In towns and cities up and down the country, pubs are increasingly a refuge from the ‘vibrant’ newly installed communities that stalk the streets. They are little pockets of Britishness. They have always been brilliant, now they are better than ever. What a tragedy that two close every day, it’s claimed.
Is that true though? I’d like to think not. Surely many close for renovations and reopen under different ownership with a different name and become slightly less ‘pub-y’. That’s a shame but rather that than completely disappear. I do acknowledge that many are closing, though, for a variety of unpleasing reasons.
I bloody love pubs. I can’t describe how much I love them. I’ve been in thousands, all over the UK. I even used to be a member of CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale), before resigning a few years back due to them partnering with the abhorrent sexual terrorists Stonewall.
In a country where what you’re ‘allowed to say’ has shrunk over the five decades of my life, even becoming of interest to the police, it’s like a breath of fresh air to be able to speak relatively freely, at least to my closest pals, in a pub environment. If Keir Starmer or Dawn Butler or Owen Jones or any of that lot could hear some of our conversations, we’d be hauled off to chokey before one of us had finished the sentence “That Kellie Malone is a weird bloke”.
Little wonder that the Labour government has done much to deplete pubs’ numbers: changes to NI, minimum wage hikes (just as the Tories did), unfavourable business rates, and sky-high energy prices thanks to the Net Zero lunacy. If Labour gets its way, they will further reduce the legal drinking limit, delivering another hammer blow to already beleaguered rural pubs. Will the ‘banter ban’, arriving in October, under new employment legislation apparently intended to protect staff members from hearing things they might not like, smash the industry even more?
The lunatic lockdowns probably did permanent damage to pubs. It became evident to many that alcohol is much cheaper in shops. I know I can buy four cans of Tribute at my local Lidl for the same price as one pint in my local. So it’s my duty to support my local pub.
There are exceptions to high prices, though. The main one of course being Wetherspoon. I like Tim Martin’s pubs – well, most of them. I was surprised and disappointed when in the new one in Bath on a Saturday night recently, ear-splitting music was playing throughout the pub. I thought that was against policy? Also, there are televisions in many Wetherspoons, which is surely another change from the original mission of the chain (no TV, no music, silent machines).
Still, the beer is good and can be amazingly cheap. Not long ago I got a pint for 99p in a Wetherspoon in Newcastle. 99p! In 2026! Just shows what the free market can do when it’s allowed to. And what a fine free marketeer Martin is, and a guy with pretty sound views all round. No wonder the ‘liberal’ elite despise him.
‘Wetherspoon News’, the magazine that sits on tables throughout the pubs, has many excellent articles in its mid section, often taken from national newspapers, and reflect different viewpoints, although the framing is Rightish, in the same way the BBC’s is Leftish.
Sitting in a ’Spoons and watching the world go by could not be more different to staying in, staring at political stuff on your phone and obsessing over Leftist pathologies. In the real world of The Moon Under Water and The Old Post Office et al, where girls natter, ordinary folk grab their evening meal or mates gob on about football, they have no idea who Hasan Piker and Zohran Mamdani are. Lucky them.
A great thing about pubs is how democratic they feel – they are open to all. You get pretty much all types of Brits in there. They serve booze, the ultimate social lubricant. I’m inclined to the idea that you should never fully trust anyone who doesn’t drink, especially men. Are they scared of revealing their true selves to you? Do they not trust themselves to speak freely?
A reminder at this point, apropos of nothing: Muslims are forbidden to drink alcohol. (This has contributed to pub closures in transformed British cities, so it’s another reason why Muslim immigration is a terrible thing.)
Pubs are the places I ‘reset’ myself. After a day dealing with whatever insanity the 21st century throws at me, which could be anything from reading the government is spending millions on protecting mosques, to seeing pronouns on a work email from someone called John who has a beard, to clocking adverts with 50% black people in them, I need relief. The pub allows me to re-enter the normal world, away from the garbage that the media, political and corporate class feed us every hour of the day. Every gulp of ale takes me away from their drivel.
I sometimes wonder if I get to a stage in life where all my close friends are dead, and I’m basically awaiting death and have little else going on, whether I would sit in pubs all day, every day, sipping my bitter, noshing the nosh, chatting with the pretty barmaid, putting old songs I love on the jukebox… whether that would be blissful happiness, a numb state of nirvana where I’d be protected from whatever hell was going on beyond its doors in this poor, doomed land by then. I’d happily die in the pub – but then again, I don’t want to cause distress to others.
Russell David is the author of the Mad World Substack.
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Not the most enlightened article I’ve ever read on the subject of alcohol consumption; a number of sentences jumped out at me, but none more than this one…
“I’m inclined to the idea that you should never fully trust anyone who doesn’t drink, especially men. Are they scared of revealing their true selves to you? Do they not trust themselves to speak freely?”
I’m not a man (which means I’m a woman) and I don’t drink. I tasted it in my teenage years, hated it and continue to hate it. A friend, urging me to change my ways, assured me that nobody really likes the taste, they drink for the “effect”, which I took then (and Russell has reinforced my conclusion) that drinkers need alcohol to “reveal their true selves”. Sad.
