Is it really our "patriotic duty" to support the pub?
Thursday, June 25, 2020 at 17:12 According to Boris Johnson it's a "patriotic duty" to support the pub.
Writing in the Telegraph today, assistant comment editor Madeline Grant agreed:
It's our patriotic duty to go to the pub, and save one of Britain's last great institutions
But is it?
I regret the decline of the pub but it's decades since I was a regular pub goer, by which I mean several times a week if not every day.
When I was in my twenties and living and working in London it was the norm to have a drink with friends or colleagues straight after work.
Quite often we’d go to the pub for a lunchtime pint as well but, it has to be said, there were fewer options in those days and drinking at lunchtime wasn't frowned upon by employers.
Life intervened as well. Suddenly you’ve got small children and time in the pub after work is harder to justify.
There’s also the question of drinking and driving which becomes a problem when you move out of town and commute to work by train, which means you have to drive home from the station.
Two or three pints after work is no longer advisable. More than that and it’s potentially reckless.
In Scotland even a pint might now result in a failed breathalyser. In England it would be closer to two but I wouldn't want to take the risk.
You can't blame the pubs for that but there's another issue that many smokers will relate to.
Why should it be their "patriotic duty" to support an institution that did so little to oppose the smoking ban and whose trade association blocked a proposal to exempt private members' clubs, including working men's clubs?
Also, why should they listen to politicians (even a tolerant, socially liberal one like Boris Johnson) who, even if they opposed the smoking ban at the time, have done nothing to amend it so publicans can provide designated smoking rooms or comfortable outdoor smoking areas that offer proper shelter from the worst of Britain's weather?
Some might argue too that it's a bit rich for the PM to call upon smokers to carry out their "patriotic duty" when, for the most part, it means being exiled not to a place where they can light up in comfort but to some grubby outdoor space or even the pavement.
Rather than agreeing to support pubs unconditionally, I think decisions like that can only be made on a pub by pub basis.
In other words, if you value your local pub and it provides a service to the local community (and accommodates smokers as well as non-smokers to the best of its ability), then it probably deserves your support.
If however smokers are made to feel unwelcome or second class then stuff it (and tell the owner or manager why).
One thing you do need to be aware of is that once a pub closes it very rarely re-opens. The property may be sold off to a new owner who may turn it into a shop or private dwelling, and then it's gone for good.
Anyway, Madeline Grant will be one of a panel of guest speakers on the next Forest webinar when I hope to discuss this issue from all sides.
Details, including the date, coming soon.
Reader Comments (7)
I loved pub-culture, I was a solid regular wherever I lived from 1974 to 2007. Then I became a filthy leper unfit to consort with my betters. Unfortunately as a long time habitué of smoking, drink without tobacco would be like chips without salt, and my ability to 'nip outside' was wiped out by disability. I never go where I'm unwelcome, and I've been made overtly unwelcome ...
Smoking Apartheids, vaping Apartheids and the fact that you can often drink four cans/bottles at home for the price of a pint, as well as not having to queue up for a drink or the dunny, means that pubs will probably have an even harder time enticing clientele back. All that plus Zoom facilitating pub quizzes. And not having to stagger as far back to your bed.
At 3 pints of less for a tenner I will not be returning to the pub, I simply will not pay that much for a pint that cost 30p to make.
I had sympathy with the landlords, really I did, they went through a rough time when Deborah Arnott took over ASH.
ASH and Thompsons’ Tell Employers: Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned Over Secondhand Smoke
Monday 12 January 2004
“The hospitality trade faces a rising threat of legal action from employees whose health is damaged by secondhand smoke, after a new tie-up between health campaigning charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and the UK’s largest personal injury and trade union law firm Thompsons was announced today.
ASH has sent a registered letter to all the UK’s leading hospitality trade employers, warning them that the “date of guilty knowledge” under the Health and Safety at Work Act is now past, and that employers should therefore know of the risks of exposing their staff to secondhand smoke. Employers who continue to permit smoking in the workplace are therefore likely to be held liable by the courts for any health damage caused. ASH and Thompsons intend to use the letters in any future court cases as evidence that employers have been fully informed of the issue.
ASH and Thompsons are also planning further steps to encourage employees who believe their health has been harmed by smoking in the workplace to seek legal advice on making a claim for compensation. These will be announced shortly.”
http://www.ash.org.uk/media-room/press-releases/ash-and-thompsons-tell-employers-dont-say-you-werent-warned-over-secondhand-smoke
But any landlord that took over a pub since July 1st 2007 knew what they were doing and is on their own as far as I'm concerned.
I don't believe in segregation and I'm certainly not going to get all dressed up to stand outside, or sit in a shelter 50% open to the elements, to keep someone elses pub open, however picturesque.
The conservatives have had 13 years to sort this socialist abomination out, which was their patriotic duty.
After all most of them didn't vote for it.
I went to pubs, cafes, and restuarants regularly before the ban and rarely since. I now take picnic lunches and a flask of coffee when out in the day and drink alcohol at home in good company in the evening rather than stigmatised isolation in "public" in places where I am not welcome but expected to spend my hard earned cash.
I will return to use the pub and so called public places again when all of the public are welcome and all paying customers are treated with the same respect and consideration as those who do not smoke.
If the government had the balls to allow pub landlords and property owners to decide their own smoking policies, new pubs may start to reopen where old ones died as smokers flood back. Until pubs become accessible to all adults again, pubs will continue to struggle as we all watch the industry's slow and painful suicide continue.
I will only support pubs when they demand that the smoking ban is amended to stop persecuting smokers.
This is an agonising question for me. To the the smoker commenters saying, if I'm not wanted, I'm not going: 'I feel your pain'! I stayed away from pubs almost entirely for years after the ban. More recently though, I've had to ask myself: do I really want them all to die? And do I never want to go to a pub and enjoy a pint, ever again? My answer now is no. Instead I've figured out which pubs are still really making an effort and that includes for smokers. Often they're run by smokers and provide the best facilities they can. I want to encourage them and I believe they get the message. They also allow vaping inside which I find makes a big difference, though I still prefer real tobacco and understand others who aren't interested in vaping. The situation stinks and plenty of people know it. No one has come up with a way to actually change it, though. I think it will happen, but in some way we can't see right now, and may never live to see. Meanwhile I think we all have to deal with it in the way we feel most comfortable with. For me that means going to a select handful of pubs because I can still enjoy them on the whole, and don't want them to disappear. They know I'm a smoker, and they know many others are staying away. I wish the pub trade had done more to stop the ban, but I'm not sure it would have made much difference, and I can't take it out on the individual publicans who still give a damn and are doing the best they can. Though if vaping is banned inside and smoking outside, I may well once again wish them all to hell . . .