The true cost of the public smoking ban
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 Patricia Gidlow grew up in a pub and she used to work in pubs and bars, servicing fruit machines and pool tables. A couple of weeks ago she received Forest's monthly newsletter and wrote to us saying, "Thanks for your email. I was beginning to feel like the only body who cares anymore."
This morning Save Our Pubs and Clubs supporter Sean Spillane (who used to run Luton Social Club) sent me the response he received to an email he sent John Healey (the so-called minister for pubs) concerning the impact of the smoking ban.
Written by someone called Suzanne Walpole of the Planning for Business Team (Communities and Local Government), it reads:
Ministers recognise the important role pubs can play in maintaining community life and there is concern across Government about the number of community pubs that have been forced to close during the recession. Ministers are determined to tackle this and give them a helping hand during these tough economic times.
However, there is no evidence showing that smoke-free laws, either in this country or internationally, have caused the closure of pubs or bars and by far the biggest drivers of success in the pub trade go well beyond the fact that pubs are now free from second-hand tobacco smoke. Indeed, there are some indicators that the smoke-free law has been good for pubs, especially where they have diversified, for example by serving food.
No evidence? Patricia Gidlow would beg to differ. She writes:
Post ban the income from the [fruit] machines dropped drastically; the pubs were all empty with the non-smokers and smokers all outside often causing noise problems in their neighbourhoods ...
I was made redundant last July. I wonder how many other job losses are a direct result of the ban. There's the licensees, the bar staff, cellar and kitchen staff, cleaners, window cleaners, dray men, deliverers of crisps etc, the sanitary disposal bods, bottled gas deliverers, engineers to fix machines, collectors to empty and upgrade them.
And other suppliers from glasses and optics to janitors' supplies and drip mats. Not to mention the bar fitters and carpet layers, the decorators and the gardeners. I wonder how many of them are feeling healthier? I am certainly not.
Full article on The Free Society website HERE.
Reader Comments (5)
I am constantly amazed how so many people (those not on the front line of the pub trade) continue to proclaim the smoking ban has nothing to do with the pub closures - ignoring those who work in the trade who clearly blame the ban. Personally I have barely stepped foot in a pub since the ban - before I was a major pub goer. Its actually saving me a small fortune. But I'd rather be able to go to a pub and have a pint and a fag.
Please give the public at least a modicum of credibility Ms Walpole. You are demeaning people by stating such obvious and frankly, "silly" lies.
"There is no evidence" you say, "to show the smoke free laws have caused the closure of pubs or bars".
Where have you looked for your evidence Ms Walpole? Have you tried the ordinary little pub in the street, or the village? (what there are left of them)?
You are discrediting your own "organisation" not to mention the many honest, and hard working publicans and their customers around the country, by making such silly and rash statements.
To say there is no "evidence" to prove the smoking ban has caused the majority of pub closures only proves one thing; that you have been looking in the wrong places for your "evidence".
When you were gathering "evidence" for your report, where did you look, by the way, for your "evidence" to prove that a second hand tobacco smoke is harmful in any way,
as it has been proven without a doubt, that there is no truth in this whatsoever?
As for the "indications" that you "found" stating that the smoke free laws have been good for pubs that diversify, by serving food for example, of course they would do, they would probably have done better still if they diversified even further, and became supermarkets wouldn't they? But it isn't about pubs becoming something else Ms Walpole, it is supposed to be about retaining the traditional British pub, and you are not helping to do this one iota by telling them, (Marie-Antoinette style) to find a way of eating their cake elsewhere.
There are similarities here with the old, long gone, independent betting shops. Many years ago there were around 20,000 betting shops of which less than half were owned by the major players. (Ladbrokes, Corals, Hills etc). Now there are only around 10,000, probably less, and most are owned by large companies. Independents have gone.
A major factor in their decline was the introduction and gradually ratching up of an off course betting tax by successive Labour governments. Only the big players could survive and the little man sold up and left the business or just closed down. No doubt, in those days, Ms Walpole would deem a betting shop re-inventing itself as a bookshop a success for the policy.
The parallels are not the same but they have a similar moralistic ring.
Do you remember that TV ad Grumpy? I cannot remember who it was for, a bank or building society I think? But it showed a little old lady looking at a wine-bar in a busy high street, and telling us how that was her bank once, "and now" she told us, "they are all converting into trendy wine bars".
Christ, that must have been a few years ago mustn't it? Banks converting to wine bars?
Now it would more likely be wine bars and pubs converting into coffee shops or something equally sterile.
The Marxist bastards are trying to rewrite history.
Fuck Walpole's "no evidence".