Councils get in a hubble-bubble over hookahs

The Local Government Association is in a funk about shisha bars:

‘Smoke-free laws are not offering strong enough punishments to deter irresponsible shisha bar owners who are making lucrative profits, which means councils often need to carry out costly and lengthy investigations to take action against the same bar over and over again.’

Let's piggle away at this one a bit. There's a market for people who want to go to a bar and smoke shisha (hookahs, hubble-bubble pipes for those who don't know about them - interesting that the Arab word, shisha, has come to be most common even among South Asian populations). And, because there are people who want to smoke said hubble-bubble pipes, unscrupulous business owners provide them and make "lucrative" profits.

Seems to me that the problem here isn't the unscrupulousness of owners or the lack of council powers - it's the smoking ban. There is no justification at all for banning people from voluntarily going into a private space to consume a legal drug. Councils are frothing away at this because the bars have priced in the risk of a fine and therefore councils want more powers, no doubt up to and including arrest and imprisonment, to deal with all this.

When we're looking at things that Council's really shouldn't be bothering about, grown men and women smoking shisha in a comfortable bar is up there near the top of the list. What's worse is that these licensing numpties don't understand why such places end up run by ne'er do wells. It's because of that smoking ban again. Organised criminals have always walked in lockstep with the puritans - one lot gets to cash in while the others get to pretend they're stopping "rogues" and protecting the public from terrible and sinful activities.

If you relax the smoking ban - perhaps just to allow cigars clubs, shisha bars and smoking rooms - then nearly all of this dastardly criminality will go away.

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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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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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The smoking ban didn't work, did it?

The smoking ban in pubs, the thing - the silver bullet - that would suddenly change the world and stop every one smoking was introduced in 2007. And look folks - it didn't work, there was no accelerated decline in smoking and one-in-five of us still smoke. So we've shut down thousands of pubs, destroying business and creating unemployment to achieve almost nothing at all.

And now because that hasn't worked, the public health fanatics want plain packs for fags. Let me tell you now - it won't work, no even a little bit. And those ban-fans will be back with their next wheeze (which, of course, won't work). Look guys, we're grown ups. We know the risks. We know smoking increases our chances of dying a premature, painful death. Some will make the choice to smoke. It's their choice too, and they should be allowed to make it.

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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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How to lie with statistics - asthma special

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Today the BBC - and assorted other nannying fussbuckets - have been slavering over a report that claims to show how the smoking ban resulted in a massive drop in children admitted to hospital with asthma:

There was a sharp fall in the number of children admitted to hospital with severe asthma after smoke-free legislation was introduced in England, say researchers. 

A study showed a 12% drop in the first year after the law to stop smoking in enclosed public places came into force.

They are using statisitics (this is perhaps spelled L-Y-I-N-G):

Yes folks, that's their evidence - evidence that contradicts what Asthma UK say about the problem:

Asthma UK said the number of emergency admissions had remained unchanged for a decade 

(Yes folks, the BBC reported that)

One day a BBC journalist will actually do his or her job and ask some questions, poke a bit at the evidence - anything other than simply reprinting the lies contained in the nannying fussbuckets' press release.

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Brandon Lewis: celebrating the pub...but doing little to help

Brandon Lewis MP and Minister writes in Conservative Home about the pub:

My new year's resolution is to make the Great British pub the hub of a resurgent economy.

Like most small businesses, life for the local hasn't been easy in recent times. Some have been forced to close down, others have been hit hard by rowdy rabble rowsers.

Cheers Brandon - thanks for the enthusiasm. But let's look at the facts - pubs are still closing, the government has launched a new round of attacks on drinking. Not just minimum pricing, not just failing to do anything about the beer duty escalator but a new licensing regime that gives 'health authorities' the chance to stop the granting of licenses.

And while Brandon crows about supporting publicans as 'entrepreneurs', he fails even to mention the one thing that has done the most damage to the pub - that smoking ban. Thousands of people now stop at home or go round their neighbours with a bottle or some cans rather than visit the pub - simply because it means they can smoke.

Despite Brandon's false bonhomie about the pub, I'm prepared to bet that there will be fewer pubs at the end of 2013 than there are open today. And that the government's anti-alcohol strategy - if imposed - will only make matters worse.

Or maybe this will be the pub's salvation:

...the ideal place to grab a morning coffee break, with over 3 million cups of coffee sold in a year.

