Hospitality: no further room for mistakes

I've been told the pandemic may have
already killed off the Belvedere in Liverpool

The constant refrain we have heard from the government during the pandemic is that they are 'following the science', and yet sometimes that is the last thing they appear to do. To give just one example: the insistence that the UK must be open over the whole Christmas period, until a last-minute U-turn limited it to one day. A pandemic cannot be defeated by breezy optimism and a conviction that the British Bulldog spirit will see us through.

The hospitality industry has had many restrictions - some reasonable, some less so - and shutdowns imposed upon it, often at very short notice, causing huge amounts of avoidable waste. It is impossible for pubs and restaurants to order adequate stocks of food and drink to meet customers' requirements while simultaneously be ready to close at the drop of a hat. Food and beer are perishable – real ale particularly because once the cask is opened, it must be consumed in days, not weeks.

A survey across the hospitality sector by Lumina Intelligence found that 67% of businesses wouldn't be able to reopen if the sale of alcohol was banned, with 19% stating that such a restriction would have an extreme impact upon their businesses. Furthermore, the British Beer & Pub Association has found that limiting reopening to outdoor service would leave 60% of pubs closed while causing an estimated drop in turnover for the sector of £1.5 billion compared to normal trading.

Some parts of the national media haven't helped by demanding dates for the lifting of lockdown, with one national paper proclaiming “Free by Summer”. Unjustifiably raising hopes only causes extreme disappointment if they cannot be fulfilled, and is likely to encourage further breaches of restrictions as people conclude that our leaders don't have coherent plans.

Restrictions such as requiring pub customers to have a 'substantial meal' with their drinks, and then debating in public as to whether a Scotch egg constituted one, gave the impression that policy was being made up on the hoof.

Hospitality is rapidly approaching a 'make-or-break' situation; after nearly a year there is now little room for yet more wrong decisions to be made. Let's hope that measures are proportionate and considered, and not based on back-of-the-envelope science and knee-jerk reactions.

Pubs with no beer? You cannot be serious!

The fine frontage of the Crown
on Lime Street, Liverpool

It is rumoured that as lockdown eases, the government may allow pubs and bars to reopen without the 10.00 pm curfew and with no requirement to have a substantial meal. This all sounds quite hopeful - until you hear that they are also considering banning any alcohol sales.

The chief medical officer Chris Whitty is concerned that drinking alcohol will destroy any attempts to maintain social distancing. This is not a scientific judgment: it is simply an opinion, and it's not one that is borne out by my own experiences last summer. Every pub I went into observed all the rules and required their customers to do the same. Sometimes I forgot and more than once I was ordered by bar staff: “Oi, Neville! Go back and sanitise your hands!”

If pubs can't serve alcohol, there is a greater danger of the virus spreading in unsupervised conditions such as when groups of friends gather in one house, not for a party as such, but just to have a few drinks from supermarkets. Such behaviour will continue if reopened pubs can sell only non-alcohol drinks: very few regular pubgoers will return just for tea, coffee and soft drinks.

Kate Nicholls, Chief Executive of UKHospitality, tweeted: “Reopening in name only inflicts irreparable damage on hospitality as we saw October to December with restrictions with little meaningful impact on health or harm, pushing revenues as low as 20% to 30%. Unsustainable for restaurants and pubs.”

She explained how pub and bar operators had taken meticulous measures to reopen safely last summer, and how few cases of COVID-19 infections had been caused by the industry. She emphasised that, operating under such extreme limitations, the pubs and hospitality industry did not break even.

While there is always the occasional idiot on either side of the bar who will selfishly break any rule that gets in the way, when pubs reopened last year I saw no chaotic scenes of drunken abandonment, and neither did anyone else I know. This industry's problem during the pandemic is that decisions are being made about its future by politicians who know nothing about it because they never go into pubs themselves, except for photo opportunities at election time. That simply isn't good enough.

Death by a thousand cuts

At the time of writing, the general view is that pubs in our area (the Liverpool City Region: Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral), are going to be closed in the latest measures against COVID-19. As a campaigning organisation, CAMRA has written to the government demanding that they release the evidence that pubs, along with other hospitality outlets, are hotbeds of coronavirus infection. To date, no reply has been received. 

My own experience as a regular pubgoer is that pubs are taking their responsibilities for the health and safety of their staff and customers very seriously: they have to because they do not want their businesses to be closed down. The restrictions currently in place have significantly changed the experience of going to the pub, and have also reduced the numbers of people they can take in.

Most pubs are small, individual businesses that are not supported by the pub company that owns the building. Unlike in the past when most pubs were run by breweries who had a salaried manager on site, nowadays the pub is a stand-alone business with the licensee renting the premises from the owning company. The success or failure of these businesses rests entirely upon the licensee. If a pub fails, the owning company simply has a valuable piece of property to sell for redevelopment, while the licensee loses everything.

