Taliban Tactics in Towns Near You or Why we need Pubs.

Genx

During these days of doom and gloom there have been some little moments of schadenfreude that I must admit to.
I don't generally enjoy watching people suffer but there are a few that made me smirk.

It turns out that a lot of the pubs in the UK now belong to major corporations that are all funded from Iceland.
Since Kaupping went bust last week and Icebank froze all the UK accounts some new facts have come to light. It is amazing how we have all missed the fundamental changes money has made in our lives because we have been so busy chasing our tails in the endless pursuit of avarice.

Staples of society have been eroded so much that there are now a million Italian coffee bars in Bournemouth alone. Once welcoming boozers bedecked with flock wallpaper, burnished bars and copper fittings have been replaced by glamourous "hot spots" where there are no seats or tables so anyone over 25 is immediately at a disadvantage, the music is so loud and intrusive that a conversation is almost impossible and there are always 2 guys on the door with the qualifications of a water rat and the manners of a stoat.

In their defence these "ALL BAR SENSE" type places do have lots of fancy paintings and hand crafted floor coverings imported from Borneo as well as an endless supply of wine from god knows where at god knows what price. They are designed to be comfortable for the media savvy, wealthy tossers and tastemekers in the three years between University and their first real relationship and / or baby. They are not for anyone else. It is inclusion by exclusion.
 
I have to tell you, with a deep sense of foreboding that ther are almost no old pubs left in central London. That my friends is a bloody disgrace! Pubs are what made this country great. That and the ability to wage war whilst avoiding casualties on our side... but that is for another time.

So the financial collapse has some visible casualties and in particular one guy, Mr Tchenguiz, who lost a billion pounds last week. A BILLION! in one day. (That's $2 billion if you are American and the whole Northern Territory if you are from Australia.) Now he has to sell his stake in about 800 pubs. That is good news 'cos he has been shutting them down wholesale for years. I believe his motives were entirely profit driven but the fact that he is Iranian can't have helped. How could he know the damage his ventures would be doing? Would we have been allowed to go to Tehran and sell off the Mosques? I doubt it and ignorance is no excuse. Our temples have been desecrated and the damage is becoming more and more apparent.

About a week ago I was at a wedding on Saturday and Funeral on Monday. There was a huge contrast, obviously. But one thing struck me at both events. The wedding was glamourous and I was surrounded by very very powerful people. And to be honest I couldn't quite believe it. After all the wedding was about 10 miles from where I grew up, in rural Lancashire. There were fund managers, developers with multi million pound portfolios, equity traders, more doctors than the NHS can provide on most days, lawyers, union bosses and they were all there to get plastered and make fools of themselves like everyone else. It was excellent. Beer was the great leveller.

At the funeral I met a load of my old school mates. They are all doing well. Things have changed there though. Apart from the male pattern baldness and ever increasing girth we are all in rude health and there is still a bond between us that I know will last forever. The difference now is that of the 4 pubs that used to be in the centre of the village only one remains open. ONE!

I consider this a personal affront. It seems Mr Tchenguiz had bought 2 of them and put them up for sale and the other was owned by Punch Taverns who are doing the same thing. The wake had to be held at a hotel in the next village.

That is a crime!

When I was younger we made total idiots of ourselves with alcoholic assistance and I know that we could easily have been led into destruction and lunacy, a la Amy Wino, but the pursuit of alcohol was a noble and honoured tradition that deserves respect and some form of sanction at the highest levels. Enough of this big brother, Taliban demonisation. It is our birth right and no amount of Iranian, Icelandic, Thatcherite profit motive led prohibition is acceptable.

With the demise of our pubs our youth have lost a font of knowledge, contacts and places to perform. In turn the older generation have lost a means of communicating on level erms with their offspring and a rite of passage is in danger of being lost. No joke. This is like removing the chief of a village and replacing him with a vending machine. No wonder we are all afraid of our own kids. We never see them in a social setting and they never see us! 

I am disgusted at the way that a fundamental part of Anglo-Saxon has been stealthily eroded. Maybe thanks to the credit crash we will actually be able to pay our publicans enough to allow them to open again. It is an international disgrace and it should be reversed now!

For the past 150 years any self-respecting male 14 would have spent his time like this:
20% masturbating
40% asleep
10% learning
15% bragging about sex or drinking
10% working out how to get a bottle of cider without being caught

Nowadays they manage the same equation but replace cider with crack and sex and drinking with knives and murders.

In all seriousness, I mean this. If we continue to escalate the prohibition of alchol simply for "health" reason or because a tea total foreign investor sees more profit in Cappucino than in Carlsberg we are going to destroy the fabric of our society. Pubs aren't about booze. They are the tribal centres of our lives. They function like the long huts of primitive societies. They are the place where law and order is founded - not flouted. A decent pub has all ages and all classes and by mixing them together we avoid the race, age, wealth conflicts that blight our society.

Pubs are the nations glue and we need to remember it.

Now put on you coat and galoshes. Take a tenner from the jar above the sink and go and buy a pint. It may just save your way of life.