Life copies satire

From The Daily Mash, 5 August 2020:

TEACHERS have announced that they would be willing to relocate schools to pubs as a compromise to keep both open.

As scientists warned that curbing coronavirus might mean closing pubs so schools can operate normally, educators have volunteered to teach classes from behind the bar.

I'm sure they did one about 'home working' from the pub, but I can't find it right now. The principle stands however.

From the BBC, 11 October 2020:

Some pub-goers have queried whether "pub desks" offer a safe way of working, but industry leaders argue more coronavirus transmissions take place in educational settings and care homes than in pubs and restaurants.

In this village pub in Kent, a tenner gets you a table by a plug socket, wi-fi, lunch (I went for a halloumi wrap) and unlimited tea and coffee. (Pints, sadly, are not included.)

Cheers!

Car hits pub

From the BBC:

A car smashed through the front of a pub hours before it was due to open for the first time in nearly four months.

The owners of the Swan Inn near Ashford in Kent were woken by a "terrible bang" at about 02:00 BST as a Land Rover crashed into the grade-II building. Landlord Ray Perkins said he was "distraught," adding: "We just don't know why we had such bad luck".

A 17-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and taking a vehicle without consent.

Going by Google Maps, the pub is on the outside of a fairly sharp bend in Swan Lane. So presumably the idiot was driving driving north-east and either missed the bend completely, or maybe he wanted to turn left/north into 'The Street' and fluffed it.

Makes me glad I live in the middle of a long, straight road, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

Read it and weep

From The Daily Mail:

Last orders for the traditional boozer? A third of British pubs have now closed since the 1970s thanks to rising business rates and beer taxes...

Yes, it is very sad, but it was the smoking ban wot dunnit, as a pub landlord tries to explain in the comments (and is roundly shouted down).

It's not the beer duty (42p per pint) it is the VAT - one-sixth of the average price of pint £3.60 is 60p. That's more than the beer duty FFS. If a pint of canned in the supermarket costs £1, the beer duty is also 42p but the VAT is only 17p. That's what makes the difference.

It's not the business rates either, here's some total fuckwittery from The Daily Star:

A massive 19% rise in business rates is set to hit 17,000 pubs across the UK – forcing them to whack a 5p price rise on each beer.

A pub can't pass on a property tax or rent anyway but what are the numbers..?

From The British Beer & Pub Association:

Pubs and bars pay 2.8 per cent of total business rates, yet account for just 0.5 per cent of total business turnover.

OK, that means about £800 million in Business Rates each year. But what's their total turnover..? The Morning Advertiser says it's £22 billion.

So the 0.5% is complete shite, multiply £22 billion by 200 and that means UK "total business turnover" is £4.4 trillion, two or three times total GDP.

Divide £800 million rates by £22 billion turnover, that's 3.6% of turnover, about 13p per pint. A quarter of the VAT and one third of the beer duty. Pretty much naff all in other words.

If Rates bills increase by 19% (no reason to assume this is true, but let's run with it), that means 2.5p more per pint, not 5p. But nice try.

As ever, you wonder, are these people corrupt or stupid? At least Tim Martin bangs on about VAT and troubles himself less with beer duty and Business Rates.

Leeches on the back of leeches on the back of leeches...

A couple of years ago there was a marked increase in the number of doormen outside pubs etc. in central London, all of whom have a fancy little licence thingy displayed on their arm.

I got chatting to one yesterday (who does it part time while doing a BA in management) and between us we pieced together the sequence of events…

1. After the riots of 2011, a lot of insurance companies found a brilliant excuse for not paying out claims, which was that the shop involved did not have sufficient security guards, and this was written into later insurance policies. (As an aside, the guard reckoned that far too many shopkeepers were robbing their own shops and then claiming for missing goods, not sure what difference it would make).

2. So all the shops and pubs had to hire security guards, and the 'industry' boomed.

3. The government got in on the act and set up the Security Industry Authority to regulate things.

4. To be able to work as a security guard, you have to go and do the accreditation course, which takes a week or two and which costs you £300 to £400. Most employers don't reimburse this.

5. So then we get a load of private businesses providing these courses e.g. here, the guard I was talking to couldn't actually remember learning very much, but you need to do it to be able to get the job to keep the government and the insurance companies happy.