One pub landlady told me a few days ago that she is slowly going bankrupt during the current restrictions; another enforced pub closure will only speed up that process. Hospitality accounts for a huge amount of employment in our economy, and pubs provide a valuable antidote to isolation, especially nowadays when the number of single-occupied households is at its highest ever.

Closing pubs is an easy fix for a government that wishes to show that it is 'doing something'. It is not enough to do something: it is essential to do the right thing, especially when thousands of small businesses and jobs are at stake.

► This is adapted from an article that I wrote for the CAMRA column in our local papers, the Southport Visiter and Ormskirk Advertiser. Older articles on local pubs are here.

10pm pub closure - stupidity or hidden agenda?

The shape of things to come?

Like most people I know, I try to follow the CV19 restrictions and I can see the logic for many of them. In other words, I am not a Covidiot. That said, I have to say that the latest restrictions on pubs and bars seem guaranteed to achieve the precise opposite of the ostensible aim, i.e. restricting the spread of the virus.

Like most places, Southport where I live has a range of establishments where you can buy alcohol for consumption on the premises, such as pubs, bars, clubs, hotels, restaurants and micropubs. Their closing times are correspondingly varied from 10.00 p.m. to well after midnight. As a result, the times when people are leaving are automatically staggered over several hours.

Now we have the situation that all venues have to stop serving at 9.30 p.m. and be closed by 10.00 p.m. My first thought was that throwing everyone out on the streets at precisely the same time when previously they would have left in dribs and drabs over several hours was the height of uninformed stupidity, and if anything is likely to spread the virus. I heard on the news earlier today that Greene King have made a similar point, suggesting that many drinkers head straight for supermarkets to buy supplies to continue drinking at home with their friends, which would also help spread the virus.

But then I began to wonder whether it is stupidity, or is there another motive at work here? If this particular restriction does cause an upsurge, I am certain that the government will blame the pubs and not their own rules. They will then have the perfect excuse to close pubs down altogether. The question is: why would they want to do that?

I have long held the view that the Establishment in this country, supported by much of the media, does not like ordinary people gathering in large numbers. This has applied throughout history: for example, Peterloo, Chartists, suffragettes, the general strike, the miners' strike all led to vicious overreactions and clampdowns by the state. It is noticeable that certain sections of the Establishment and the media will always condemn any collective action such as a strike, regardless of the cause and how peacefully it is conducted - ordinary people acting together is anathema to them. I have been going on demonstrations since the 1970s, and I have never seen any trouble. However, you might have a couple of dozen hotheads on a demonstration of hundreds of thousands, and guess who the attention will invariably be focussed on?

What does all this have to do with pubs? Every day, in every town and city, thousands will go out for a drink in an environment that involves alcohol, and this spontaneous gathering of ordinary people is unwelcome in certain quarters, because it cannot easily be controlled. The fact that the vast majority of pub-goers are simply socialising and enjoying themselves is irrelevant to the mindset that I am describing.

What other evidence is there for hostility to pubs?

• Beer tax in the UK is among the highest in Europe.
  
• Business rates are set at unrealistically high levels.
• There isn't much protection for tenants of predatory pub-owning companies. The minimal safeguards that do exist were grudgingly granted after the strenuous representations by pubcos resulted in the dilution of the measures to near worthlessness.
  
• Alcohol in supermarkets is a fraction of the price of that in pubs.
• 'Trouble' involving pubs is always given disproportionate prominence in the media. 
  

These could all be just coincidences, of course, and this CV19 measure which may well cause permanent pub closures could simply be yet another one, but I find that increasingly implausible.

Concerning the last bullet point: pre-CV19, I'd go out for a pint between four and seven times per week, rarely less, and it is quite literally decades since I have seen anything worse than the occasional argument. However, the repeated drip-drip reporting of pubs as dangerous places can put people off going to them. In my last job, some of my colleagues were amazed that I went into town every weekend: "You wouldn't catch me doing that!" is the kind of thing I tended to hear, and my argument that I never saw any trouble was disregarded. 

This CV19 measure looks likely to cause precisely what we are told it is intended to prevent. If pubs are blamed for an upsurge and are consequently completely closed down again, many will never reopen. I believe that some people in the Establishment would welcome that; in their eyes, the more people supping supermarket drink at home rather than gathered in groups, the better. Some politicians like to be seen in a pub quaffing a pint, usually with a big head*, to show that they are 'men of the people', and they usually are men. This is all just for show. If after CV19 we have lost whole swathes of our pubs, bars and clubs, some will be mentally punching the air and shouting, "Result!"