Yes, Brandon - that will work!

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More "save the pub" nonsense from Ministers

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The government has this "pub is the hub" project that:

...good licensees communities, pub owners, breweries, local authorities and the private sector to work together to match community priority needs with additional services which can be provided by the local pub and a good licensee.

Today Communities Minister, Brandon Lewis announced another £150,000 to promote the scheme and then brags about all the other things the government is doing to "help" pubs:

‘The Government is taking decisive action to support community pubs including doubling business rate relief, which gives up to 100% discounts for small firms including pubs and postponing revaluation will also avoid local pubs facing an 11% rise in their business rates bills."

We then get nonsense about competition from supermarkets and using Community Right to Bid so as to stop a (presumably unviable) pub from closing.

Sadly, Brandon doesn't mention the two big things have contributed the most to pubs - and especially the wet-led local boozer - closing down:

1. Europe's second highest rates of duty on beer
2. The smoking ban

If you really care about pubs, Brandon, do something about these and we'll believe you.

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Do we like pubs or not?

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Mintel have published (although I haven't seen the full report as it will cost loads of money) their market survey of pubs and stuff. And :

...found that more than twice as many people find it more enjoyable drinking in a pub than drinking at home.

So pubs are thriving then? People are flocking to those pubs? Not according to Mintel:

Despite Britons’ enjoyment of pubs, the research found that visits to pubs are falling. Mintel said that over six in ten adults over the age of 18 visit a pub regularly to drink. This is down from seven in ten people in 2007.

So there you have it - we like the idea of drinking in the pub but fewer of us are actually doing so! Mintel have a theory - it's down to the recession and cheap drink in supermarkets. Nothing to do with this then:

Three in ten people think it has been much more pleasant going to pubs since the smoking ban. 

Which I guess mean that 70% don't think pubs are "much more pleasant" since the smoking ban. So it's no surprise then that a dozen pubs close each week, is it!

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More hypocrisy about saving the pub...

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There's an Early Day Motion:

That this House notes that beer and pubs contribute 21 billion to UK GDP and support almost one million jobs, almost half of them for 16 to 24 year olds; acknowledges that brewing is one of British manufacturing's success stories; believes that 2012, as a year of national celebrations, is the perfect time to recognise the economic and social value of great British beer and the pub industry; and so urges the Government to listen to consumer and industry groups, including the British Beer and Pub Association, the Society of Independent Brewers and the Campaign for Real Ale, who have united to call on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to support Britain's beer and pub sector by suspending the beer duty escalator to help reduce pub closures, create 5,000 additional jobs and ensure pub going remains an affordable leisure activity.

Let's be clear, I support this idea - indeed, duty on alcohol should be dropped across the board. But am I alone in being irritated by MPs moaning about the decline in pubs when, by their very actions, they contributed to that decline?

Of the 97 MPs who have signed this EDM, 47 voted to ban smoking in pubs. I make that 47 people who should hang their heads in shame at the death of the pub.

Here's a list of those MPs:
 

Peter Bottomley (Con), James Clappison (Con), David Anderson (Lab), Adrian Bailey (Lab), Kevin Barron (Lab), Clive Betts (Lab), Tom Brake (LD), Annette Brooke (LD), Lorely Burt (LD), Menzies Campbell (LD), Martin Caton (Lab), Tom Clarke (Lab), Rosie Cooper (Lab), Jim Dobbin (Lab), Frank Doran (Lab), Jim Dowd (Lab), Louise Ellman (Lab), Paul Flynn (Lab), Don Foster (LD), Mike Gapes (Lab), Andrew George (LD), Mike Hancock (LD), Stephen Hepburn (Lab), David Heyes (Lab), Jimmy Hood (Lab), Martin Horwood (LD), George Howarth (Lab), Gerald Kaufman (Lab), John Leech (LD), Tony Lloyd (Lab), Steve McCabe (Lab), John McDonnell (Lab), Alan Meale (Lab), Austin Mitchell (Lab), John Pugh (LD), Linda Riordan (Lab), John Robertson (Lab), Dan Rogerson (LD), Bob Russell (LD), Dennis Skinner (Lab), Gerry Sutcliffe (Lab), Mark Tami (Lab), Joan Walley (Lab), Robert Walter (Con), Hywel Williams (PC), Mark Williams (LD), Mike Wood (Lab)

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Why are Cambridge's pubs closing?

