Pub bore
Monday, June 24, 2024 at 10:34 The Morning Advertiser has announced the finalists for this year’s Great British Pub Awards.
I always take an interest because I was on the judging panel for three years (2011-2013) and in 2013 I even presented one of the awards at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane.
I was a late stand-in after the junior government minister who had agreed to present the award for Best Outdoor Smoking Area mysteriously pulled out.
His office didn’t give a reason but it must have had something to do with the category - which was sponsored by JTI and the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign - because they asked if he could present one of the other awards instead.
Er, no.
This year there are 15 categories including Best Beer Pub, Best Country Pub, Best Pub for Entertainment, and Best Pub for Food.
There’s also a Best Pub for Dogs award but not a Best Pub for Smokers, unless you count Best Pub Garden which is not quite the same because these days many beer gardens have introduced restrictions on smoking, and smokers.
Truth is, even when we sponsored the Best Outdoor Smoking Area it was noticeable that some landlords were unhappy to the point of being abusive if they were nominated in case they became known as a smokers’ pub.
That, and the cost of sponsorship, was one reason the category was quietly dropped, but the Save Our Pubs & Pubs campaign was also drawing to a close as our attention turned to plain packaging.
Also, we didn’t have the resources to campaign on two fronts at the same time and without the support of the pub industry - which was always lukewarm about fighting the smoking ban - there was little or no prospect of even amending the legislation.
Nor did we get even a hint of encouragement from the Conservative-led Coalition government, which is why I was trifle bemused to read this report last week:
Tories pledge focus on pubs and clubs in 'first 100 days' (BBC News)
Let’s be clear. The Tories had the opportunity, in 2010, to focus on pubs and clubs by amending the smoking ban that had been introduced by the previous Labour government.
Instead, and despite a brave attempt by David Nuttall MP, the Conservative-led Coalition - aided and abetted by a substantial number of Tory MPs - rejected Nuttall’s fair and reasonable private bill that would have put some element of choice back into the hands of Britain’s hard-pressed publicans.
Conservative-wise, the rot therefore started with David Cameron (whose government then introduced plain packaging), continued under Theresa May (who set 2030 as the target for England to be ‘smoke free’), and reached its natural conclusion with Rishi Sunak pledging to introduce a generational ban on the sale of tobacco.
With that in mind, why would anyone now take seriously the Tories’ desperate pledge to focus on Britain’s pubs and clubs, unless the plan is to turn them all into health clubs?
As for the 2024 Great British Pub Awards, the thing that stands out for me is not only the absence of a Best Outdoor Smoking Area award, but the lack of recognition for Best Urban Pub or Best Pub That Doesn’t Serve Food - in other words, the type of pub that used to be popular with smokers but is rapidly being consigned to history.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good gastro pub as much as anyone. Nevertheless, the speed with which Britain’s traditional boozers are closing would appear to have as much to do with social engineering as it does with changing trends.
The Great British Pub Awards therefore represent a useful barometer of where the nation is heading, and I can’t say I like it.
Reader Comments (3)
Pubs have never been the same since the blanket smoking ban. What exists now are not pubs but noisy restaurants that serve alcohol and let kids run wild where adults once sat and enjoyed gossip and chat over a couple of pints.
It is not just a war on smoking but a war on the wrong sort of working class who both parties want to gentrify or exclude.
The puritans are back in power. Soon they'll be cancelling Christmas and other celebratory events on health grounds too. None will be satisfied until the public is thoroughly miserable.
I'm leery of making "slippery slope" predictions. I've yet to see a war on the obese, or drinkers, or the sedentary et al. In the states, marijuana is becoming legal in state after state with no objection by Public Health. Hardly "puritan."
Anti-smokers champion abortion, sex change surgery, physician-assisted suicide, and homosexuality. Hardly things associated even with the word "puritan."
They believe tobacco to be unique. Banishing public tobacco smoking has increased the power of government over our lives, reduced socializing in general, contributed to obesity, and by eliminating "smoky back rooms," increased government dysfunction.
Marxists wish to use the template of attacking the tobacco industry to attack free-enterprise entirely.
As Margaret Thatcher warned, freedom always needs defending.
In the UK, there is a war on obesity. Food companies are warned to change their products or else face "tobacco style legislation" to force them. Obese people are continually harassed and as we once saw almost daily stories finger wagging about the dangers of smoking, we now see them about the dangers of obesity - in addition to so called alleged costs to society, employers, and health services, of obesity.
Minimum pricing of alcohol is a thing here. There is already talk of stopping MPs from drinking in the parliamentary bar and then the war on alcohol will certainly turn up a few notches for the people too. Some are already being priced out of going to the pub, what's left of them.
On the one hand we have calls to decriminalise marijuana yet on the other scare stories about it's dangers to health - hence it hasn't happened here yet and is unlikely to.
There really is a slippery slope and many of those now attacking other products and their consumers have come from the anti smoker industry due to their expertise in applying the "tobacco template". They claimed tobacco had a unique danger but said that only to scare the pants off people and get what they wanted - the eradication of the industry. If tobacco dangers were so unique, there would not be such a huge public health industry derived from it which now looks to bully and terrifying us over other lifestyle issues too including "Ultra Processed Food" the new fad of the moment.
It is a new kind of puritanism. You can change gender, you can be gay, you can get an abortion (female or trans female ?!?) and identify as anyone or anything you want to be but you must not identify as a smoker, you must not be fat, and you must not do anything to yourself that could possibly lead to you needing any healthcare before you are dead.
There certainly is a marxist influence in all this using health as an excuse to attack industry and control the population but certainly the new puritans are not driven by religious ideology as they once were but political and social manipulation, a loathing of business and industry which is seen as only wanting to kill its consumers, and healthist beliefs that only what is pure should enter the body.
Freedom is now a politically incorrect concept unless you discuss how to be "free from" risk rather than being "free to" engage in the wrong type of risk.
Whichever party says it will dismantle the nanny state, bring back freedom of choice, and treat adults as grown ups will get my vote. Sadly none have. Even Reform, the hope for many politically dispossessed, hasn't even mentioned it.