Thankfully, I have no trouble in “revealing my true self” – and I have absolutely no trouble in speaking freely, while, happily, managing to refrain from doing so to the extent that I damage someone else, either unnecessarily hurting their feelings or upsetting someone with a home truth or two that is not my place to give. Hence my rule of sticking to the issues in any discussion and refusing to indulge in nasty name-calling – drinkers take note.
And – unlike drunks – if I’m trusted with a confidence over coffee/tea/lemonade, whatever, my friend(s) know that it will not go any further. Since Russell brought in the “trust” word, I thought I’d throw that in for good measure, since there can be no doubt that if you tell a drunk, male or female, something you really don’t want to read plastered over social media, then you are, more likely than not, set for disappointment, if not embarrassment. Just a thought.
I haven’t got time to say more or I’d share my undiluted and completely sober assessment of the damaging effects of alcohol consumption on family life – where I live in Scotland, it’s been devastating. And don’t gimme that “but all things in moderation…” It doesn’t happen. Sorry, Few people drink in moderation – males especially, perhaps? Oops!
“I’m inclined to the idea that you should never fully trust anyone who doesn’t drink, especially men. Are they scared of revealing their true selves to you? Do they not trust themselves to speak freely?”
I must say I had a problem with that one as well. I tried drinking when I was younger, mostly due to peer pressure, hated it, and still hate it. Not just the taste, but also how it made me feel – which is apparently the reason why most people drink. I was probably the only person on the planet who was glad when the drink driving law came in – at last, a ‘valid’ reason for not drinking. I was happy to be the ‘designated driver’, although I knew I was just being used by so called ‘friends’. If I’m going to die in a car crash, at least it will be me doing the driving. I was once so frightened by the driving of a drunken boyfriend, that I literally jumped out of the car into a ditch on a country road.
I have had enough relationships with drunks to be thankful that my better half gave up drinking after heart surgery. He was never a heavy drinker, but is a much nicer person without it. And sorry, we talk all the time.
What drunks don’t seem to realise, is that they are so BORING, except to other drunks. Conversation? Speaking freely? Forget it. It’s like a rubbish record on repeat, even supposing they don’t want to argue your hind leg off. Also I have been beaten up, verbally abused, vomited over, never mind having to throw a blanket over a passed out drunk at the bottom of the stairs. As for ‘trustworthy’, don’t make me laugh. Conversation the next day: ‘I can’t remember snogging that girl in the corridor… In fact, who are you?’
I used to love going to pubs for live music, and I used to love working behind the bar. It was great fun. But sad old drunks whining on about their ex-wives, or young drunks looking over your shoulder for something better, when they were the ones who asked you out? Nah, forget it.
Sadly in many pubs there are still wet wipes and eavesdroppers (especially younger bar staff) who think it’s appropriate to reprimand others for word crimes. Also there is a world of difference between country pubs, city pubs and Spoons pubs and not everyone has the luxury of finding a convivial hostelry within walking distance. Surely though normal people who overindulge learn from the experience and moderate next time? BTW CAMRA committed worse sins than hooking up with now busted flush Stonewall (COVID mania support and Golliwog phobia to name but two).
‘Surely though normal people who overindulge learn from the experience and moderate next time?’ Trust me, they don’t. They go out and do exactly the same thing the next week. I don’t know if it’s madness or sheer bloody mindedness, or they just…forget. Atrophy of the brain cells. Or maybe they just like it – ew. If I drank enough to make me throw up, or suffer for days afterwards, or God forbid, not remember what I’d done, I would never drink again.
I still disagree, too much alcohol puts me off having any at all the next day, and having (enjoyably when being sociable with others in a nice pub) gotten drunk and then suffered the results, this reminds me not to get carried away again for months or even years. Perhaps I just have more self-awareness than those who have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. When I had a local (went once a week, but then sadly it closed and no acceptable alternative was ever found) the real regulars were not drunks, even those who went daily and seemed to drink gallons of beer also the staff were quick to bring over a pint of water, unasked for, if they noticed a regular was having too much. Water recipients always took the hint. A bigger problem these days are those who take other substances in pubs and think it’s a normal part of pub culture.
An interesting and slight wistful personal reflection and nothing wrong with that. I can also see that as a token of national character they have their place – and it is desperately sad to see so many (along with banks, post offices and phone kiosks, etc.) close. I strongly sympathise with the author’s desire for feelings of relief from the ghastly phenomena of 21st C Britain he describes so vividly.
However, as a conventional 65+year-old male, I admit I’m not, and have never been, a regular pub-goer for various reasons, although I appreciate a very rare ‘social’ drink as a novelty when (rarely) away from home. Like Patricia, I have observed many unpleasant effects, from chronic illness to violent brawls, caused by excess alcohol intake. And with anti-drink-driving legislation in place since the late 1960s, it is sheer folly to risk drinking alcohol when a car is one’s only means of transport.
Our nearest rural watering hole is, sadly, not now a sociable locals’ hangout (except for a lonely bar-fly neighbour who almost lives in it), but an over-priced gin palace that appeals largely to the passing wealthy road trade in big cars. It is not welcoming or peaceful, the prices are far too high to afford, the menu is limited, and the eatery side has dominated everything. The food quality is unremarkable, with the usual poky potions of messed-up foreign food dribbled with wisps of dressings and served on silly big showy plates.
Perhaps we need Mr Martin to set up a new old-fashioned ‘quiet’ pub in our hamlet?!