Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

Good luck if you’re going to the pub today.

According to the Telegraph (Pubs and beer gardens reopen today - and these are the new rules):

There will be strict rules to follow in order to keep customers safe: no bar service will be allowed, customers may need to register if they visit, and establishments will have to offer table service.

In venues where two metre distancing isn't possible, customers may sit one metre apart so long as measures are put into place, such as back-to-back seating, perspex screens and partitions between tables. You'll find disposable menus and regular cleaning of commonly touched surfaces.

As far smoking is concerned, there are no new rules despite demands by Mark Pritchard MP (opposed by Forest), so that’s good news.

In fact, until this week the only time I saw smoking mentioned by the hospitality industry in relation to pubs reopening was when the trade association Hospitality UK submitted proposals to the government in May.

They included patrols of smoking areas but that was simply to prevent over-crowding, not to stop people smoking.

The most specific instructions for smokers came this week when Wetherspoon, the UK’s largest pub group, issued a nine-point plan for reopening. It included this directive:

No smoking near entrances and exits

Customers won’t be allowed to pop outside for a cigarette during their visit, as staff need to keep pathways and exits clear for others waiting to enter.

Instead, customers will need to either step away from pub doorways for a smoke, or go to the designated smoking area in the pub garden, if there is one.

Signs reminding customers to observe social distancing will be in place in the smoking area.

To the best of my knowledge however government guidelines don’t mention smoking at all, which is a victory of sorts.

Individual pubs can still apply their own policies but why alienate returning customers with unnecessary rules when you’ve got so much else on your plate?

It’s my guess that most people going to the pub over the next few weeks won’t be the sort of person who worries about being exposed to a wisp of tobacco smoke - as David Hockney famously said, “Pubs aren’t health clubs” - but it wouldn’t surprise me if someone tried to make an issue of it. (See Thursday’s post on smoking in queues outside shops.)

Anyway, I Iook forward to hearing your stories, should you decide to visit the pub over the next few days. If not, tell us why.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Wetherspoons is happy to alienate smokers who it considers to be second class scum who they would ban on prejudicial grounds if they could get away with it and it looks like they want to go that way. After all, it's because smokers abandoned the souless shithole when we had a choice of smoking venues that Tim Martin supported the blanket ban and demanded a level playing field because he knew if people had a choice to go elsewhere, his shithole would go bust.

When I recently said that I would smoke inside a wetherspoons as a protest for the shocking way the company treats smokers, I was threatened that I would be grabbed by my hair and dragged outside. How charming their customers are (not).

That is the sort of tolerance the likes of ASH has unleashed on smokers with their discriminatory ban and following publc hate campaign and Wetherspoons is happy to step aboard.

Let's all do the revolting place a favour and stay away and find a pub with better clientele, a more ambient atmosphere, or any atmosphere at all given how tacky wetherspoons is, and go to those places that respect our custom as much as those customers who do not smoke.

[Mona]

I don’t think I’ll go to the pub until all this Covid garbage settles down. I can’t imagine that such pub visit would please me. I will stay at home with my fags for now.

[PJH]

"If not, tell us why."

I don't fancy much queuing outside a pub, and don't think there'll be much of an atmosphere or enjoyment even when I got inside.

I'll be waiting a few weeks before I even think about going back.

[Misty]

“... threatened that I would be grabbed by my hair and dragged outside.”

Nice! Sounds like they’ve got enough “second class scum” amongst their non-smoking customers that they probably don’t think they need to worry about losing any smoking ones! Another very good reason to avoid cheap, tacky ’Spoons places like a bargepole.