I also believe that, if they could get away with it, they'd have everyone watching sports, football especially, on subscription channels at home rather than in stadia.

Would they deliberately provoke an upsurge by this 10.00 p.m. rule? I wouldn't put it past a government that wanted the virus to sweep through the population, regardless of the number of casualties, to achieve the unproved aim of herd immunity. There was a report in the press, later denied, that an unidentified individual (although I can guess who) in a government meeting about the virus said it wouldn't matter very much if old people in care homes died of the virus, and it is a fact that for several months those homes received almost no help despite high mortality rates. So yes, I do believe they are callous enough to provoke an upsurge, blame it on pubs and close them down again. 

Even if you disagree with my opinion, this point remains: because this measure is seriously flawed, either they are stupid, or they have an agenda which, if you reject my speculation, is what?

I'd just finished writing this post when I noticed in the news today: Covid: Manchester mayor calls for 'urgent review' of 10pm closures

* I mean the pint rather than the politician.

Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs

The Office of National Statistics states that the average price of a pint of draught bitter in 1988 was 91p and that 30 years later in 2018 it was £3.06. We all expect prices to rise, but according to the Bank of England inflation calculator, 91p in 1988 is equivalent to £2.39 in 2018. If inflation had been the only pressure on beer prices, that's what we'd be paying nowadays.

A year ago, YouGov conducted a survey with more than 40,000 respondents and found that beer was on average around 60p dearer than what drinkers considered reasonable. This means that, not just that beer is dearer in real terms, but drinkers feel they are being overcharged for it. How did this come about?

When the big brewers sold off their huge pub estates, most were bought by pub companies, who financed their purchases by mortgaging their newly-acquired properties. The 2007 financial crash then put most pubcos into massive debt; they are however too big to fail or they'd take the lenders down with them. To service these debts, pubcos charge very high rents for pub tenancies and insist the tenants buy their supplies through them, adding mark-ups that can be as much as 100% - just for passing on the order.

Then it was the government's turn. Beer duty has during this period been pushed up by much more than inflation, notwithstanding the odd duty freeze now and then. In addition, business rates, also set by central government, are disproportionately high when compared to other businesses with comparable turnovers. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden eggs: if pubs are driven to close, they pay no duty or rates at all.

If you ever feel your pint is dearer nowadays in real terms, you're quite correct!

This is from an article I wrote for the CAMRA column in our local papers, the Southport Visiter and Ormskirk Advertiser. Some previous write-ups are here.

The EU, free speech, and Tim Martin

I wrote a few days ago about how some people can, in my opinion, be quite snooty about Wetherspoon's pubs. In recent weeks I have been hearing another explanation for avoiding them, a more political one. As I said in my earlier post, anyone who chooses not to patronise Spoons because of Tim Martin's strident views on leaving the EU is of course perfectly entitled to do so, but although I completely disagree with him on that issue, it won't stop me using the pubs.

Why not? Quite simply, I take the view that Tim Martin is entitled to his views, although I must question the business sense of potentially alienating up to 48% of your potential customers, but that's his problem, not mine. As I also previously said, if I knew the views of senior directors of a lot of pub chains, breweries, or indeed any companies that get money from me, I'm sure I'd find plenty to disagree with. Sensibly from a business perspective, most people in such positions will be much more guarded in their public statements than Tim Martin.

This second post on the subject of Spoons was prompted by a friend giving me a few vouchers, saying that she'll never use them because of Martin's public statements on leaving the EU, so I might as well have them. Fine by me. While I'm a very political animal, having been involved in unions, political parties, demonstrations and campaigns for most of my adult life, I accept the principle of free speech.

So let's define free speech: it doesn't just mean that you have the right to say what you believe in, it also includes other people having the right to say things that you fundamentally disagree with. In this country, there used to be an attitude of, "I disagree with what you say, but I defend your right to say it", often more simply expressed by agreeing to disagree. Increasingly the attitude is, "How dare you say that!", very often accompanied by insults and abuse.

I believe this change began with Mrs Thatcher because that was very much her approach, but she is not solely, or even mostly, to blame: social media have given very public voices to people with genuinely nasty attitudes who are incapable of tolerating, not only views they don't like, but people they disapprove of, often for irrational reasons such as gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, political views, or even just because they don't find them physically attractive. In other words, bigots. Bigots don't respect free speech in others, which is one of the reasons why we have laws against the hatred they spew out.

The tone of some discussions, especially on-line, has become distinctly unpleasant: calling your opponents 'Brexiteers' or 'Remoaners', by no means the worst terms I've seen, isn't likely to encourage a respectful exchange of views, which is why I have never used them: I prefer 'Leavers' and 'Remainers'. Besides, adults engaging in such silly name-calling is an unedifying sight.