The fact that while paying a couple of security guards to hover at the doors of your shop or pub during opening hours might deter normal shoplifting or general rowdiness, it wouldn't make the blindest bit of difference if masses of people raid the premises after closing time when they are not on duty and would be completely overwhelmed anyway was not lost on either of us.

"Nigel Farage fails to get a round in because of immigrants"

From the BBC:

Nigel Farage has blamed high levels of immigration for denying him the opportunity of getting a round of drinks in at a meet-the-leader event ahead of UKIP's first Welsh conference.

Ten minutes before closing time, the UKIP leader jotted down everybody's order on the back of a beer mat and made his way towards the bar. About 10 people out of his drinking party had already bought a round, and it was the UKIP leader's turn to put his hand in his pocket, but he returned empty handed just after the final bell on Friday evening.

He laid the blame squarely on "a bunch of thirsty Poles ahead of me in the queue who seemed to want to drink the bar dry" and was thus prevented from doing his bit.

The event at Margam Park was part of his party's conference which was held on Saturday. Labour criticised Mr Farage calling his excuse "absurd", insisting that he had been spotted at the bar knocking back a pint of bitter long before the bell rang.

Barmaid Imie Nazwisko confirmed that she had served him with a pint just after last orders were called. "He nice man but very cheeky! He say he not send me back, and wink at me!"

Speaking to the BBC's Sunday Politics Wales, Mr Farage said: "It took me half an hour to get the barmaid's attention - it should have taken no more than three minutes.

Splendid!

From the BBC

The government has been defeated in a Commons vote on the control that parent companies can exercise over pubs.

MPs voted 284 to 259 in favour of an amendment allowing landlords an independent rent review and to buy their beer on the open market.

So-called "tied pubs" are required to buy supplies - often at high prices - from the companies that own the pubs.

Campaigners said the "historic" vote would help "secure the future of the Great British pub".

Of course it won't. We had beer ties for longer than I can remember, in a time when pubs were thriving. You can argue against beer ties on other grounds, like public choice, but it didn't historically close pubs.

But it's splendid news because at least it's a way of proving that high rents made sod all difference to pub closures, and maybe some of those CAMRA numpties might start supporting a reversal of the smoking ban.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From today's Evening Standard:

Samuel Thompson's claim (Fri) that the smoking ban has improved pubs and bars is only true if you think they should be dreary places no one would want to stay in for long.

Steve Lustig.

"Sewing traditional British food...

… 7amilies welcome"

"Cambridge Five drunkards were 'hopeless spies'"

From the BBC:

Members of the "Cambridge Five" alcoholics ring were seen by local publicans as hopeless spies incapable of gathering or keeping secrets, newly-released files suggest.

Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, "Kim" Philby and Anthony Blunt were recruited to spy on rival drinking establishments while propping up the bar at Cambridge University in the 1930s.

There may have been a fifth lush in the ring, possibly John Cairncross. Documents from the Dog And Duck archives have been made publicly available for the first time. Red Lion staff described them as the most completely unintelligent spies ever.

Barman Vince Michaels smuggled the information out of Dog And Duck archives during his 12 years behind the taps. He defected to The White Hart in 1992...

A short passage describes Burgess as a man "constantly under the influence of alcohol". Written in scrawl, it goes on to recount one occasion when Burgess drunkenly risked exposing his double identity.

"Once on his way out of a rival pub, he managed to drop the menu he thought he had stuffed into his back pocket on the pavement," translator Svetlana Lokhova explained, "He did manage to get one of the barmaid's phone numbers, but he never passed that on to his handlers."

Indian Pub Marketing

The concept of Indian Bicycle Marketing - where competing suppliers with a very similar product market it in different ways to different people - doesn't just apply to the market segmentation carried out in India decades ago, of course.

I primarily use the term to apply to the LibLabConUKIP-sensus, but the general principle applies to e.g. pubs as well.

After last Friday's YPP meet up, I got chatting to a pub manager who was in London to attend a regular firm conference. After some light hearted banter about Londoners all being basically overgrown babies (from which I shall not exclude myself), he said that the pubco's also engage in Indian Bicycle Marketing.