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Cambridge City Council are worried about their pubs and are doing something (if appointing consultants fits that description):

The consultancy has been appointed to provide the council with interim policy guidance and evidence to guide future planning decisions involving the loss of public houses.

The study, which the local authority says will also inform a review of its local plan, is expected to go out to public consultation in the summer for adoption later this year.

It seems that Cambridge see the closing of pubs as a planning issue rather than the consequence of other social change or regulatory action. The report does include a brilliant project description - a task I would be up to for sure:

Cambridge’s public house study will provide a comprehensive study of all public houses in the city...

Now joking aside what will this study conclude? It seems that what the Council seek is a planning stick to prevent the closing of pubs, some form of usage definition that will stop the loss-making pub from turning into housing or a convenience store. You will all have seen the flaw in this - planning isn't the problem and stopping pubs being sold for other uses won't suddenly magic new customers ready to tip down pints of foaming ale.

The reasons for pubs closing are economic and social - changing planning regulations won't make anything but the most marginal difference. The reasons for pubs closing are largely as follows:

• Social change - pub-going has been declining steadily for thirty years as people opt instead to stay in their nice warm living rooms watching TV, listening to music and annoying friends on Facebook
• Smoking bans - the smoking ban accelerated this change by making pubs less attractive for the 60% or more of regular drinkers who are also smokers. They too have opted for home or for the converted garage
• Beer Taxes - the ever-increasing duty on beer makes it more of a luxury meaning that people go to the pub less often and drink less beer when they get there. And that beer is cheaper at the supermarket fitted well with staying at home instead
• Moderation - yes folks, we're drinking less, quite a lot less. And most of that reduction since 2002 has been in the pubs, bars and clubs

Appointing a planning consultancy won't give Cambridge the answers - or even tools it can use to stop the rot. Perhaps they'd be better served lobbying the government for a review of the smoking ban and the cutting of duty on on-sales.

But the would be asking too much wouldn't it!

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From the mouths of New Puritans...

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...sometimes fall pearls of unintended truth:

"Inhaling smoke from any products, organic or not, may it be lettuce, spinach or tobacco, is inherently dangerous for your health," says Vaughan Rees, a Harvard University researcher who studies smoking.

Let's unpick this then. Inhaling smoke - any smoke - is the problem. Yet we haven't banned open fires in pubs, we permit bonfires and we (well some folk any how) revel in joss sticks, candles and the burning of "essential oils".

The smoking ban, or should I say smoke ban, is incomplete until all sources of smoke we might inhale are eliminated. Otherwise it's simply a wholly unjustified attack on a pleasure the New Puritans disapprove of.

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On stopping smoking...

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Given that I speak and write much about my anger over the government’s obsession with smoking – were it not for booze to the exclusion of every other public health consideration – I guess many of you think I smoke. To help you understand my position, I thought I’d tell you about giving up smoking.

I stopped smoking nearly five years ago. It’s a simple as that really. I stopped smoking – it just took me a little while to realise that this is all there is to stopping. All the semi-medical mumbo-jumbo, the hypnotism, the psychotherapy, the patches, the gum – let alone bans and restrictions – are of no consequence. If you want to stop smoking, you just stop smoking. Yet a massive industry – a billion dollar industry – has sprung up around smoking cession:

In 2009, total sales of smoking-cessation products surpassed $1.6bn (Rx products).

At drug company profit margins that’s a big business and it’s expected to grow!

The report predicts that the launch of new smoking-cessation aids early this decade will answer some unmet needs currently limiting that pharma market segment. Besides extensive coverage of currently-marketed drugs, this report examines the most exciting products currently in development. The report also includes external opinions on the sector, gained thorough original unique surveys. The report analyses current leading markets in North America, Europe and Asia in detail. A major contribution to the market during the next 15 years will come from emerging economies, led by India and China. Almost half of the world’s smokers live in those countries, with almost a third in China alone, reports suggest. At present, those national markets yield relatively low smoking-cessation revenues. However, the report predicts that the emerging economies have a large potential for sales growth of smoking-cessation products. This report reveals how their sales revenues and market shares will expand during the forecast period.

A brilliant strategy – medicalise the delivery of nicotine! Let me tell you something, these products don’t work. People stop smoking because they want to stop smoking – and whether they use patches, gum or specialist smoking cessation drugs makes not one jot of difference. But it does keep a pretty huge and very profitable industry going!