Getting back to Tim Martin. As far as I know, he has not demonstrated any bigotry; he simply has very strong views on leaving the EU and has used his public profile to try to persuade others. He is, in short, exercising his right to free speech. Unfortunately, this issue has become so toxic that rational discussion is becoming increasingly difficult, but as long as he stays within the bounds of civilised debate on an issue about which we've all had the chance to have our say through the ballot box, I have no intention of boycotting his pubs.

One thing I have observed is that the old convention, one I have never fully agreed with, that you don't talk politics in the pub seems to have gone out of the window. In the last month or so, I have heard several animated conversations in pubs about leaving the EU.

Debating the future of pubs

An important debate is taking place in Parliament this Thursday, 7 February, in which MPs will be discussing the issues affecting beer and pubs and their valuable contribution to our society, economy and culture. MPs must stand up for the diminishing number of places in their constituencies where ordinary people can enter free of charge, meet their friends or make new ones, celebrate special events, watch sport, play darts, listen to music, have a meal prepared on the premises, or even just enjoy their own company – not forgetting, of course, savouring a pint of British real ale.

Following on from CAMRA's well-supported lobby of Parliament last October, members all over the country have recently been e-mailing their MPs about today's debate with the following demands:

• A preferential rate of duty on beer sold in pubs.
• Full reform of business rates to fix the unfair amount that pubs pay.
• Reforming the Pubs Code so that tenants get a fair deal. 

Let's hope enough MPs have got the message!

••••••••••••••••••••••••

Tax freezes on alcohol that CAMRA has been vigorously calling for came into effect last week on 1 February. Duty on beer, cider and spirits was frozen in the 2018 Autumn Budget. Duty on wine was left to rise with inflation and a higher rate was imposed upon 'white ciders'. The Treasury claims that a standard pint of beer is now 14p cheaper than if taxes had risen in line with inflation.

It's a welcome measure, not only because it helps protect the great British pub and pint, but also because it has saved at least 3,000 jobs that would have been lost if duty had gone up, according to an estimate by the British Beer and Pub Association.

No politics, no religion! Part 2.

Following my post yesterday about forbidden topics of conversation in pubs, it occurred to me that there probably are some topics best avoided in certain circumstances.

In Merseyside, the Orange Lodge marches every year in Liverpool and Southport on 12 July, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne when the forces of William of Orange defeated those of James II. In Liverpool, this used to be a much bigger matter than it is today.

My mother told me that as a little girl she'd been enjoying watching a parade marching down the end of her street in Kirkdale, Liverpool, a mainly Catholic area at the time, until her anxious mother dragged her indoors as it was an Orange Lodge march. Catholic and Protestant divisions in the city were much more pronounced and sometimes resulted in violence, no place for a little child. There was even a Liverpool Protestant Party until the early 1970s who usually sided with the Conservatives on the Council.

In such an environment, which I expect still prevails in parts of Northern Ireland, it may have been wise to remain quiet about religion and politics in any pubs where you couldn't be sure who was listening. On 12 July 1986, I think it was, I went to my then local in Southport for a pint, but when I entered, a row of people wearing lots of orange stared at me in a not especially friendly manner: I had picked up the top T-shirt from the pile that morning, hardly noticing the colour. I looked down, saw it was green and decided I wasn't thirsty after all.

In January 2016, I wrote about risky activities that anti-alcohol campaigners don't go on about:

There are many risks in life, most of which don't get the same attention as drinking: crossing the road, mountain climbing, sailing, pot holing, rugby, boxing, driving too fast or singing The Sash My Father Wore in a Sinn Fein pub.

Not that I know of anyone who's actually tried that.

I've no interest in sport, but I expect a similar attitude prevails in circumstances where football rivalries have a tendency to spill over into violence: in some parts of the country it would be foolish for a football fan to go into a pub favoured by the rival team's supporters. Yet, funnily enough, I've never heard anyone say you mustn't talk about sport in a pub. Mind you, if they did, some pubs would fall silent. My point is that it's just religion and politics, not sport, that are picked out for disapproval, which is inconsistent, to say the least. However, as Tandleman has informed me, consistency is overrated.

Except perhaps where tribalism - whether religious, political or sporting - prevails, I'd still maintain that generally there shouldn't be taboo topics in pubs.

A few asides:

• The video shows the Irish Rovers playing a humorous folk song written by Tony Murphy of Liverpool. It has the line: "My father he was orange and my mother she was green." This describes my background although, unlike the families in the song, neither of my parents were fanatical. 
• I was once playing in a folk club in Hampshire and the person immediately before me had sung this song, with everyone joining in enthusiastically. I got up and commented that, as it happened, my father was from the Orange and my mother from the Green. The sea of uncomprehending faces told me that they hadn't a clue what I - or the song - was on about; I didn't explain.
• In Northern Ireland during the late 70s, a young punk was cornered by a gang who demanded to know whether he was a Protestant or a Catholic (my mother told me this had sometimes happened to her as a girl - she'd try and guess what they were before answering). He said, "Atheist", to which they replied: "Protestant atheist or Catholic atheist?"

