prisoners in the UK has more than doubled in the last decade, with the greatest increases amongst those over 70. Around 40% of older prisoners are sex offenders, many of whom are in prison for the first time due to historic abuse. Longer sentences and more stringent release criteria mean that increasing numbers of ‘anticipated deaths’ in prison are predicted.

Fascinating - especially the issues with painkilling drugs (most of which are, from a different angle, narcotics).

Meanwhile the Flaxen Saxon is getting all metaphysical:

Philosophers as far back as Plato (see the allegory of the cave) have reasoned that what we perceive is not reality. With the advent of computers and especially the stupendous increase in computing power, we have to ask ourselves- are we part of a huge computer simulation? Sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? Perhaps, but there are serious professional physicists and philosophers out there who consider the concept not only plausible, but likely. And no, these folk are not inmates of a secure mental health facility, they are, in the main, tenured academics.

As I commented on the blog - all reminds me of Brian Aldiss's 'Report on Probability A'. Which rather takes us to that age old question as to whether we can, in the manner of Azimov's 'psychohistory' break everything down into equations, algorithms and metrics. As Demetrius asks in talking about arts funding:

So many of us ask for the arts to have some funding and support to ensure their survival and continuance in a difficult world. Now it seems that this can only be if extensive management is applied to the distribution and assessment of those which are being assisted.

Having just re-read Yevgeny Zamyatin's 'We' (written in 1921 as a critique of Taylorism but banned by the Soviets as it applies as well to Scientific Marxism) it's clear that this breaking down of everything into numbers and measurements remains a challenge to civilisation.

Indeed there's a part of this problem displayed in the endeavours of public health to use science to promote their rather joyless ideology of wellbeing. And both Frank Davis and Paul Barnes pick up on this. First Paul on Stop Smoking Services (SSS) and e-cigs:

This is where I begin to have a niggly problem with SSS. I don’t knock the work they do, but nine times out of ten when a positive article appears in the press there is always this cessation approach – the “they can help you quit smoking” – type line. Broadly speaking that statement is true, but e-cigarettes are substantially more than just a bloody quit aid.

And Frank on 'junk food':

My conclusion is that “junk food” is perfectly good food, but “disapproved food”. It’s food that’s been labelled as “junk”, and most likely libelled as “junk”. And there is no rhyme or reason for this disapproval, much like there is no rhyme or reason for the disapproval of everything else the disapprovers disapprove.

Only approved pleasures are allowed, citizen!

But we like pubs, of course. Pubs are about community - wholesome, clean, caring community. And we should save them. Old Mudgie takes issue with this simple mantra as promoted by Greg Mulholland MP:

Now, I recognise that pubs can have a value as community resources that transcends narrow financial considerations, and that ACV listings, if properly applied, can give them a valuable stay of execution if they are threatened. I’d also support pubs being given protection from being turned into shops or offices without needing planning permission, subject to a reasonable minimum time limit of trading as pub.

But it has to be accepted that society changes and moves on over time, and that most of the current issues around planning and redevelopment are symptoms of the general decline in the demand for pubs, not its cause.

The idea - as Mulholland has promoted in Otley - that every single pub (there are over 20 in Otley) merits protection is hard to defend. Helping locals save the only village pub is a great idea but using planning and regulation as a stick to beat PubCos really won't work if the pub isn't viable in the first place.

Perhaps, if we're concerned about community, we need to ask about how councils, police and fire services are stopping local events unless they pay up or provide their own security (at great cost). Here's Julia:

So....what's happened here is the council get to shrug their shoulders and say 'Toree cutz, mate, innit?' Because that's easier than changing the event into something more manageable.

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Scribblings II: On pubs, smoking bans, perdigree dogs, political donations and Brexit

We're back with another dose of great writing from Martin Scriblerus bloggers. I did get called out for calling it 'scribblings' - but what else could I choose! Well here we go:

There are a lot of beer bloggers who talk about beer. Old Mudgie talks about pubs and his blog is a paean to their wonders, a wistful look at the memories of pubs gone and a poke at those who get too precious about beer. Here's he looks at why old pubs just sit empty:

Assuming the building has no future as a pub, it is going to cost money to convert it to anything else, and that will need both someone willing to take it on, and planning permission. In many cases, the owners are probably hanging on to get planning permission to demolish the building and redevelop the site for something else, typically housing.

Up and down the country, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of derelict pubs that have been in that state for years, many of which are featured on my Closed Pubs blog. Fortunately there aren’t too many in Stockport, but two exceptions are the Royal Mortar on Higher Hillgate and the Bow Garrett on Brinksway, both of which must have been closed for over ten years.

