Bruce wrote: > Not according to the publicans around this neck of the woods it hasn't. As > it happens, I was talking with the landlord of my local about this very > issue earlier today and he confirmed what I said and then some. >From the > horses' mouth, his trade has been hammered by the smoking ban and he tells > me that he's far from being alone - most of the pubs in the area, both rural > and urban, are suffering badly.
Surely we have to be careful here. It is a definite fact that pubs are closing down at a very rapid rate. However, to lump that decline totally on the smoking ban might be too simplistic. 1. We've seen the rise in cheap booze available from the supermarkets. 2. We've seen significant tax increases on beer and spirits by our dear Chancellors over the years while supermarkets have managed to keep cheap booze cheap. 3. The general recession and cut back in consumer spending has also occurred over a significant part of the same period as the smoking ban. > Of course, the anti-smokers will NEVER accept any possibility of this being > the case, just as they never accepted the possibility of a sensible > compromise. > > My local, as with many others, could very easily have been altered to > provide a smoking room adequately separated from the non-smoking areas. In > fact, it already had been long before the ban came into force. Smokers, and > their companions, could smoke in warmth and comfort. Non-smokers could sit > in warmth and comfort *and*, glory of glories, without having to breath in > smoke. Not all pubs could separate their seating areas/rooms as you describe and, therefore, it would have meant a pub by pub inspection to check whether each individual establishment could, or could not, have complied with the new rules. > But no, only a total draconian ban will do. And to illustrate how stupid it > can get, the landlord of whom I speak cannot even smoke in his *private* > upstairs flat above the pub which he owns outright. Apparently, the corridor > and stairway between his flat and the public areas of the pub are "too > short". Now that is a very silly ruling. I can sympathise with his frustration. The pub that I frequent has, for as long as I've known it, had a ban on smoking downstairs. They then introduced into all the pubs (for it is part of a small, privately owned chain) a complete smoking ban many months ahead of the legal ban. It did have a slight affect on sales at one time but now the only difference that I notice is that the floor outside the pub is covered in dog ends, despite ashtrays being provided and the area swept regularly. Roger