No politics, no religion!

The Fishermen's Rest in Birkdale, Southport

I posted this on Facebook this morning:

Our song session in the Guest House was invaded by a Jesus fanatic last night. He'd interrupt songs to say in a loud voice with an ecstatic look on his face,"Jesus!" repeatedly. I don't care what religion people follow, but I doubt that I would be welcome if I went to his place of worship to interrupt the proceedings with, say, trade union chants.
I ended up telling him he wasn't welcome to come back. In nearly 20 years of running such sessions, I've never had to speak that way to anyone before.

Then I got to thinking about the rules that some people think apply to pubs, such as don't discuss religion and politics. Last year, again in the Guest House, I was talking about two Jehovah's Witnesses who had come to my door. I wasn't talking about religion, just about how I had dealt with them, but someone whom I didn't know sitting on the next table said to me that you weren't supposed to discuss religion in pubs. As I think that's nonsense, plus I wasn't taking about religion per se anyway, I ignored him and a few minutes later he and his friend moved to another table. Personally, I think they were guilty of the greater faux pas of listening in to other people's conversations.

As for politics, as someone who's been actively involved in trade unions and political parties, I've often discussed political issues in the pub. I've known occasions when seemingly intractable disagreements at meetings have been resolved informally after a couple of beers down the pub. It is inevitable that groups of people who have come together for a specific purpose such as politics, campaigns or trade unions will, if they go for a drink together, talk about what they have in common. The back room of the Vernon in Dale Street, Liverpool, was well-known as the meeting place for Militant Tendency in the 1980s. Pub function rooms have often been used by political parties and other campaigning groups for meetings, and it is regrettable that we've lost so many of them, especially as they were also useful for non-political gatherings such as parties, family occasions, fundraisers, and so on.

I don't know where these so-called rules come from. It would, in my view, be wrong to stand up in a pub and start political campaigning, but I can't see how it's wrong to have a chat about politics in your own group. 

I'd take the same approach to preaching in a pub. In 1986 I went to a commemoration of the centenary of the Southport and St Anne's lifeboats disaster in the Fishermens Rest pub in Southport. In 1886, this building was the coach house of a nearby hotel and was where the bodies of the lifeboatmen had been laid out after they had been rescued from the sea, hence the name it was given when later it was converted into a pub. I wasn't very happy when a local clergyman called for silence to say prayers, getting the whole pub to stand. I expect quite a few of the customers felt as awkward as I did at that point.

I suppose a summary of my view is that religion and politics cannot be forbidden subjects - like it or not, both are a part of life - but if you start pushing either down the throats of other customers not in your group, then you're going too far. On that basis, the pious visitor to our song session was way out of line.

An aside: I once heard someone at a local CAMRA meeting refer to a controversy about the name of the pub: Fishermans Rest or Fishermens Rest? There is no controversy: the latter is correct, being what it says on the outside the pub, and in view of the origin of the name, the former makes no sense. The local CAMRA pub guide published twelve or more years ago got the name wrong.

Turning Back The Clock

'Chucking Out Time' by Edward Foster
The good old days UKIP wants back

Why does UKIP still exist? The UK has now voted to leave the EU, so you'd think they'd just have a victory party and disband. Not a bit of it.

Continuing as a party, even though it has lost its main raison d'être, requires it to produce policies on a variety of issues, even though everyone knows they will never be enacted. This is why they have produced a policy on pubs. Their manifesto includes plans to "reduce the density of alcohol outlets and restrict trading times" for pubs and bars, and to replace the Licensing Act 2003 with new, more restrictive legislation. This is a good few steps away from the frequent image of a smiling Farage standing outside a pub, pint and cigarette in hand. I have no time for Farage, but I have to concede that bit of PR was quite effective.

UKIP is at one with the anti-alcohol brigade in that they see pubs and bars as the root of all alcoholic evil. Control them and you control the problem. This point of view takes no account of the huge growth in recent decades of drinking at home, a trend that has been encouraged by the disproportionate mismatch between on- and off-sale prices. As long as the problem is out of sight off the streets, they don't care much. The fact that drinking on your own at home can lead to problems associated with isolation, such as depression, doesn't seem to cross their minds. Not all home drinking is solitary, of course, but even drinking in company at home eliminates interaction with people outside your immediate group.