Dick Puddlecote, when not running some sort of transport business, writes passionately about the fussbuckets - charmless, judgemental folk who hate us having pleasure. Here he cites a fellow 'jewel robber' (and he calls those challenging the anti-smoking, temperance and diet fanatics) and comments that:

This is what happens when you have a colossal state-funded machine which views life solely through the lens of health. Other pleasures and benefits in consuming the products in question are completely ignored, therefore the prohibitionists simply cannot comprehend the huge social and financial damage their rancid policies are causing ...

Julia has been a loud, uncompromising and essentially conservative voice in the blogging world for a long while. Here's a typical sample of her blogging as she comments of a story about a lefty who bought a pedigree dog - first the quote from the story:

"...Colleagues and friends have accused me of abandoning my longstanding centre-left principles in favour of eugenics, arrivisme and trying to suck up to the ruling classes..."

Then...bang:

Might I suggest you find new colleagues and friends? It should be quite easy, now you have a puppy!

Brilliant!

Mark Wadsworth is best known for writing about land value tax but he's not a one-trick pony and here's a cracking post about donations to political parties (that may or may not be a good idea):

...it has been suggested that parties should either be funded out of taxation or there should be a cap on the amount each donor can give.

I don’t think either of those two are satisfactory, and would like to suggest another alternative. Legislated anonymous donations.

Anyone wishing to donate above say £500, would have to send their cheque to the Electoral Commission nominating to whom it should go. Once a year, those donations would be passed on to the relevant party aggregated and without the names of the donors.

Raedwald's another blogger who takes few prisoners and doesn't bow to political correctness. Here he compares a map of 7th century East Anglia to the devastating effect of ice caps melting on the region:

The Indie prints a map of how East Anglia could look if the giant ice sheet did melt; it's exactly the same as the historic Anglian coastline in the 7th century.

Finally -for this week - Frank Davis compares the experience of Remain voters after Independence Day with the shock smokers like Frank got on 1 July 2007 when they were banned from pubs:

But for those who voted to remain, their experience that day was probably one of shock and dismay and disbelief. They are probably feeling something very like what we smokers experienced on 1 July 2007. For they also had just been expelled from a club in which they had come to believe that they were full members – just like smokers and their pubs. They had become exiles. Their world had been turned upside down. They are probably filled with the same disbelief and rage as many smokers were on 1 July 2007.

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Why pubs (and publicans) matter

Many years ago I trained as an agent in the Old Bexley & Sidcup (member one Edward Heath) constituency. The full time agent, Tom Jolly, used to organise what he called 'opinion former' events - inviting certain groups to meet Heath, listen to him and have the opportunity to raise questions. There were three groups Tom focused on - doctors, vicars and publicans. This isn't a random or arbitrary selection but one driven by the belief that these three sets all speak to a lot of people and that their opinion is given more credence than that of others. The aim wasn't to have the doctors, vicars and publicans act as mouthpieces for policy but rather for them to say "Heath's OK, when I met him last week...".

Now it's true that there are a lot of pubs (although far fewer than there were before politicians started mucking around with the industry through beer orders, smoking bans and a mountainous duty on beer) and MPs can't spend all their time popping in for a pint but the figures above tell us that, for all the rhetoric about 'community pubs' some MPs aren't giving enough attention to these important businesses. Some are even falling out with them!

My ward - Bingley Rural - has 13 pubs (plus four Conservative clubs and a working man's club) and there are only three or four where I'm seen other than infrequently. But making the effort to visit is important - even if you don't have a drink. I know that Philip Davies, my teetotal MP, has visited pubs both privately to discuss their concerns and publicly to talk to regulars. Seeing pubs as a problem (all too common among some politicians not to mention the new puritans of the public health industry) is the wrong approach.

The pub industry provides lots of jobs - from highly skilled crafts through to casual bar and restaurant work - and in many places is at the forefront of improvement and regeneration. The 'craft beer revolution' has seen an explosion in both variety and quality resulting in a new generation of pubs and a different - more savour less volume - approach to drinking. Yet some MPs still rail against the 'concentration' of pubs, about 'drink fuelled' violence and on the 'chaos' in A&E departments because of the industry. They ignore the fact that 99% of drinkers go out, have a great night and go home without causing anybody any bother. And it is these people who the anti-pub brigade are attacking not the tiny minority who get into or cause trouble.

None of this is to say that pubs are never a problem but politicians - if that statistic is correct - need to change their attitude. Not by mouthing platitudes about "community pubs" but by talking to the industry about how lawmakers can help make it better, safer and more exciting that it is already.

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Crime down, drinking down but more licenced premises. Hogan Howe is talking authoritarian rubbish.

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The Hillsborough enquiry reveals how police called for dogs rather than ambulances and every new day reveals another example of the police failing to respond to cases of child sexual abuse - given this it would be a good idea if the leaders of the police showed a little humility and addressed themselves to the enormous lump of timber in their eye rather than mounting yet another illiberal assault on private businesses.