"At the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco conference held in San Diego, CA, Scott Leischow, PhD., Associate Professor of Public Health for the University of Arizona, presented research findings indicating that over-the-counter (OTC) nicotine patches resulted in low quit rates of 4-5% at one year, which is in the range of naturally occurring smoking cessation. Published in the January/February 1999 issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior, the study also found that brief physician intervention did not improve on these rates." "New Smoking Study Questions the Effectiveness of the Nicotine Patch," PR Newswire, Mar. 24, 1999.

And some smoking cessation drugs have questionable side effect:

"It is very unusual to get 300-plus adverse drug-reaction reports in the first year of marketing a drug. The question is whether the benefit of the drug justifies the risk…and the answer is no." Rick Hudson, a medical consultant to British Columbia's Pharmacare program, quoted in Krista Foss, "The hidden cost of kicking the habit," Toronto Globe and Mail, Aug. 31, 1999.

And, of course, they don’t work. People stop because they want to stop – drugs make no difference.

When I decided to give up, like we’re advised to do, I went to see the GP – although I ended up seeing a very pleasant nurse (she spent a lot of time asking me how much I drink – which seemed unrelated to the reason I was there) who arranged a prescription for nicotine patches. Let me tell you, if you want that nicotine high, get those patches. I wandered around for a week in a zombie-like state, high as a kite on nicotine! Returning to see the nurse, she suggested using only half a patch to reduce the dose. No difference – still high as a kite, unable to function properly in my work and now with an uncomfortable rash. So I dumped the patches and went cold-turkey.

I haven’t smoked since – although a year sitting with Graham in the Fleece (before the stupid and unwarranted smoking ban) allowed some high quality Cuban passive smoking! I stopped because I ceased to enjoy smoking and without the pleasure there was no point any more in resisting the nagging!

All the millions spent of these products are, at best, having a marginal impact on people trying to stop smoking. But boy is it making the drugs companies some cash!

Update: An Anonymous comment brings this to our attention - reinforcing my point that the "anti-smoking" campaigns are, in truth, mostly ramps for drugs companies:

The heads of Pharmacia & Upjohn and Glaxo Wellcome both expressed their appreciation for the joint partnership.

"I'm delighted that Pharmacia & Upjohn is a leader in this ground-breaking action partnership with WHO to combat tobacco dependence," Fred Hassan, Pharmacia & Upjohn's President and Chief Executive Officer says. "Public health threats of this magnitude and urgency require the collaborative efforts of both the public and private sectors if we are to significantly reduce harm in a timely fashion. We hope that this initiative will serve as a model for other such partnerships."

"This partnership with the World Health Organization offers great promise in the effort to reduce tobacco dependence and thus reduce the significant health costs and burden of tobacco-related illnesses and deaths," said Sir Richard Sykes, Chairman, Glaxo Wellcome plc. "As a company, our commitment is to fighting disease. Tobacco dependence is in every sense of the word a disease with major but reversible health implications. Together, we can defeat this disease."

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The impact of the smoking ban on the old...

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For all my opposition to the smoking ban, I never really thought about how it would create loneliness, depression and illness in the old. Here's one real example (lifted from here): 

“I am getting too old to stand outside pubs or restaurants. Plus I was taught that it was only 'ladies of the night' that stood in the street smoking. 

I have been 3 years away from any social contact other than the odd hello with neighbours. 

Being a widow with no family it was always going to be hard to get back into some semblance of normality with regard to socialising, but I didn't think that it would be this bad.

I used to meet up in a cafeteria with some lady friends, but now that has stopped as a few of the ladies were smokers and didn't want to stand in the street to have a cigarette. 

I went to a quiz night at the local pub as there were quite a few elderly 'singles' there. That has stopped. I also played bingo once a week and that too has stopped as there is no pleasure in having a drink there with no cigarette. 

I am now on anti depressants and wish that I had the courage to kill myself and join my dear husband.

Thank you politicians for making my life not worth living after working from age 14 until 68. I am now 74 and have lost my soul and will to live in this lonely place.”

Depression, loneliness, even suicide - what have we done to these poor folk with our insistence on a total ban. The 'Freedom2Choose' site records a dozen of so examples - real examples of real people with their pleasure destroyed by the smoking ban. Plus this comment from some kid:

“OMG these ladies are my nans age and its people who are younger than them who made these horrible laws that make them stand out in the cold and they should be ashamed at throwing their parents in the street, my nan smokes and says she would rather be at home and i thought it was because she was old but now i think its because she dont want to stand in the street, i cried when i read this letter and wish that my nan could go out to see people and not sit indoors unhappy, they are bastards who do this to old people.”

