Get your mitts off my pint!!!

[Mr Mystery]

I am now officially enraged

Not content with piling greater and greater tax on my pint, my local pub has now been told their quiz machine requires a gambling license.

And all this in the name of curbing 'binge drinking'. Well guess what, at £3.50 a pint, I cannot afford to binge drink. And thanks to the hours I work, including commuting time, midweek drinking is far from advisable.

It's time for me to write to my MP with a whinge, and a suggestion. Your average pub is categorically NOT part of the problem. Indeed, it is in their interest to not serve those who have had a skinful. It pisses off their other drinkers, and if sustained, drives us away. Plus, of caught they can be fined and stripped of their license.

Yet the measures being taken hit these businesses hardest. When I started drinking in the pub in question, a pint of ale was £2.50. That was 5 years ago. When I started drinking 14 years ago, a pint was around £1.80. And guess what! Binge drinking hasn't been affected.

Small pubs are clearly not part of the problem. So why not offer them a tax break? A responsive publican is a godsend. Give them a way to compete. Tax late licensed premises heavily. Make the ones creating the problem pay for the clean up!

As I said, I'm writing to my MP, and if you feel the same, I ask you to do the same.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I'm sure it isn't pubs either, surely it falls to where they can buy alcohol cheapest? I.E. A supermarket, or an off-license.

[Mr Mystery]

Indeed. People 'pre-drink' because they've made a night out so expensive.

The cost does need to be paid, of that there is no dispute. But why apply it to those who aren't contributing to the problem?

There are other ways. My local has several police officers who frequent it, not only because it's an excellent boozer, but because they know there is never any trouble, letting them leave their work behind. So why is the landlady struggling to turn a profit due to heavy handed taxation?

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

It's ridiculous in all honesty, I work at a pub, and we do have trouble occasionally, but that's because the Welsh are dicks, and they are usually already drunk.
So pubs aren't the problem, most people go to a pub to have a couple of drinks with friends and have a laugh. That's what me and my friends do on a Sunday eve.

[Denzark]

Pub - chat, drink, pork scratchings, ogle skirt.

Job Jobbed.

[White Tiger88]

Pub - chat, drink, pork scratchings, ogle skirt.

Job Jobbed.

Want to trade types of pubs are countries have then? We have been invaded by Redneck bars here -_-

[Deadlift]

Pub - chat, drink, pork scratchings, ogle skirt.

Job Jobbed.

Not forgetting the Darts and Pool.

[tawelwch]

the Welsh are dicks

Oiiiiiiiiii!


Uffar gwirion!

Everyone can be bad when they've too much to drink sometimes!

[Kirsten]

having been a pub manager, I can agree with this. the problem are the supermarkets with their ridiculous cheap offers. everyone I know gets drunk before they go out then tops up once there, a total waste of time and money. Restricting sales of alcohol in supermarkets, and in clubs with ridiculous offers on shots, jaeger bombs etc. would solve most of this binge drinking, increasing violence, and soaring hospital admissions