“We need to make sure there is good control of the supply of alcohol. This means licence numbers, density and licensee-regulation being a priority for local authorities, however much they would like to develop their local economies.

“We know that many injuries occur inside or outside licensed premises, and if we can close down repeat offenders, we will.

“But do we really need as many licensed premised chasing limited business. The system needs reform and we need to police it better.”

This from the same jumped up little fascist who called for CCTV in every home, wants water cannon to deal with disorder and who leads an unaccountable, dysfunctional paramilitary force.

The failings an inadequacies of police leadership and management are legion. It's not just the high profile cases - Hillsborough, the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes or child abuse in Rotherham - it's an every day in every community problem.

In answer to "Britain's Top Cop" as the tabloids would call him - no we don't need more control over the supply of alcohol. You already have all the powers you need to deal with drunks, to respond to badly managed pubs and to manage the effects of alcohol in our communities.

Britain has about 204,000 licensed premises a figure that has risen by some 3% over the last five years. And during that period our consumption of alcohol has continued to fall - it has dropped nearly 20% over the last decade. So it's no surprise that violent crime is now at its lowest level for over 30 years:

The CSEW covers a broad range of victim based crimes and includes crimes which do not come to the attention of the police. Decreases were evident for all major crime types compared with the previous year; violence saw a 23% fall, criminal damage fell by 20%, and theft offences decreased by 12%.

This represents a 16% decrease compared with the previous year’s survey, and is the lowest estimate since the survey began in 1981.

I for one am completely fed up with top police officers making out that there's a problem where there isn't while at the same time making excuses for the complete failure of the police to deal with a real problem such as child sexual exploitation.

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It was foul murder - how Labour killed the pub...

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Murder most foul, as in the best it is.

But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

The modern Labour Party, for all its supposed "working class roots" rather dislikes the pleasures of Britain's actual working classes. And nothing illustrates this better than their direct, premeditated assault on the pub.

Here's Peter Oborne (getting it spot on for a change):

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.

And Labour didn't kill the pub from neglect, the act was deliberate - the smoking ban and the duty escalator were introduced in the face of the industry telling Labour that this would kill the pub. And the first pubs to go were the proper locals - 'wet led' and used by people who walked there for a drink, a chat and a fag with their friends.

The Labour Government did this deliberately - they could have stuck with the manifesto promise and protected pubs from their righteous legislation. Instead they forced a ban through that has closed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pubs and clubs. Places where, for generations, working class men and women had gone to enjoy the small pleasures their lives could afford - a smoke, a drink and good company. Gone forever, killed off by Labour.

It was foul murder.

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Today's nannying jobsworth...

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Via Arfur Daley on Facebook:

Fires at an historic city centre pub will have to be put out after a landlord was told it was causing pollution following a passer-by's complaint about smoke in the street.

Graham Rowson, 60, has traditionally lit three fires for customers at his real ale bar so they can keep warm over the Christmas period.

But officials at Preston City Council have now said his 115-year-old Black Horse pub is pumping out fumes - putting it in breach of smokeless zone rules.

Apparently someone (anonymously) complained and the Council leapt into action to force a chilly Christmas onto a popular pub.

It makes you want to cry - such thoughtless, uncaring intervention based on nothing more than the word of some busybody.

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There is nothing to cheer in pubs closing...

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Oh it's-a lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night we'll hear the wild dingoes call
But there's-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer

Now the publican's anxious for the quota to come
And there's a far away look on the face of the bum
The maid's gone all cranky and the cook's acting queer
Oh what a terrible place is a pub with no beer

The Good Pub Guide sets itself up as a promoter of the fine pub - although one suspects at times one without beer. And the book is useful so long as it's a particular type of pub you're looking for.  However this doesn't justify the glee with which the editors of said book describe the closing of pubs:

The closures may be bad news for staff and customers, but it is high time "bad pubs" went out of business, giving visionary and energetic licensees a chance to open new ones, the Good Pub Guide 2014 argues. It predicts that more than 1,000 new pubs will open next year, often in former hostelries that have been shuttered for years. Between 2,500 and 4,000 will go out of business, but the guide quotes a successful landlord saying there are too many pubs in the wrong place, chasing the wrong market. 

The truth is that the traditional idea of a pub - somewhere to go have a drink, a banter and maybe a game is gone. Killed by the pub companies, the smoking bans and the snobbishness of the sorts who write The Good Pub Guide. There are no reasons - bar the interference of politicians and the neglect of PubCos - for these traditional boozers to go and for Sally Maclennane to be thrown out into the cruel world.