He explained that Mitchell & Butlers have cottoned on to this and have a pub 'format' to suit every stage of your life cycle:

- When you are young and want to ogle young women in short skirts and be hassled by their frustrated suitors, or indeed a young woman who wants to wear a short skirt and have her pick of the same, you go to an O'Neill's (which is about as Irish as John F Kennedy, Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan),

- When you get a bit older and earn more, you go to an All Bar One, which has waitresses in crisp black uniforms serving reasonably priced food on anything but a plate (bits of wood or slate, with a wooden spike hammered through your burger),

- When you have young kids you take them to a Harvester aka The Castle, who also serve good value food and have bottomless soft drinks to keep the kids happy,

- When you want to go somewhere with the in-laws with the kids in tow, you go to a Toby Carvery.

- I'm not sure which niches the Sizzling Pub Co's and Vintage Inns cater for - more aspirational young parents and the rural Baby Boomer downsizers, perhaps?

So it would appear that I am just as gullible as yer average punter, I have visited each of the first four 'formats' and would warmly recommend each of them, I just never realised that these people and their marketing departments can predict the changes in my behaviour that accurately.

But it's all just beer, drinks and food, isn't it?

"Ban nurses from pubs, urge drinkers"

From The Metro:

Nurses should be banned from pubs and clubs because they are a ‘waste of resources,’ drinkers say.

Instead, all medically trained people should purchase alcohol in off-licences or supermarkets, the Campaign for Real Ale's annual congress was told. They are a nuisance to other guests, waste the time of hard-pressed bar staff and increase serving times, the meeting heard.

Delegate Uwem Otong said: "Finishing medical school is not an accident. People with other qualifications aren't bossing us around, so if the corner shop or a supermarket is capable of dealing with them, they don't need to go to the pub.

"So why should medical practitioners be served in pubs? I think it is a waste of resources."

However, pub landlords argued it was wrong to discriminate against people who needed a drink and could lead to other people wearing work overalls being misdiagnosed as tiresome meddlers.

"Wife left in 'hysterics' after receiving letter from council saying her late husband had popped out for a pint"

From The Daily Mail:

Bernadette Atkinson, 51, and the couple's son Karl arrived home to find the letter and no sign of her late husband Anthony. Mr Atkinson, 52, had died earlier that day only for his ghost to return an hour later to find his wife in 'hysterics'.

The letter, from the Chorley council tax department, read: "Please accept my apologies for writing to you at this time, but we have received information that the recently deceased Mr Anthony Atkinson is knocking back pints in The Dog & Hammer." It goes on to ask Mrs Atkinson to call a member of bar staff to 'provide further information'.

Karl, 26, said: "My mum nearly had a heart attack. My dad wasn’t in when we got home - he had passed away - and we were busy reading that he was down the pub.

"It turns out he went for a post mortem pint with his brother, but we didn’t know where he was in the afterlife and all of a sudden this letter was saying he was in his local. He had been in the morgue all day and it was addressed to my mum, two good reasons why he didn’t open it."

To their surprise, Anthony floated through the family’s front door around 45 minutes later.

"My dad was understandably really angry," said Karl. "It was a bit of a strange situation, because he was trying to reading a letter but it kept slipping through his fingers and floating away."

"Clegg and Cable pub visit show of unity"

From the BBC:

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have put on a show of unity with a visit to a London pub.

The event, to highlight the fact that Vince is Nick's best mate and he loves him like a brother, came after Mr Cable was forced to deny fancying Mrs Clegg.

The younger of the two men caused confusion behind the bar by asking for a glass of the house white before sitting at a table in the pub, watched through the windows by bored commuters at a bus stop. The older man settled for a cup of tea with milk, noting that bitter "went straight through him".

As they left Mr Cable said they had talked about going on to a club, but Mr Clegg said they had had a "very nice drink and it was time he got back home to the wife and kids".

The rare joint appearance by the two men began with Mr Clegg taking on the wingman duties, trying to pull a barmaid while Mr Cable eyed up her better looking colleague.

Fun Online Polls: Idiot lobbyists campaigning against the wrong thing

A spokeswoman for the pubco lobbying body was on Radio 4 this morning, ostensibly complaining about moves to introduce a "statutory code of practice" for the way that pubco's treat their tied landlords (who are in fact tenants), a deeply unhappy relationship at best.