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So what was it you said about passive smoking, again?

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Do I get the feeling that the nannying fussbuckets arguments are beginning to collapse - here's Dick Puddlecote reporting on this man's views:

He points out that wood smoke is twice as dangerous as that emitted by cigars and cigarettes; that diesel emissions dwarf the dangers of smoke in a casino which allows it; that passive smoke exposure is on a par with emissions from clothes dryers, popcorn poppers, candles, irons and toasters; and that nicotine itself is a benign concern.

So that just about wraps it up for the passive smoking kills argument then? So can we have our pubs back?

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Can I have 568.26 millilitres of Old Spot please landlord?

I know that we're not supposed to say things like this but, regardless of how many brains he has, David Willetts is severely lacking in either common sense or any connection with the normal pubgoer. It seems that, bowing to the vigorous lobbying of national pub chains, he is to scrap the 1698 Act of Parliament that requires beer to be sold in pints (or fractions thereof). As we all know this act was brought in to stop unscrupulous publicans (for which read the operators of national pub chains) serving short measures. As the Sunday Telegraph reported:

In announcing his plans to change the law after 313 years, David Willetts – the Science Minister known, at least prior to this initiative, as “Two Brains” – claimed last week that the public wanted more choice when ordering drinks. “We have listened to consumers and businesses,” he said. “They have called for fixed quantities to be kept, but with greater flexibility.” 

Sorry but we haven't. Of one thing I can be absolutely certain Mr Willets, no-one at the Fleece or the Club has ever - not even for a laugh - suggested that we needed 'greater flexibility' in the measures of drinks. In truth these proposals represent an unholy alliance between the big chains of pubs and the temperance campaigners - the pubs can rip us off by charging the same for 85% of a pint as they currently charge for a whole pint and the new puritans will get another restriction on the sale of booze.

At the moment we know where we are with beer - it comes served in a glass stamped with the crown to guarantee we get a full pint (except for Yorkshire folk who seem to think that half a glass of froth represents part of the pint). Under these proposals we won't know whether we're being ripped off or not - which, of course, explains the British Beer & Pub Association's enthusiasm for the whole idea.

In truth - just like the smoking ban - pub landlords and pubgoers don't need or want these changes. Only the big pub chains who want to sell overpriced alcoholic fizzy-pop to kids standing up in poorly lit town centre caverns want these changes. The rest of us are quite fed up with this kind of, at best purposeless at worst nannying, intervention to change things that don't need changing.

I sometimes wonder whether people like David Willetts ever go to pubs. But then I know the answer to that one - they go to carefully tarted up pubs that are really restaurants, they may have the occasional drink in a shiny wine bar but they aren't pubgoers. As a result we get a tightening of licensing regulations we don't need, a pointless and business-destroying smoking ban and, when there's a regulation that actually benefits the drinker, these folk want to get rid of it.  I despair, I really do!

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On the death of the pub...

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Missed this brilliant obituary for the English pub in The Economist:

The 2007 smoking ban drove regulars onto chilly backless benches in hastily improvised beer gardens, or into the street, or simply home (1,409 pubs closed in 2007; 1,973, post-ban, in 2008). Around 24,000 pubs, roughly 40% of the total, are tied to giant “pubcos”, hooked to one particular brewer, and must buy their beer from them at premium prices. Pubs, selling pints for £3.50 ($4.50) must compete with sixpacks of beer in the supermarket, or cheap plonk at £3.50 a bottle; they must also pay a swingeing government duty on beer, now ten times as high as Germany’s.

There's more - read and mourn. Or better still start the resurrection - get out and visit your local, have a pint and a chat. And tell the new puritans to lay off with their nonsense about drinking, smoking and other fine pleasures.

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The End of The Fleece

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It seems that The Fleece in Cullingworth will soon be no more. Another pub joining the thousands that have closed over recent years. Another piece of choice, variety and social capital torn out of the heart of the village and replaced by we’re not sure although those investigating come back with words like ‘day centre’ which might be a little worrying. I’m sure all will be revealed and I hope they get 350 grand’s worth of value from ending a pub’s life.