I'm uncertain what restricted opening hours UKIP would favour. They would have to be standardised, otherwise when one pub closed, drinkers would simply be able to drift to another that was still serving, thus defeating the purpose of restricted opening. Standardised hours would bring back the old closing time rush that led to virtually all the drinkers in a town centre being discharged onto the streets at the same time. In the past, this was often blamed for public order problems, and is thus at odds with UKIP's professed aim to "protect emergency workers from abuse" from drunks. While I fully agree that people should not suffer abuse or assaults for simply doing their jobs, the party hasn't done any joined-up thinking here.

As for reducing the density of pubs: how would they achieve that? Will businesses be forcibly closed? Will they be taxed out of existence? Because if the latter, going out for a drink would become a pastime only the rich could afford in a small number of expensive outlets. Anyone else who wanted to drink would have to do so at home.

As Kate Nicholls of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers has said of UKIP's opening hours policy, "Any return to the old system would be a hugely retrograde action and unhelpful for pubs, restaurants and bars. Thankfully, there is little chance of UKIP sweeping to victory at the general election."

Quite.

Voting for a pint

Now here's a curious thing: pubs offering a free drink to people who have registered to vote since the announcement of the General Election on 18 April. The "Vote This Year Get A Free Beer" campaign was begun by Joby Andrews who owns three pubs in the Bristol area. Quite a few pubs have signed up, not just in Bristol.

People who register on-line will receive an e-mail confirming their registration. If they produce this in participating pubs, they'll get a free drink. The only two places offering this locally that I'm aware of are both in Liverpool: Ma Boyles in Water Street, and Constellations in Greenland Street.

As I understand it, this is not illegal as it is not rewarding for people for voting a particular way, but simply for being on the electoral roll. It's probably worth it for a free pint and not getting an £80 fine. The thing is: you've only got three days.

CAMRA's manifesto

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has stated that, as a consequence of leaving the EU, it's probable that people's spending power will decline in real terms as inflation rises and real wages fall. Logically, people will have less spare cash to spend in the pub.

CAMRA is asking candidates to pledge that the pub and beer industry be protected and promoted throughout the Leave negotiations, and suggests extending duty cuts on lower strength beers, and reducing duty charged on beer sold in pubs and clubs. CAMRA is also urging our negotiators to ensure that any potential adverse effects on pubs and breweries are avoided during EU exit negotiations.

Personally I think they are whistling in the wind, and if Mark Carney is correct, you don't have to be Mystic Meg to predict that pubs are going to have a difficult time in the near future.

Colin Valentine, CAMRA's National Chair has suggested that the General Election and upcoming negotiations to leave the EU will give us a unique chance to change some of the tax rules that have significantly increased the price of a pint in the pub, but I see no political will to introduce the measures that would be required. Furthermore, the negotiations will cover a multitude of issues, and pubs and beer will be nowhere near the top of the list, assuming they feature on it at all.

Still you can't blame a campaign for trying, and CAMRA has prepared an on-line tool where any member of the public, not just members, can lobby their local candidates to pledge support for pubs, and also where all candidates can commit themselves to the pledge. The link for both voters and candidates is here. CAMRA's General Election manifesto can be seen and downloaded here.

P.S. 16.5.17: I've just heard on BBC Radio news that prices are now rising faster than wages. It looks as though Mr Carney got it right.

Labouring the pint

It's encouraging to see one political party taking pubs and communities seriously. Labour's leaked manifesto includes plans to:

• Set up a national pub review to investigate why they're closing.
• Set up a task force to consider the sustainability of pubs in the long term.
• Give greater protection to pubs.
• Give communities a greater say in the future shape of town centres, which would obviously affect town centre pubs.
• Switch business rates from RPI to CPI and providing a better appeals system.
• Review the entire business rates system in the long term.

A review of business rates is long overdue, seeing that pubs pay 2.8% of the business rates levied, even though they account for a mere 0.5% of turnover.

According to the Morning Advertiser, the pub trade newspaper, these proposals are broadly welcomed by the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, the British Institute of Innkeeping and the British Beer & Pub Association.

It seems to me that some thought has gone into these suggestions. Most politicians that I've seen asked about pubs just waffle on about "foaming pints" in the "great British pub", or in John Major's case, "warm pints": we must make sure he never serves at a CAMRA beer festival.

Well, they've got to get themselves elected first, but if they manage that, let's hope these considered proposals don't lose their momentum.

Unjustified discrimination

Southport Golden Balls, brewed for the
2006 World Cup, proved popular and was
retained under the name Golden Sands

Not being a sports fan, I was quite surprised to learn that there are some special laws governing the consumption of alcohol at football matches - not sports events in general, just football. I learnt this from an article by Matthew Hall, associate lecturer in law, including sports law, at the University of the West of England.

