Great British Pub Awards 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010 
I have just been interviewed for a feature in the Morning Advertiser. And by a staggering coincidence it gives me great pleasure (drum roll) to announce:
JTI AND SAVE OUR PUBS & CLUBS CAMPAIGN SUPPORT GREAT BRITISH PUB AWARDS
Japan Tobacco International (JTI) has joined forces with the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign to support the Best Creative Outdoor Area award in the Morning Advertiser’s Great British Pub Awards 2010.
Launched last year with the support of TV chef and publican Antony Worrall Thompson and MPs from the three main parties, the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign is a coalition of groups and individuals who believe that the public smoking ban introduced in Scotland in 2006 and the rest of the United Kingdom in 2007 is excessive and should be amended to allow separate smoking rooms.
Campaign director Simon Clark said: “By supporting this award we aim to show our commitment to publicans who go that extra mile to accommodate all their customers, including smokers, throughout the year.
“Although we want the smoking ban amended to allow separate smoking rooms, we also want to highlight the fact that the ban could be extended to doorways and beer gardens with exclusion zones around many public buildings, including pubs and bars.
“Supporting this award gives us the opportunity to highlight this very real threat that could have serious repercussions for publicans and their customers.”
Jonathan Yajima, JTI’s Head of Horeca and Vending, said, "Our aim to help licensees improve the profitability of their business and accommodate all their customers, including the 10.5 million smokers in the UK.
“Therefore we are delighted to support both the Best Creative Outdoor Area award at the Morning Advertiser’s Great British Pub Awards 2010 and the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign.”
The Great British Pub Awards 2010 take place on Thursday September 9 at The Hilton, Park Lane, London.
Watch this space.
Reader Comments (4)
"There are all kinds of factors lying behind the loss of hundreds of public drinking houses. The smoking ban is always advanced as one of them, but I don't necessarily accept it: for everyone [sic] one person who preferred it when you had to cut your way with a knife through the fog of tobacco smoke to get to the bar I suspect there are two or three who find fume-free pubs a much more pleasant alternative."
- Ian Liddell-Grainger, Tory MP and member of the Parliamentary Pub Group, writing in the Western Daily Press, 12 June 2010.
Good old Tories, eh?
Hmm - that'll be "two or three" of those invisible people who take up space and don't buy anything.
Ian Liddell-Grainger's point is flawed in three ways. Firstly, it has become patently obvious that the crowds of smiling families that were predicted to arrive in pubs en masse following the smoking ban have simply failed to materialise; in addition, it has also become patently obvious that smokers on the whole spent more in pubs than non-smokers. Secondly, while agreeing that many factors have led to closures of pubs, it is pure sophistry to suggest that the smoking ban is not the leading reason for their demise. Evidence for this is provided by the profiles of the pubs closing and the simple fact that to a greater or lesser degree, the other underlying factors have been in play for decades, if not generations. Finally, and perhaps most pertinently, whether you like smoking or not, a Conservative MP should be campaiging actively for freedom of the individual as one of the fundamental reasons that led him to Conservatism in the first place. The ban is a construct of nannying bureaucrats and social engineers - the very people the Conservatives should be viscerally challenging as a part of their DNA. Liddell-Grainger's comments are extremely disappointing, though unfortunately not surprising.
A few pubs in my town are surviving only because they have scavanged
customers from the 17 pubs that have closed down. How many non smokers deserted their usual locals when they died a death.. Where are all the big mouthed
zealots who now stay at home frightened of stepping into
pubs they helped to kill.. One weasel featured pro ban Labour MP who used to frequent local town centre pubs has'nt been seen for two years.
Time for chat chat is long gone ,time for some collar feeling.
Waiting is over.