The truth is sneaking out bit by bit, it may be a bit distorted but it’s a sneaking! A new survey has declared the death toll among bars, pubs and clubs has increased 9.4pc over the last quarter as hard-up drinkers stayed at home to drink cheap supermarket booze.
This may be true, but it is not the whole truth as they have neglected the smoking element – and I talk from first-hand experience here! My brace of offspring, one of each variety loved ‘going clubbing’ 6 years ago. Now we are talking preparing for a full-scale war here regarding preparations for the night out! We are talking decisions, decisions and more decisions as there is ‘make-up’ to consider, eye liner or not, this top or that top, stinky perfume of the merest hint of, tights or leggings, it was easier to plan the invasion of Iraq!
On the other side we had to decide which after shave to sport, which trousers, shoes, shirt etc – and can someone iron the pile of attire that floated down the stairs from above?
Now in my daughter’s case this 3 hour action necessitated 30 minutes intervals for a fag break “to de-stress!”, and of course a celebratory fag when the ordeal process was completed. My son, being a non-smoker took a mere ten minutes to sort himself out-providing we ironed!
Off they’d trot, about 7.30pm- 7.45pm (actually we ferried them!), into the city centre for a few drinks and some serious socialising before hitting the clubs just before 10.15pm. I could never figure this out, the 10.15pm bit I mean as in my day when it was “Down Down…deeper and down…” we used to pile out of the pubs at 11-11.15 and do our best to remain upright in front of the bouncers so as to gain entrance to our favoured clubs.
It transpires that things have changed over time (as they certainly do) for now, apparently, if you appear in the club/s pre 10.15pm it costs next to nothing to get in, whereas after 11pm it can easily cost eight quid. £8??? I can remember when £8 would… oh, never mind all that. So, fair play to the young ‘uns, ever clued up they seek value where-ever they go and that includes fashions too.
I never noticed to start with but late on, 2007, the kids seemed to request that a couple of their mates come round first so that they could drink some cans before they went clubbing. Hmmmmmm! The good lady allotted the conservatory & kitchen for such activities on the proviso that no mess was left behind-a rule observed by all excepting our own boycub to whom a bin was an alien concept. After a few months of this I asked said boycub why we had been singled out for ‘pre-club drinkies’. “It’s her ennit dad” he warned me (I stared uncomprhendingly at him), “she can’t smoke in the pubs anymore an’ it’s freezin’ outside so she don’t wanna go pub anymore cos she can’t smoke in there”.
Of course! My daughter is a female reincarnation of moi-no smokey (?) then f**k you, you don’t get my money either! Simples.
I noticed that the nightclub chatter changed too, as “Unscrupulous” (eg) nightclub was deserted and they all piled into the new ‘top of the pops’ night club “Scruples” (eg) as it turned out that “Scruples” had immediately realised the impact the smoking ban would have and had gone out of their way to spend approximately £1,100 to provide their smoking clients with a rooftop smoking area – and of some quality too!
The amazing thing? My son, total non-smoker and abhorrent of such matters, joined them!
“Unscrupulous” simply went downhill as they could not cope with the disappearance of so many customers and soon closed down altogether.
The report states that a total of 116 drinking holes became insolvent in the last quarter alone, up from the 106 over the previous quarter, bringing the total to 540 over the past 12 months, according to research by accountant Wilkins Kennedy. 116 late night music bars, discos cum night clubs in 3 months! Now we are talking some serious government revenue going missing here folks, serious wedge indeed! I know one or two people in this abundantly immigrated city of ours and I also know what they (a couple of the bigger night clubs) turned over cash wise on a friday/saturday night. I’m amazed they didn’t have a brewery directly behind the building for instant stock replacements! I also now know what the smoking ban has done to them because now, 2011, you don’t have to get in by 10.15pm to get in cheaply; in fact, you are welcomed in at any time-providing, of course, that you are not legless. (sigh-somethings never change!)
We know about pubs, bars, clubs, snooker halls, Bingo halls closing etc and they now amount to a tad over 9,000 closures, but I had never considered night clubs before! 540 over the past 12 months, slightly more than 10 per week-just how much money IS the treasury losing because of this ban?
There’s a nice little list of ‘dunnits’ too:-
Luminar – night club operators
Castle Inns – Scottish bar & nightclub business
Principle Leisure Group – Tyne & Wear based group which runs a chain of bars and restaurants.
Cougar Leisure – Northern pub and bar chain, went into administration in January
Balls Brothers – a City wine bar chain went under in November last year.
Now it is obvious that all these went out of business due to lack of patronage, the much-vaunted beer-tie which has had a colossal effect on the pub sector has absolutely nothing to do with this sector at all, as most nightclubs are privately owned and buy their beers from where-ever! This is solely down to the smoking ban, people reacting to no longer being able to go out and “smocialise” (I like that one) and therefore going out much later or not at all.
Miko, my Hungarian friend calls the smoking ban “fattyú törvény” – which translated to English simply means ‘bastard law’. Sadly, the night club owned by him burnt down a month before the implementation of said fattyú törvény! Very clued up these eastern Europeans I’ll tell you.
Wilkins Kennedy partner Anthony Cork, said: ‘The second quarter of 2011 has been particularly tough for bars, pubs and night clubs and the death toll keeps rising.
Well, upon my soul. man not speaking with forked tongue (well, on this bit at any rate!). If you consider that the 2nd quarter of the year to be April, May & June then the outlook is bleak for the entire industry, for if these venues cannot make it pay when it is relatively warm at night then there is no hope for the industry! 38,000 more people joined the dole queues in those 3 months as well so we can assume that the hospitality sector is losing at least 152,000 jobs per annum so at this rate it won’t be too long before this country applies for a ‘euro bail-out‘ too!
What a joke, what a farcical state of affairs when it is all over a few dickheads abhorrence of a legal product. (Those damned, stinking, no good mushy peas-look at the havoc they have caused!)
ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) had the perfect song for the nightclubs to play to GOVERNMENTS, but would they listen?