It’s entirely understandable that pubs are desperate to hear from Boris Johnson as to when he intends to reopen them. As the BBC reports here, the whole industry is poised to go off a cliff if nothing happens. The problem is nothing much is going to happen anytime soon and even when it does, pubs are in line to get clobbered again.
Before coronavirus, I didn’t do a great deal of my drinking in pubs. It was much cheaper to sit in front of the box with a £6 bottle of wine than it was to spend several times that and not even be able to get a seat. That’s not to say I don’t want to go to pubs again – I very much do – but a night in a pub, especially in town, is not a cheap night out. I can spend on four pints of ale in my Morrison’s shop what I spend on a pint in town. When I fancy a pint of Boston’s Old Thumper, I’m more likely to visit a supermarket than a pub.
When this is all over™, I will visit pubs again but it’s entirely possible I may visit them even less than I did before.
Last summer, the chancer of exchequer, Rishi Sunak, bribed us with our own money to ‘Eat out and spread covid‘, which succeeded in providing temporary financial relief to the sector and extensive long term damage by new and harder lockdowns. I doubt that this will happen again.
The economy will be a basket case when things reopen again and we can be sure that one of the first things Sunak will do is to raise taxes and, you can safely assume he will lay the emphasis on indirect taxes like VAT and beer duty. In other words, he will hammer the pubs and the rest of the hospitality industry as what’s left of it staggers out of intensive care.
Johnson will not give the industry reopening dates. It will be months, and possibly quite a lot of them, until pubs are open again, probably with the same ghastly restrictions, like having to book before you go out and being served at your table.
Long before this sodding virus, pubs were changing. Gastropubs and Craft Ale pubs are the new normal, aimed at the monied middle classes and hipsters in that order. Your pub as a boozer is becoming a thing of the past. I close with one request. When this is all over™, please support your local proper pub. By all means visit a Gastropub and mingle with the bearded men and women in the Craft Ale pubs, but take some time out for a proper pint. Definitely not a Wetherspoons – Tim Martin can go to hell – but your nearest local.
I might even join you, always assuming there are any pubs left.
