It’s hard not to sympathize with Lord Tebbit, even if he does go around introducing himself as “Lord Tebbit.” Apparently, he woke up to a collection of empty beer bottles outside of his home. I’ve got a neighbor who likes to flick his cigarette butts into my yard so I can understand his lordship’s frustration.
Tebbit understandably concluded that the bottles came from the Queen’s Head pub, 30 feet from his front door. So, the lordly one confronted Joel Shepherd, manager, of Queen’s Head. It was quickly established that the bottles couldn’t have come from the pub, rather they were likely sold at a nearby grocery store.
Joel gave the lord a pint and all was well. The lord graciously apologized to Joel and the staff. No word on whether the bottles are still sitting on the lord’s front stoop or not.
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Anyone with a passing interest in beer has probably heard how English pubs are closing at an astonishing rate. The latest numbers say that they are going down at a rate of seven a day.
There are some general culprits that everyone seems able to agreed upon. Increasing taxes on beer, rising unemployment, the smoking ban and increasing prices have driven many a British beer drinker out of the pub and into his home where he can drink beer bought at the store.
Two new culprits were added to the list this week. The British ale advocacy group CAMRA issued a press release this week putting some of the blame on the beer tie system. Under this system pubs are under contract with a bigger company, often a brewery, to share the costs of running the pub. The system allows the company to set prices for the pub owners and, according to CAMRA, they often set prices at higher rates than what exists in the market. This makes the pubs prices higher for consumers and hurts the pubs ability to compete.
The other culprit identified this week in an article from the BBC is the publicans themselves. According to the article pubs are simply failing to give the consumers what they want and are generally unfriendly.
I have to wonder if the writer of that BBC article recently got pissed off because some bartender didn’t serve him quite as quickly as he wanted.
No one knows exactly how to stop this trend. One thing is for certain, a British institution is slowly dying.
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This is what health conscious pub-goers in Britain were expecting when a smoking ban went into affect this summer. What they got was something else entirely.
I’m not a smoker myself although I do occasionally enjoy a cigar. But since I don’t habitually light up I really don’t feel much of a personal stake in the smoking bans that are popping up with increasing frequency around the world. I am a believer in personal liberties and responsibility so it gets under my skin a little bit. On the other hand, I do have to concede one point to the health advocates – second hand smoke could be a hazard for the people that work in pubs and restaurants and simply getting another job isn’t always an option.
So, I see both sides and it gave me quite a chuckle when I read this piece in a British newspaper about some surprising side-effects of the smoking ban. Proponents of the ban were sure that their favorite watering-holes would be filled with the cheery aromas of food and freshly pulled ale when the hated tobacco stink was finally driven to the streets. What they found instead was that the smell of smoke was covering a whole host of nasty smells, the worst of which were coming from the pub-goers themselves. Now instead of smoke British nostrils are being greeted with the smells of stale food, sweat and flatulence. The stink is so bad that it is actually hurting food sales.
What to do? Cover the smells back up, naturally. If burning cigarettes, cigars and pipes were covering these smells, then pub owners can simply pump some other smell into their establishments to drive those human odors back down below the threshold of perception. They’re using such scents as leather, fresh cut grass and, my favorite, tobacco smoke. Yup, that’s right; the fake smell of burning tobacco is being used to replace the old smell of real burning tobacco.
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