See:tinyurl.com/mhspzb
At this rate we'll have no local pubs and be FORCED to drive (but not drink!).
[R O] = Read Only (not enough room to fit it all in)
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 22/07/2009 at 20:05
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Just to expand and create discussion. How many of the backroomers have lost their local pub (ie one within walking distance) and now find that a decision has to made as to whether to drive instead? The inference being that the closure of pubs might actually INCREASE the potential for drink/driving etc?
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Not me, though I don't live in a little village, just the outskirts of a small town...
Having said that I can only think of one "country" pub thats shut locally, and that was several years ago... there's been a couple "saved" by the locals though!
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Some years ago I used to live in a very rural hill village in Scotland. It had a then thriving pub which was the centre of village life. It was a family pub in the true sense. Everyone used it and it also attracted its fair share of day tourists and overnight guests.
Not just a boozer but the venue for local wedding receptions, charity events, council meetings etc etc. Good if simple food and a friendly atmosphere. The sort of place where if you needed something you just had to put the word out. Need your car fixing ? Someone knew someone. Fridge broken ? Same deal. Telly not working ? Aye, John'll be in the morra.
They would cash cheques, sell stamps and even had a selection of confectionary for sale. The landlord, because he didn't drink while working would even give his regulars a lift home to the surrounding farms at the end of the night.
Always poular with bikers on a Sunday and the meeting place for the Bentley owners club of that area. Some magnificent vintage machines used to roar up some nights.
I hadn't been that way for some years. For reasons mainly of nostalgia I diverted past the village last year. The pub is now two residential houses.
There is nothing else for miles around there. Shame. Wonder what they do now for fun ?
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The day the breathalyser was invented was the day the countryside pub was doomed to extinction.
They did have a brief window to help themselves but decided against it by charging nearly the same amount for a glass of Coke or Lemonade as they did for a pint of beer.
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People are not being very realistic when they talk about the decline in the number of ale 'ouses. They have been declining for many years, although the conversion of many to pub-restaurants has masked this & the smoking ban has accelerated it.
The main reason is simply that a majority of men in their 30's to 60's don't go out 5 nights a week supping 5 or 6 pints a night whereas a few decades ago they did.
There are lots of factors contributing to this: - the move away from weekly cash pay being the biggest (IMO); the decline of heavy industrial employment; the breathalyser as Mr X mentioned; men spending more time with their families rather than their mates; the shift from weekly rented housing to monthly mortgage payments; increasing consumer spending on houses, cars, consumer goods.
What the smoking ban did was to alienate one of the few types of customers who still called into the boozer 5 nights a week putting it away
Those were the days. What's that love? The dishes need washing & the kids need putting to bed? Pass my pinnie, please!
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Can't help but wonder where are all those non smokers who declared that once a smoking ban was introduced, they would be free to use pubs and clubs again.........
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They can usually be found on a nice sunny day sat outside in beer gardens complaining if anyone lights up in their vicinity....
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Sign seen in the beer garden at the rear of a pub, "Please keep the noise down, upset the neighbours and smoking will be banned here as well!"
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It is ridiculous that the government has blocked access to websites about cigars such as www.davidoff.com and yet they promote sites that encourage illegal drug use and all sorts of other degenerate acts and give awards and exalted status to 'acts' which promote and celebrate prostitution, drug dealing, racist shootings, stealing etc.... They prefer this over motoring too.
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Where I live (my local area, not the city centre) in the past year they has been a huge increase is in the number of bars. Even on a Monday night now most places seen packed.
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I regularly go to my local now theres a smoking ban. I also now go to pubs for meals out much more often than before, simply as I don't want my 5 year old breathing in someone elses smoke.
Blaming the smoking ban is so predictable. All the smokers I know still go to the pub anyway, they just pop outside for a fag every other pint. Doesn't seem to bother them and some have even praised the ban (under their breath) for saving them money as they smoke less over the night.
Edited by Snakey on 22/07/2009 at 13:00
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'my 5 year old'
One of the reasons some of us have given up on pubs and restaurants . I want to eat and drink in an adult atmosphere, not a creche.
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There are plenty of places that don't allow children and even the ones that do tend to have family areas. I won't say I go out more now there is a ban (I go out less due to freinds getting older etc) but I certainly enjoy it much much more. In the past I would walk out of a pub because it was too smokey that is all a distant memory now.
Not quite sure what all this has to with motoring though?
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The (slightly tenuous) link to carsis the question of whether this might increase the instances of drink driving as motorist are forced to go further for their shandy!
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Not quite sure what all this has to with motoring though?
Me neither. Unless anyone can turn it into motoring related, then the padlock will be fitted. DD
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>>>but decided against it by charging nearly the same amount for a glass of Coke or Lemonade as they did for a pint of beer.
Mr X, when I was on my annual diet I bought a pint of diet coke (the sort made in the pub from concentrate which costs 10p to make) from a run down country pub and was charged £3.40!!!. I heard the landlord saying how tough it was these days, I'm not surprised. I had one and went somewhere else.
There is an article in today's Mail saying how many pubs are hopeless. I agree, most seem to think that catering is taking stuff out of a deep freeze and putting it in a microwave. I love real ale, but much too often it is not kept correctly and tastes dreadful.
I also agree that stricter breathalyser testing and the smoking ban has had an effect. I don't smoke, but if I did I wouldn't like having to go outside like a naughty schoolboy for a fag.
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and before it gets locked
why do pubs take umbradge if i ask if they"ve already sold a pint out of the pump before i get mine as these days its not pulled through and allowed back into the barrel so my beer may well be off as its been stuck in the pipes since goodness knows when
i neither wear sandals have a beard or smell either as seems to be needed according to another thread
Edited by Webmaster on 23/07/2009 at 02:03
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DD - think you may as well lock this as the anticipated drink driving discussion is not materialising!
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Whats to discuss. Drink driving costs lives. Thats the proaganda that has been spread for the last 25 years. It goes with Speed Kills. I've all ways liked that statistic, the one about two out of every 10 accidents are caused by drinking and driving. To me it means sober people have more accidents.
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A friend who is a recovering alcoholic, says that "drink driving" to an alcoholic (in her AA group anyway) means actually drinking while you are driving !!!
Scary
MVP
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Scary
Doesn't scare me. It's the driving that counts under those circumstances.
Bad driving is scary. Drinking isn't.
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To me it means sober people have more accidents.
Ah, another one of those "statistics can be made to prove anything"!
All I'd say is that I'd be pretty certain that if you found out how many people were drink drivers, and then how many of them had had an accident it would be a greater percentage of them than the percentage of sober drivers who had an accident... but I don't have any stats to prove that... it just seems logical based on how badly people's judgement is affected by drink and other drugs...
But, MrX, you are quite right if you look at just the overall accident figures!
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But I would imagine 95% of the drivers at any given time are sober (unless its late at night) so of course sober people have more accidents!
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It's all in the way our society chooses to see things. Sometimes rightly and sometimes not.
Drink driving and most other motoring laws such as those relating to speeding etc are fairly unique I think in being enforced on offenders who are doing something which only might harm others or increases the chances of that.
It is more likely that a drink driver or speeder or dangerous driver will have an accident of course but it doesn't follow that they always will without fail. Most of the time I imagine they don't actually.
Not defending anything here by the way. Just musing really. Beats working.....
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 22/07/2009 at 18:54
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