Quoth "running round drunk as a skunk singing its raining men to agadoo" - thats the problem with kids in pubs!!!
On the way home after work sometimes I think “Ah, it’d be nice to pop down the pub for a nice pint” but we both work 5 days a week and we have Mia in the car from nursery and lots to do when we get home. I don’t have a stay-at-home wife who says “Everything’s done, babes, you go down the pub and have a nice pint”, nor would I want a wife like that, and it’d be a quiet pint on my own as I wouldn’t know anyone in the pub. I remember in my old local they were pulling my pint before I even got to the bar – that’s how quickly things have changed!
- I used to think that kids were the death of pubs but 5 or 10 years ago noticed a definite change in this trend – kids could be the lifeline of pubs. Couples do more things TOGETHER – and want to be able to take their children as well. If you ban children from pubs then you had just as well close them all down. The bloke who slopes off to the pub to get out of the house is becoming nothing more than a dinosaur. And I have to say screaming kids running round the pub is something you should expect if you must insist on going somewhere as chavvy as a hungry horse, try somewhere a bit more classy and the odds are the kids (and the locals) will be far better behaved.
- Pubs with TV and music are TOO BLOODY LOUD – its impossible to go out for a quiet drink.
- Pubs don’t have a mix of people from all generations in them any more – nowadays the clientele of any pub identify themselves with the rest of the clientele (the pub “brand”) so much so that they exclude anything different – the “scruffy but welcoming” pub is no more.
- More people are drinking wine. Pub wine is terrible. And terribly expensive. Drinking wine in a pub is a compromise.
- If the smoking ban is the death of pubs then so be it.
- The asbo generation aside, people expect a generally higher standard – they expect a nice environment, clean loos, good beer, reasonable pricing, and polite company. We have spent enough time abroad to know that this is a real possibility yet we come home and nicotine stained ceilings, dirty glasses, stinking bogs, and £10 for a round means staying home is an appealing option.
- The supermarkets do offer cheap beer but I agree with the article that says that home offers cheap coffee yet why does Starbucks do so well? Pub beer is overpriced, supermarket beer is sold at less than cost price as part of their offering – maybe pubs should consider that with their food. Regardless, I think citing the cost of supermarket beer hides other factors such as absence of decent “get home” public transport and readily available taxi services, naked profiteering (and limit of choice) by those criminals the pubcos,
- I don’t buy this thing about “There are so many other things to do than go to the pub nowadays” – there always has been!
