Fifty Pubs Closing Every Week, Research Says

[lankou]

How much is this a trend towards social drinking in other places .

I do most of my social drinking at weekends in isolated locations, well away from human habitation, in the company of several hundred other like minded people with real ale, real cider, proper food, and a few bands that ought to be. (Music stops at midnight)
Only those with motorcycles need apply.

[Patman Post]

Overtaxed, overpriced, smoking ban, poor product and services may play their part but I understand there are more licences than ever been issued to serve alchohol.
How much is this a trend towards social drinking in other places such as restaraunts, sports music and art events for example.
Sad to read of so many pub closures all the same.

Not many pubs have closed round my way. The rest have adapted and re-adapted to market demands – whether they are for traditional east end boozers, community centred establishments, foodie pubs, literary and arty watering holes, etc, etc. We also have an increasing number of clubs, bars and licensed restaurants. There's also a noticable absence of high viz bouncers, which immediately makes a place more inviting.

[CB100]

So you want the government to interfere even more by making it harder for people to drink at home and thus force them into the pubs? Is that the idea?

Of course its intentional. We do not have unfettered capitalism. Government interference drastically affects the market in alcohol, laws which govern how it is sold, opening hours, taxation policies...

If they had any WILL to help keep pubs open, they easily could. People would be more than happy to drink in pubs rather than at home if the former were the cheaper option. Whatever happened to CAMRA? One never hears a pipsqueak from them these days either.

[Roland]

Frankly I find all this hype about the high streets shops being destroyed as totally bizarre.

The reason that your butchers shop or grocers shop is closing is because most of the public prefer to go to the big supermarkets. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads and say "leave the high street". It's market forces, simple as that.

Same as foreign imports. We hear criticism on here about unemployment and yet we have lost millions of jobs to overseas competition. But who is it that is buying all the foreign goods? UK consumers. Yep, we did it ourselves with no help from anyone else.

Time for a reality check rather than another conspiracy theory..

I totally agree no one is forced to go to the super market and if you can be bothered you can get better stuff from a butchers or the green grocers.

What people need to ask themselves is why is life so fast and chaotic that they'd be lucky to find a spare five minuets to go to the butcher.

Think about this, technology, advances in communication, high speed travel, the fact we can get anything from anywhere in the world at the lowest prices and quickly should mean we could all work a four day week and have a little left to save.

Yet why do we all find our selves running around like blue @rsed flys never seeming to get any where?

If you break it down to it's lowest denominator eventually we come down to paying for wars we can't win, paying for an over bloated public sector, paying for people to do nothing and a monitory system that requires us all to be maxed out on credit card debt to stop the system falling apart.

[Road_Hog]

I totally agree no one is forced to go to the super market and if you can be bothered you can get better stuff from a butchers or the green grocers.

Not true anymore. There was a time when all produced was sourced locally. But we are now in the days of central abattoirs and meat wholesalers.

Most butchers get their meat from the same sort of wholesalers that the supermarkets do. If you can find a butcher that sources its meat locally, its fresh and they know the origin, then yes, great. But that is rarely the case nowadays.

Where I do find the butcher useful, is for the cheaper cuts. I like to feed the dog a mixture of ox heart and liver, a couple of days a week. You can't buy ox heart in the supermarkets, apart from occasionally at Morrisons.

[flamingreen]

So you want the government to interfere even more by making it harder for people to drink at home and thus force them into the pubs? Is that the idea?

No lets put a positve spin on it shall we? I want the government to make it easier for people to be able to afford to drink in pubs, so that they are not forced to buy their booze in supermarkets and stay at home.

[Geoffrey Collier]

Of course its intentional. We do not have unfettered capitalism. Government interference drastically affects the market in alcohol, laws which govern how it is sold, opening hours, taxation policies...

If they had any WILL to help keep pubs open, they easily could. People would be more than happy to drink in pubs rather than at home if the former were the cheaper option. Whatever happened to CAMRA? One never hears a pipsqueak from them these days either.

Flamingreen: In the 1960' and 70s' it made sense to focus on the younger customer because they had the largest amount of disposable income. To ignore that fact would have been very detrimental to a wide range of business activity. To day the situation is entirely different; the group with the highest level of disposable income are the over 50s'. In the same way that it was economically harmful to ignore the tastes of the younger groups in previous times, the older groups have now taken over as 'lead spenders'. The problem is that many business activities have ignored this fact. A million 16-24 year olds on the dole. Many of the older groups are unemployed, and 25% of the over 40s' are still being supported by their parents as a consequence of unemployment, divorce, debts and other misfortunes. Younger people have now been socially re-defined, and their economic importance has diminished. I predict that restaurants will soon be going in the same direction as pubs. Silence, or at most light pastoral music, is all that is desired. Dimmed lighting is not required; good lighting is preferable so that the menu can be read with ease. In addition the age of the management of business establishments should broadly reflect the age of the economically desired clientele. Raucous music, pub quizzes and slot machines have had their day. While it is true that public houses have many problems, trying to gear those establishments to attract the most impecunious in the Kingdom hardly reflects sound business talent.

[flamingreen]

the older groups have now taken over as 'lead spenders'. ...
Many of the older groups are unemployed, and 25% of the over 40s' are still being supported by their parents as a consequence of unemployment, divorce, debts and other misfortunes

So which group are you saying business needs to target?

[Geoffrey Collier]

So which group are you saying business needs to target?

Flamingreen: If the name of the game is profit, the over 50s' are those whom you must attract.

[flamingreen]

Flamingreen: If the name of the game is profit, the over 50s' are those whom you must attract.

Not if youre correct when you say:
"Many of the older groups are unemployed, and 25% of the over 40s' are still being supported by their parents as a consequence of unemployment, divorce, debts and other misfortunes."

and you are. The over fifties have less motivation to go out to spend. The young and single are still out in crowded bars, depsite many being unemployed. Its imperative to the young to go out. Older married people can stay in if they cant afford it.