'Time, gentlemen, please' for the village pub.

The village pub has closed, sold by the brewery as a week-end cottage to a City fat-cat with a Chelsea tractor and green wellies.

 

This was the last of the village amenities.

 

First to go was the corner shop, which meant also the newsagent, so no daily deliveries anymore, and the sub-post office, forcing oldies to take a pricey bus ride into town on pensions day.

 

Next was the primary school; the kids now have a 10 mile bus ride to school instead of a 10 minute walk.

 

Then the village bobby was no more.

 

Finally, the vicar departed, along with Holy Communion, Matins, Evensong, the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible, and the congregation. The parish has been merged with seven others.

 

The village will now become a dormitory for week-enders and middle-class retirees.

 

‘The Three Horseshoes’ was not just a place that sold alcohol. It was the community centre where people went to socialise. Its customers were the doctor, the farmworker, the city gent, the bookies runner, the parson within minutes of finishing his sermon at morning service . It was the ultimate classless society. The only distinction was between the public bar for the darts players and dominoes devotees. The saloon bar was for the talkers, Saturday evening quarterbacks, Sunday lunchtime philosophers, the sort of people who simply enjoyed the company of others in congenial surroundings.

 

It was home to the darts club and the folk club and the venue on Plough Monday for the Molly Dancers. It was where you laid your bets and  joined in the sweepstake on the Grand National and the Boat-race. It hosted most of the village at its New Year’s Eve party, when permitted hours were a tad flexible. It was a centuries-old part of the social fabric.

 

And it was killed by the Labour Government.

 

The rot had set in some years ago, resulting from brewers’ greed in jacking up rents to a barely sustainable level and putting oppressive ties on landlords banning them from buying stock except through the brewery monopoly. At more or less the same time the supermarkets began selling alcohol at less than wholesale prices so that beer cost less than bottled water and far less than a pub pint. This undermined the habit of pub-going; people began to stay at home with a cheap six-pack watching endless football on the telly.

 

But the kiss of death was the smoking ban.

 

Prior to this the number of pubs closing each week was in single figures. Now it is more than 25 a week, 50% up on last year and rising.

 

The percentage of smokers who are pub-goers is much higher than amongst the general population. It was self-evident from the start that a ban on smoking would lead to a massive loss of custom, and so it has proved. And the pub trade is so marginal that only a small loss in turnover leads to unprofitability.

 

And yet there is not a shred of evidence that a risk analysis was carried out before the law was drafted. The original proposal was that there would be limited smoking in separate air-conditioned ‘smoking rooms, a reversion to old practice. Clubs would have been exempt so we would not have had the outrage of old soldiers being banned from a drag in the British Legion club, many of whom would have received a vacuum-pack of 50 Players as part of the rations on active service.

 

But the law as it stands was forced through by a tee-total, non-smoking Presbyterian bigot.

 

There is a simple solution. Permit smoking in restricted areas. Reduce the beer duty so that it reverts to an affordable ‘on’-sales price. Put a swingeing duty on ‘off’-sales to stop unfair supermarket competition (and also discourage binge drinking by yoof).

 

The excuse for the draconian ban was to protect the health of bar staff from the dangers of passive smoking.

 

The thousands who have lost their jobs through pub closures must be duly grateful.

 

 

Damn their eyes if they ever tries to rob a poor man of his beer