The man from CAMRA (for once) is right:

Roger Protz, editor of the Campaign for Real Ale's 2014 Good Beer Guide, added: "How bizarre that a book called the Good Pub Guide should welcome the closure of as many as 4,000 pubs. Pubs need to be saved, not thrown on the scrapheap.

"We welcome the new Localism Act that enables pub-goers to save pubs threatened with closure, get them listed by local authorities and protected as community assets.

“We want to save pubs, not axe them." 

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A great little beer rant...

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...from Helen at Food Stories:

I expect the designers think this makes the pub look cool, because we need to make drinking beer cool, right? It’s not just for beardy CAMRA members; old timers with old attitudes. Well here’s the wake up call, people – beer already IS fucking cool. Get over it! Stop trying so hard! Make a pub we can sit in and actually hear the people we are trying to socialise with! 

Go read it - it pricks a few pretentious presumptions and makes a very good point.

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I expect the designers think this makes the pub look cool, because we need to make drinking beer cool, right? It’s not just for beardy CAMRA members; old timers with old attitudes. Well here’s the wake up call, people – beer already IS fucking cool. Get over it! Stop trying so hard! Make a pub we can sit in and actually hear the people we are trying to socialise with! - See more at: http://helengraves.co.uk/2013/06/craft-beer-pub-rant/?utm_source=feedly#sthash.khw60tMu.dpuf

I expect the designers think this makes the pub look cool, because we need to make drinking beer cool, right? It’s not just for beardy CAMRA members; old timers with old attitudes. Well here’s the wake up call, people – beer already IS fucking cool. Get over it! Stop trying so hard! Make a pub we can sit in and actually hear the people we are trying to socialise with! - See more at: http://helengraves.co.uk/2013/06/craft-beer-pub-rant/?utm_source=feedly#sthash.khw60tMu.dpuf

I expect the designers think this makes the pub look cool, because we need to make drinking beer cool, right? It’s not just for beardy CAMRA members; old timers with old attitudes. Well here’s the wake up call, people – beer already IS fucking cool. Get over it! Stop trying so hard! Make a pub we can sit in and actually hear the people we are trying to socialise with! - See more at: http://helengraves.co.uk/2013/06/craft-beer-pub-rant/?utm_source=feedly#sthash.khw60tMu.dpuf

A St George's Day toast to CAMRA

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What I hear you say? To that supine bunch who've been suckered into backing the New Puritan, prohibitionist, anti-alcohol campaigns - ostensibly in order to "save the pub"?

It seems the members have given the CAMRA bosses a slap:

First, motion 8, proposed by the Liverpool branches, was passed, apparently without any speakers against.

8. This Conference requires that the Campaign should actively challenge the health lobby’s anti-alcohol statements to give a more balanced view.

Then, after what reportedly was a very lively debate, Motion 19 was passed by 276 votes to 201.

19. This Conference agrees that CAMRA is on the wrong side of the argument over minimum pricing. It instructs the National Executive to withdraw its support for this measure with immediate effect.

Progress indeed - perhaps we'll see all these articles, press releases and statements removed from CAMRA's website?

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A week's worth of government guidance for nannying fussbuckets everywhere!

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I get a little e-mail from GOV.UK. It's a useful little thing that helps me with the trials of being a councillor. It also reminds me of the sheer fussbucketry of government. Here's a selection of today's government guidance, information and advice:

Late Night levy - Amended supporting guidance for licensing authorities on the late night levy.

Ah yes, that's a secondary tax on us enjoying a night out.

False ID Guidance - Guide to the legislation relevant to false ID, to the types of valid ID, and to what action should be taken when presented with false ID. 

Fighting crime you think? See that bit "...the types of valid ID" - you even need two forms of ID to sign on at the doctors when you move!

Section 19 Closure Factsheet - Explains the circumstances for serving a closure notice under section 19 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001.

You mean you don't know about Section 19? This is the law that's used by police and council enforcement fussbuckets to close down pubs for whatever arbitrary reason they chose. And at whatever time.

Designated Public Place Orders Guidance - explains the powers given to local authorities in England and Wales to introduce designated public place orders (DPPOs).

DPPOs are those 'bans on public drinking' your local paper gets all excited about and your local council loves.

 

"It's not to say people can't be trusted to drink responsibly but it is about setting the right sort of tone. It's about tackling a minority of people who drink to excess and drink in a way which brings all of us difficulties."

Rubbish, it's about stopping people enjoying themselves because you disapprove.

And this is just one week's worth of government fussbucketry!

Now please don't tell me I live in a 'free' country. I'd like to but there are too many nannying fussbuckets who think it's just fine to stamp on, tax, arrest and generally get in the face of anyone who doesn't share their judgemental new puritan, disapproving, po-faced bigotry.

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