I found out all this while propping up the bar in the Conservative Club – and institution that continues to thrive (at least for the time being). And the discussion turned – as it always does – to the reasons why the Fleece closed.

Target number one is of course “the brewery” – this is despite the fact that nothing remotely resembling a brewery had anything to do with the management of said public house. So that gets set aside to be replaced with “supermarkets and cheap drink” – people aren’t going to the pub any more because they can drink at home. But drink has always been cheaper at the off-license and the price of beer has, since the beginning of time I suspect, been a mainstay of public bar conversation and dispute.

By this point – and with alcohol consumption rising – the conversation has sidetrack into reminiscences about past landlords, events and occasions at the Fleece. Things that future generations won’t have the pleasure of recalling. And then somebody asks about John. Why doesn’t he come out to the pub (or club in this case) any more?

Various suggestions are made – how he fell out with someone, that his missus stopped him, even (heaven forfend) that he stopped drinking! None of these are right of course – John doesn’t fall out with people, his missus likes a drink or seven (despite working for the NHS – or maybe because of that) and he’s still drinking. No he doesn’t come out because he can’t smoke anymore at the pub. So he opens his garage doors, sets up a dart board and some garden chairs and stays in where he can drink and smoke at his leisure.

Tens of thousands of people like John have stopped going to the pub because they don’t want to be treated like lepers for wanting a fag with their pint. And that’s why The Fleece is closing – its old customers are stopping at home.

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The Smoking Ban Problem - polls, libraries and predicting future behaviour

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Many experts on polling question the effectiveness of the “what if” question:

“If politician X was leader of Party Y why would you be more or less likely to vote for them”

There are too many chances to be wrong for this to make much sense as a question – Politician X isn’t leader, you many already have a 100% likelihood of voting for Party Y, the election is in the future. In essence this type of question expects people to make a prediction of their own behaviour following a given change – a we are not especially good predictors of our own future behaviour under such circumstances. Indeed, these questions are really just a variation on “who would you prefer to be leader” or “which policy would you prefer”.

Which brings us to the way in which these questions are used to justify policy decisions. By way of benign example, let’s talk about libraries. Most of the population are not members of a public library and have at best a very occasional engagement with the library service. This isn’t to say we don’t want libraries – we’ll fight hard to protect these vital local services even though they are not services we (or anyone we know) makes use of.

Faced with this problem – declining library membership – the local council undertakes a review part of which involves surveying the public. But first the council thinks of lots of exciting things to do with or put it its libraries – computers, coffee machines, self-service issuing of books, book clubs, kids parties - you name it. And in the survey the council asks whether these things will make non-users more or less likely to use the library.

Now let’s assume that library non-users (or a majority of them) say that some or all of the changes will make them more likely to use the library. Seizing on this, the council rushes through the changes – despite that fact that current library users have said they don’t want these changes. Ah, says the Council, the policy will attract loads of new users to the library and we’ll be in clover!

So what happens? Well the current users of the library don’t like the changes (noisy kids, impersonal service, coffee stains all over the table and so on) and some decide to get their reading material from Oxfam or Waterstones. And those non-users who said they would be “more likely” to use the library? Not a sign of them. Result of the policy changes? Probably further library closures, reductions in the book fund and another review.

This is precisely what happened with banning smoking in pubs – non-users said they didn’t like pubs because of the smoke. And that they would be “more likely” to use the pub is smoking was banned. Existing regular pub users – overwhelmingly – opposed the ban preferring good extraction, separate smoking rooms and other measures. But no – banning smoking would make pubs more popular. Those non-users said so, didn’t they?

In truth those non-users said nothing of the sort – they didn’t go to pubs because they didn’t like pubs. And the smoking was just one factor – mostly they didn’t see the pleasure in sitting a drinking away from their comfortable homes. Nothing to do with smoking, nothing at all. And, following the ban, these non-pubgoers have not started going to the pub while at the same time loads of previous pubgoers now stop at home where they can smoke. With fewer regulars, the remaining hardy folk began to drift away and the local was left with three customers at 10pm on a Friday night.

The result? The pub closes. The community loses a local facility. Ordinary, harmless folk have nowhere to go for a pint and a fag – other than at home of course. Some of that much vaunted social capital is lost. The football team folds – it was a PUB team after all. The gardening club slowly declines. Other groups become ever more cliquey. Why? Because a ban brought in to satisfy folk who never used pubs resulted in those pubs closing.

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