He points out that, while alcohol can be consumed in 'direct view' of sporting events at rugby, cricket and horse racing, none of which have been immune from disorder recently, consuming alcohol in 'direct view' of football matches remains forbidden. This has led to the absurd situation in a Norwich hotel which is next to the football ground where guests in pitch-facing rooms have to agree and sign 'FA Match Day Rules' when a game is due to be played. One rule states that: 'No alcohol is to be consumed in hotel bedrooms during the match and for a period of one hour before kick-off and one hour after the final whistle has blown.'  The rules end with: 'These premises are controlled by Norfolk Constabulary.' If your room is not pitch-facing, or if you are watching the match in the hotel bar, there are no restrictions. I wonder whether anyone has actually been arrested for glancing out their hotel window at a match while sipping a tin of beer?

I'd guess that this law was motivated by a fear of drunken football hooliganism and, more generally, a simple fear of the ordinary people of this country gathered en masse. Our ruling classes have always been jittery about mass gatherings, which is why measures such as 'kettling' are employed against political demonstrators. Historically, such fear led to the Peterloo massacre by cavalry at a peaceful political rally in Manchester in 1819. Today, football causes frequent mass gatherings of people in far greater numbers than any other activities, sporting or otherwise; they know they can't ban football, but they'd really prefer it if all fans watched it at home on TV.

This is much the same mentality that demonises pub going, describes town and city centres at weekends in 'Wild West' terms, and sees alcohol and uncontrolled ordinary people as a real threat. As I said, I have no interest in sport but I don't see why football fans should be singled out for special treatment that is not applied to the followers of any other sport. It seems especially perverse, seeing how often beer companies have sponsored football events in the past. Football fans are being subjected to unjustifiable discrimination based on ignorant prejudice.

A penny for the pub, mister?

With the Chancellor's Budget less than a month away, CAMRA is campaigning to keep the price of the British pint down by calling on the Treasury to reduce beer duty by 1p ahead of the Budget on the 8 March. With higher inflation expected in the next year (it rose to 1.8% last month), the cut will help to cap the price of beer and benefit the pubs and brewing sector.

Although in recent years there have been three 1p cuts and one freeze in beer duty, British drinkers still pay among the highest rate in Europe at 52.2p per pint, compared to other big brewing nations such as Germany and Spain, where duty is less than 5p a pint.

The three cuts have been good news for drinkers, pubs and the Treasury, helping to limit price rises and protect the beer, brewing and pubs sector which supports nearly 900,000 jobs and contributes £23.6bn to the economy every year.

As Southport MP John Pugh has pointed out, pubs are economically important locally. He cites statistics published by Oxford Economics last year demonstrating that Southport’s 54 pubs directly or indirectly support 1,184 jobs across the pub and brewing industry, and contribute £25 million to the local economy.

In a further effort to help pubs, CAMRA is calling for a reduction of up to £5000 in business rates for pubs in England which would allow pub owners to reinvest the additional funds back into the business.

Colin Valentine, CAMRA's National Chair says: "Previous cuts to beer duty have benefited beer drinkers and supported significant growth in the brewing industry. However, we as a nation are still paying a notable amount - especially in comparison to our European neighbours. At the same time, pubs are confronted with higher taxation and cost … We are simply calling for fairer measures for beer drinkers and publicans." 

This is an article I recently wrote for the CAMRA column in our local paper, the Southport Visiter.

Government ignores MPs' vote on PCA job

Adjudication without credibility
is worthless

I have written several times about the pub code adjudicator, Paul Newby, including:

• how his business interests would provide a conflict of interest in his new rôle;
• how pubcos were sidestepping the pubs code;
• how the government refused to review his appointment.

The issue hasn't gone away, and the House of Commons has voted to "reopen the appointment process for the PCA (pubs code adjudicator)". While the minister from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy admitted that pubcos were "flouting the code", the solution she suggested was for the licensees affected to use the PCA. A Tory MP added that the appointment complied fully with the code of practice for ministerial appointments to public bodies.

This is missing a significant point: that such an appointment should not only be compliant with the code, it must also appear credible to the people for whom the post has been created: in this case, pub licensees. In the debate, Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland described Newby's position as untenable, explaining that there is a real possibility that he will undermine the intentions behind the pub code. He concluded: "All the people that the British Pub Confederation is representing in cases oppose Mr Newby, have no confidence in him and he will have to go. It will happen; it depends on if we see leadership from the Government or whether this has to drag on for another six months or a year, but this will not go away."

The longer this controversy continues, the more Newby's credibility in the job will plummet. The government's position should not be determined by a refusal to admit a mistake. I can only conclude that they don't want to lose face, but the risk of that will be greater as time passes. It would more sense to cut their losses now, accede to the MPs' vote, and reopen the appointment process.