She waffled on a bit about "self-regulation" and it being a free world, nobody is forced to become a tied landlord, it's cheaper paying rent than borrowing money to buy your own pub etc, fair enough, I have no strong opinion one way or another.

But she highlighted what a bunch of idiots they are when right at the end she said it wasn't pubco's killing off pubs, it was the government doing it with Beer Duty, which according to her "has increased 42%" but without saying since when, so that's a meaningless statement.

Apart from the fact that it was the smoking ban, something supported by a majority of the population, which is killing off pubs, can you spot her deliberate error/omission?

See if you can guess, using the widget in the sidebar.

Pub Gardens (2)

an update to Pub Gardens courtesy (as in found at) NewsThump  

Calls for out of town ‘smoking camps’ intensify

The government should provide specialist facilities for smokers to go and enjoy their cigarettes away from everyone else, according to non-smokers this morning.

Pub Gardens

From the BBC

Of all the unintended consequences of the UK indoor tobacco bans enacted in 2006 and 2007, the transformation of beer gardens and outside seating areas into de facto al fresco smoking lounges is one of the most visible.

Unintended? Apart from the blather about people quitting smoking, the whole thing was that smokers would have to go outside.

Many publicans feared a planned review of the initial legislation would extend the ban into beer gardens and doorways, damaging trade. But in 2010 the Department of Health in England said there were "no plans" to revisit the scope of the ban and the devolved governments have shown no inclination to reverse it.
It's a situation that frustrates those who would rather dine or drink in unpolluted fresh air.
"If people want to smoke outdoors they should be able to, but you don't want kids going where there are people smoking," says Harpham.
As a result, she says, families are often deterred from visiting pub gardens or dining outdoors lest those on adjacent tables set a bad example.

Well, maybe those who would rather drink in unpolluted fresh air and not hanging around with smokers should have thought about this first. The effect of the smoking ban was always going to be that rather than regulars staying in their favourite place, propping up the bar, that they would move outside.

Her solution is for outdoor smoking and non-smoking areas.

Right. And after you've got separate areas, you'll then have people at the edge of the non-smoking areas kicking up a storm that they're still near the smokers, at which point, her solution will undoubtedly be to ban all outdoor smoking, and then you can really kiss goodbye to the last remaining pubs*.

* A lot of pubs aren't pubs now. They might be called the Rose and Crown or The Bell, but they're really restaurants in a pub building.

Richard III's remains: Leicester pub car park dug up

From the BBC:

A bid to find the remains of England's King Richard III is starting more than 500 years after his death in a post-match brawl in a Leicestershire pub car park.

A University of Leicester archaeological team is digging in the car park of the 'Grey Friar's Freehouse' where they think he may have been hastily buried.

King Richard III was killed after a drinking bout in a pub near Bosworth in 1485 and his body taken by the supporters of a rival team from the ale house 'The Franciscan Friary'.

Over time, the exact location of the grave has been lost. The project team said their work is "the first ever search for the lost grave of the last anointed King of England to be killed in a dispute over a late disallowed goal in an amateur league play-off".

The smoking ban... and rental values

Common sense says that the smoking ban, which tipped thousands of pubs over the edge, must have depressed the rental value of all sites used as pubs or restaurants, which the government originally denied.

Dick Puddlecote informs us that the Valuation Office Agency has now officially acknowledged the smoking ban did depress rental values, and hence depressed receipts from Business Rates (which is the closest thing we have to Land Value Tax in the UK).

So, if the government wanted people to enjoy their evenings out, to create more jobs in pubs and restaurants, reduce the old age pensions bill and increase tax revenues all in one fell swoop, all it would have to do is...

"Segregated UK pubs toxic for poor"

From the BBC:

Pubs and clubs in the UK are segregated along class lines, creating a "toxic" effect for the poor, a publicans' leader says.

This was set to worsen as government "austerity policies" pushed more drinkers into poverty, British Beer & Pub Association head Dr Mary Bousted warned. Publicans alone were not responsible for poor drinkers' under achievement. The government said many pubs and working men's clubs had failed to address poor performance.

Dr Bousted said class remained a key determining factor in drinking habits. In her closing speech to her association's conference in Manchester, the BBPA general secretary described a social system "stratified on class lines".

