Pubs facing triple tax whammy, says Camra

[EddtheBrew]

A bit rich from CAMRA who've helped create an unbalanced market place by supporting Wetherspoons and promoted and facilitated discounted beer within them, at the expense of independent pubs.

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And that's before you consider the stitch up with beer festivals and SIBA and distribution !!

 

[Duxuk]

Chorley has lost a lot of traditional pubs. They generally served poorly kept beer, majoring on lagers. Now we have 9 (I think) micro pubs which pride themselves on a vast variety of top ales. Things are way better than they were. Micro pubs buy beer and sell it at a profit. They don't get ripped off by breweries who put the price up if you increase sales as I believe happens in tenanted houses.

 

[Dmet]

Independent micropubs and freehouses do seem to be having a resurgence and are hitting the traditional brewery / pubco owned pubs. They are the ones that don't sell fosters, Stella or Guinness so are not tied to rip off prices charged by the majors. One of my local landlords said his Guinness price went up £7 per barrel just before St Patricks day and that he has put the price up by 20p per pint. That's his choice but that doesn't help keep customers.

 

[Dmet]

CAMRA beer festivals are not as profitable as you may think when they take into consideration the amount of money it costs in staff beer. My local one stopped the bottle beer sales as most of it was bought by staff at discount prices using free beer tokens which they didn't use as they helped themselves to "tasters" while working.

I also don't like the way that members expect a discount in pubs. If it is £3.20 a pint (a good price for my area) asking for 10% or even 50p off and then getting upset when they are told no is a bit much just for carrying a card. It is a bit rich when on one hand they say they are promoting pubs and a living wage yet want to take the profit from the landlord because they carry a bit of plastic. The flipside is the pubs who add it on so non-card carrying members of the public pay more.

BTW I am a card carrying CAMRA member but will not take the discount in the non-chain pubs.

 

[Pavros]

Lifestyle/technology changes can also factor into why people aren't using pubs as much now. 30/40 years ago, friends met up in pubs to chat whereas now we have the internet. You can communicate with others, order food (takeaways and weekly shop) and never, ever have to leave your house. Someone mentioned earlier that young people don't drink as much or go to pubs now. How many of them actually have to leave the house at all?

 

[simon12]

I think one reason young people don't drink as much as they used to thats often overlooked is Facebook if a drunk teenager does something silly now it goes on facebook forever this was never a problem for older generations.

 

[Pavros]

This is also true - drunken holiday photos were in your possession and the only people who saw them were the people you showed them to. Now they are shared on Facebook/blogs/goodness know's where

 

[Thumper]

I would think there are few things here.

1) The government don't want people smoking at all owing to the increased healthcare costs (even taking into account additional duty on cigarettes, probably, I have no idea)
2) Consideration needs to be given as to whether concessions on smoking encourages any non-smokers to start smoking
3) As a non-smoker, it's always been the case that the smokers rule where everyone sits (even now, I am occassionally forced to sit out in the freezing cold to accommodate smokers) so, practically, I'd be stuck in the smoking room even though I didn't want to be there.

Point one is oft repeated, but it is a myth. The profit to the government from tax on tobacco was two to three times what smokers were costing the NHS prior to the smoking ban. And please note that's just medical care for smokers, variously estimated between 3 and 6 billion a year; as far as I can tell no one's ever bothered to work out whether the fact they were smokers actually had anything to do with their various medical conditions.

https://fullfact.org/economy/does-smoking-cost-much-it-makes-treasury/

Point 2 is surely nobody's business but the smoker, providing they are a fully-informed adult?

Point three I can sympathise with. I am a smoker, and I think indoor smoking rooms are disgusting.

 

[Thumper]

I think one reason young people don't drink as much as they used to thats often overlooked is Facebook if a drunk teenager does something silly now it goes on facebook forever this was never a problem for older generations.

I don't think that's a problem. As one of the generation we are apparently now calling millennials, I can say from firsthand experience that silly things done while drunk are generally a source of humour and perverse pride, rather than shame.

Although that might have just been my mates...