EU-nough to make you weep into your beer

The Guardian reports that "Heineken and Carlsberg follow makers of Carling and Budweiser in hiking cost of their beers in face of weak pound". Apparently our tumbling pound is putting pressure on prices on items as disparate as food, toys, and beer.

The British Beer and Pubs Association (BBPA) has said that the depreciation of sterling will lead to inflation, pointing out that "higher inflation will also lead to higher levels of indexation for taxes like beer duty, creating a vicious circle when it comes to cost pressures, which is why we are urging the chancellor to cut beer duty on a pint by one penny in the budget." Well, no harm in asking.

As drivers will already know to their cost, the price of fuel has noticeably increased recently. This is mainly because it is priced in dollars, against which the pound has fallen 18% since the EU vote. Smaller brewers tend to move beer in much smaller quantities than the mass brewers, so rising fuel prices will have a disproportionate effect upon their transport costs. Either the prices of their products will have to increase, or they'll go under. In reality, I think we can expect more small brewery closures.

Oh well: at least it's a relief to have taken back control, isn't it?

Stamping a place on the gravy train

The mark of Satan?

It's nice when politicians have their finger on the pulse of the burning issues of the day. Bill Etheridge, an MEP for UKIP, a single issue party that has achieved its sole objective, is now looking around for something to justify continuing to receive his Euro-salary (three times the UK national average wage) from an institution he claims to hate. He's come up with a demand that the UK should reintroduce the old crown stamp on our pint glasses instead of the EU-wide CE mark.

He asserts that, "All drinkers remember the crown mark, knowing that it guaranteed them a full pint, indeed there are still some around." All drinkers? Perhaps it's true of some more mature drinkers, but

not of those who came of drinking age after the introduction of the CE mark. Regardless of the hyperbole, the real point is: do British drinkers - whatever their age and whether or not they remember the crown stamp - worry about this? I haven't done a survey, but I seriously doubt that anyone could care less.

Bill Etheridge: worth every penny!

Looks like he'll have to blow his own Trump

In 2009, Beyoncé and Aretha Franklin sang at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. During his term of office in the White House, singers of the stature of Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Rihanna, and Kelly Clarkson have performed for him. The Donald isn't so lucky: his inaugural committee is struggling to find top stars who are willing to play at his swearing-in ceremony on 20 January 2017 to the extent that some agents claim to have been offered cash, posts in the administration or even the diplomatic service. "They are willing to pay anything," said one, pointing out that the fees of most of these artists are in six or seven figures, and adding that he was invited to name his own price for getting them to perform. To play at the inauguration is usually unpaid, being seen as a high-profile, high-prestige patriotic gig.

The Trump party has predictably denied all of this. "Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the mall," said Anthony Scaramucci, a member of the inaugural team, claiming that Trump would be the first president to enter the White House with a pro-gay stance. But Elton John's spokesperson immediately denied this: "Incorrect. He will NOT be performing. There is no truth in this at all." The BBC reported that Elton John’s hits were frequently played at Trump rallies, although it has become very clear that permission was never given to use them. It looks as though Trump may have to make do with the likes of far right-wing hunting and shooting rocker Ted Nugent and some of the products of America's Got Talent. 

Here is Paul McCartney performing Hey Jude at the White House six years ago. Politicians often try to look cool when faced with pop music; Obama is the only one I can think of who doesn't look embarrassing in the process. Look for the enthusiastic audience participation by the Obamas and White House staff at the end.

Spoons squares up to EU

One of Tim's contributions to what
we laughingly called 'the EU debate'.

I see Tim Martin of Wetherspoons is getting certain garments in a twist over the fallout of the EU vote. He has accused Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission, of putting unfair pressure on European firms to be hostile to UK trading partners, asserting that Britain was in a stronger position than people think: after all, he says, we can switch from Swedish cider to British cider. Call me naïve but I can't help thinking that there is probably more to the process of leaving the EU than what cider we buy in Tim's pubs.

He suggests that the British drinkers, offended by what he describes as "the hectoring and bullying approach of Juncker and co", may decide to boycott French wine, champagne and spirits, German beer and Swedish cider. While JDW customers may stop buying certain drinks if the prices go up too much, I seriously doubt that most of them would do so because of any frustrations they may feel over exit negotiations. I know I wouldn't, but as I drink only British beers anyway, it's not a decision I'll have to make.

Tim Martin has been active throughout the whole exit saga, giving £200,000 to the Leave campaign and issuing 700,000 beer mats urging his customers to vote 'Leave' in the ballot. It's a pity that Spoons doesn't routinely put beer mats on tables, but it seems that protecting your clothes from glasses dripping on you because the tables haven't been wiped matters only when Tim has a political bee in his bonnet.

I'm not hostile either to Tim Martin or to JDW pubs in general, but on this issue I think he is being a bit of a prat.