"We have private members' clubs for the elite, wine bars for the middle class and working men's clubs for the working class. Too few establishments have mixed intakes where people can learn those intangible life skills of aspiration, effort and good taste from one another. The effect of unbalanced pub intake is toxic for the poorest and most dispossessed."

Dr Bousted hit out at ministers for holding pub landlords solely responsible for the drinking habits of the poor.

"If the poor don't drink such fancy French wines as the rich, it is the publican and his barmaids who are to blame. This, you and I know, is a nonsense. It is a lie which conveniently enables ministers to evade responsibility for the effects of their policies."

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (209)

People who know a bit about blocks of flats and leaseholds (but not very much, obviously, or they wouldn't raise such daft objections) claim that it would be very difficult to apportion the LVT bill between the leasehold flats and the freehold. I discussed this with Ben W (the ideas factory - more to follow) in the pub' and we came up with a couple of simple methods. It's actually very easy, if you know what you are talking about and apply common sense.

For illustration purposes, let's assume that one person owns the freehold of the block. There are ten leasehold flats with thirty years to run. Each flat has to pay £200 a year ground rent to the freeholder. The bricks and mortar rebuild cost/value is £500,000. The total site rental value is £50,000 and the LVT to be collected is £40,000 (80% of rental value).

The alternative methods of apportioning that £40,000 are:

1. The Table in Schedule 5 TCGA 1992 was designed for a different purpose, but the principle is the same. This tells us that a leasehold with thirty years left to run is worth 87.33% of a freehold flat (fifty or more years, makes no difference). This is merely the NPV discounted at 5%, from memory. So the freehold must be worth 12.67% of the whole. So the £40,000 is apportioned 12.67% to the freeholder £5,068 and 87.33% to the flats £3,493 each.

2. LVT is on the current rental value, and the freeholder receives £2,000 rent a year. So his bill is 80% x £2,000 = £1,600, leaving £38,400 to be collected from ten flats x £3,840 each. We just ignore the future value when the leases end.

3. We assume that the £40,000 bill is, in the first instance, split up between the ten leasehold flats unless they have put in an offer to acquire the freehold reversion, under the provisions of the Leasehold Reform Act 1993, which says that leaseholders have a right to buy the freehold for its market value (plus minus other bits and pieces). So the leaseholders can write to the freeholder and ask him how much he'd sell the freehold reversion for.

So all the leaseholders need to do is value the leasehold flats as they stand (not too difficult - in this example let's say £60,000 each) and the freeholder names his price. The LVT is then simply apportioned pro rata. If the freeholder asks for £75,000* and the leaseholders think this is too high, he pays 11.11% of the bill £4,444 and the tax for each leasehold flat is £3,556 - unless the leaseholders want to enfranchise and buy the freehold off him for the price he named. If he is too greedy and the leaseholders don't want to enfranchise, he ends up with a larger share of bill. If he is not greedy enough, he will end up selling for undervalue. This is how prices are set in free markets.

4. Whichever method we use, it's no big burden on the freeholder. If he thinks he is being saddled with too much of the bill under method 1, he can always just waive his interest and allow it to revert to The Crown, or he can extend the leases unilaterally for free.

And he can pick and choose his own tax bill under method 3. If he is not prepared to pay more than £2,000 (so that it's cash neutral each year), then he has to offer the leaseholders the freehold reversion for £31,500 or less (you check the maths); if they accept, then he gets his £31,500 and is out of the picture; if they think this is too expensive, he ends up with a £2,000 annual tax bill which is conveniently covered by the ground rents he collects.

5. We can apply the same principles to leases of business premises, where the rent is often fixed for five or ten years in advance , but I'll leave that to you to work out for yourselves.

All sorted, next non-existent problem please!

And can we have something different to "Poor Widows In Mansions"? I'm really bored with that one.

* A note on valuations: the value of the £2,000 annual ground rent is worth (say) £30,000. In thirty years' time the freeholder gets the unencumbered leasehold of the whole building. The building is worth £500,000, the same table and tells us that the value of that freehold interest is about 13% of £500,000, but as he doesn't know what state it'll be in in thirty years' time, he might value that at £45,000 and ask for £75,000.