The Great Put Decline, Essay help

[HTM69]

There have been some superb responses in this thread, so I ill just throw in a few of my theories regarding the hardships felt by the great British Public House.

Firstly, Supermarkets: it has been touched on time and time again, but the cheap booze promotions and offers are harming the pub trade. Why go to the pub and spend £3 for a pint of beer, when you can get 15 cans for about a tenner? I don’t know the exact price, because I choose not to buy lager from the supermarket!

Secondly, the changing demographic of our society: the United Kingdom is becoming more and more of a multi-cultural society. Take the East End of London, where are large Muslim communities and plenty of boarded-up pub – a coincidence? I think not.

I don’t know whether-or-not my last point is a taboo reason, but in my honest opinion, it is a key factor.

[arwkrite]

HTM69 I can see no reason why it should be a taboo subject. If the market is no longer there you can no longer sell the product. I am glad that I can go to most big towns and buy and eat food from all over the world. And its sellers are from all over.But in my part of the country there are not yet any Communities of different races or religions. Just how my small town manages to support three Chinese takeaways and two Indian restaurants puzzles me. The children go to local schools, the Chinese ladies are to be seen shopping and the men are spoken to on first name terms.The men from the Indian restaurants love to bet and are often seen in the bookies. I have just thought...I have never seen any Indian female. Any way these trades people are integrating into the community as best they can. You do not see them in pubs but that also goes for a lot of locally born and bred.
I was going to make a comment about the futility of trying to sell fridges to Eskimos but if you believe everything about global warming there now could be a niche market.

My local is charging £2 per pint for beers and lagers during World cup match times. A saving of between 50p-80p per pint. I can buy 8 large cans of lager for £7. But that £7 does not include the company of like minded people, the repartee,the jokes , the sense of communal disappointment when England fail to perform. I walk home from the pub with that feeling of it will all be different next time. If I sat at home on my own and drank those cans of lager I would likely feel even more depressed than I usually am. Its the shared experience that makes one willing to pay the price of a drink in a pub otherwise all of us would be down the supermarket.

[ETA]

I don’t know whether-or-not my last point is a taboo reason, but in my honest opinion, it is a key factor.

I have met a numnber of Muslims on my travels who enjoy a drink. It's liek lots of religions - they adapt the theology to suit themselves. Many Afghans drink in their villages simply because when their ancestors adopted Islam, they ignored the bits that didn't suit them. (I guess it's a bit like the Christian church today which, on the one hand, tells us to live by the Bible, then ignores the bits in Deuteronomy and Leviticus about same-sex relations, how women shoudl dress and behave, alcohol consumption and keeping the Sabbath Day holy. I'm not saying whether these things are right or wrong, just that the Church's approach to them is inconsistent. Still, you can't take what Christian clerics say as Gospel, can you?) I was once also told by a member of the Saudi royal family that to was OK to drink in London because "Allah can't see [us] here".

I don't believe this should be a taboo subject in a society where freedom of speech and expression has been a constitutional right since 1205 and has always been part of English culture. The fact that we raise these issues with such trepidation suggests that HTM69's Key Factor applies not just to our pubs.

[Conrad]

Does anyone else see ethnic communities closing pubs? I have to admit to not noticing that one, some areas have changed the natures of their pubs, and being honest I wouldn't feel comfortable going in, but not strictly speaking a closure.

[Strongers]

I think that a change of demographic in West London has seen a lot of pubs close and have a change of use, but the ones that were really good or changed with the times are still there. There are now just as many pubs in NW London that do curry as do Thai.

The influx of Poles has also seen some pubs that were closed be reopened next to the Polish shop (Sklep)

[Farway]

Does anyone else see ethnic communities closing pubs? I have to admit to not noticing that one, some areas have changed the natures of their pubs, and being honest I wouldn't feel comfortable going in, but not strictly speaking a closure.

I don't, but then round here it is nearly 100% white English and multi culturism is some sort of wierd alien concept, like Asian or Chines supermarkets

[Rex_Rattus]

Does anyone else see ethnic communities closing pubs? I have to admit to not noticing that one, some areas have changed the natures of their pubs, and being honest I wouldn't feel comfortable going in, but not strictly speaking a closure.

I have to say that I had not really considered this as a factor, but it stands to reason that it must have an effect on the viability of pubs in some areas. Where I live there is a large Korean community, but you see Koreans in pubs so I doubt whether their presence has much of an effect. But if you look at the Brick Lane & Whitechapel High St area with its very large Muslim Bengali population then it stands to reason that it must have an effect, when such a large proportion of the local popuation doesn't drink. But I reckon any effect is pretty much unquantifiable. There's at least one pub that has closed down in Brick Lane (as well as the Black Eagle brewery of course!), but pubs close down all the time for all kinds of reasons so who can say that it was solely because of the Muslim population? There's also one of the best pubs around just off Brick Lane, so where does that leave us? I have to say that I can't name a pub that has gone to the wall because of a change in the ethnic mix.

[HTM69]

Of course pubs are not solely closing due to a change in the demographic, but it is having an effect. How could it not? Some areas may not be affected - like where I live, though I suspect the closures in the Medway area are due to a general lack of interest - but some indeed are.

Being a civil servant and working in central London, I work with a lot of ethnics and most of them choose not to drink. The change has been rapid in the last few years. Previously in my department, there was a healthy mix who would venture to the pub together on a Friday evening - but not anymore. The demographic in my office has changed vastly and as such, have the after-work social habits of my colleagues.

[ETA]

in the Medway area....

Not a closure, but I have often wondered whether http://www.pubsgalore.co.uk/pubs/9846/ (The Countryman in Gillingham) was affected by the increase in the number of Asian famillies in Gillingham. It used to be called The Ghuzni Fort and was a memorial to soldiers killed in an action there (Ghuznee, not the pub) during one of the Afghan wars in the nineteenth Century. I have previously wondered why the name was changed - was it because of the change in local population mix, was it because people were uncomfortable with Britain's colonial past, was it a loss of respect for the military or just ignorance of history?

I asked a similar question about the Anglo Saxon (now the Will Adams) http://www.pubsgalore.co.uk/pubs/9896/ and was told that the name change was simply the new owner's attempt to disassociate the new name from a previous reputation for trouble. A fair comment, I guess, but you can't help wondering whether our inverted pride and over-sensitivity to being accused of nationalism may have been a factor.

Are there any other possibel examples of this - where the name of a pub has been changed as a result of a demographic change?

[Conrad]

I have to admit the cultural change had never occurred to me, I live in a district that has a lot of Polish people move in and specialist shops opening, I haven't really noticed any effect on the pubs though. I can see how it would be different for Muslim areas, just something I had never thought of so interested to see whether others had noticed.

As to changing names I think it is fairly natural to change a pubs name when you take over to try and make it clear that the pub is under new management. If you are changing the name you probably won't pick something that could be contentious these days.