Trollied Tuesday: boozenomics
I've long been an advocate of the science of boozenomics: understanding society and economy through the prism of a beer glass. In that spirit the following news report fills me with horror.
Pub operator JD Wetherspoon has announced it will open 250 pubs over the next five years, creating 10,000 jobs in the process.
The new pubs represent a slight increase in the group's current rate of expansion.
Apart from the average Wetherspoons being a bloody awful place, what this announcement tells me is we can expect to see many more long-term unemployed people, drained of all dignity and self-respect, seeking nothing more than cheap booze and oblivion.
Never mind Dubai's woes; the advance of the cheap booze barn is a portent of economic doom.
Labels: boozenomics, trollied tuesday, we're screwed
posted by buff and blue at 2:03 pm
5 Comments:
The voice of the pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots beg to differ
http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2009/12/weatherspoons.html
The ambiance is good? That level of wrongness pretty much means one can discount anything the voice of the pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots has to say.
First I must confess to a possible bias as my son (university dropout) is currently working in a Wetherspoons pub in Guildford. He doesn't have enormously great things to say about it.
But I suspect that you may have a rather more significant London bias, Bill. Out here in the provinces, pubs are closing alarmingly fast, and there aren't many good ones anyway. In villages you have those which survive mainly on the food (sometimes exotic like Thai). In the towns they have Sky Sports, karaoke competitions, quiz nights, gaming machines or an intimidating clientele (bikers, bruisers in work-clothes or restless children). And even with those attractions and clients, they are unable to sustain all-day opening, unless they are Wetherspoons, which are the best imitation of an all-welcoming eclectic old-fashioned mellow pub that we can rustle up in High Wycombe, Maidenhead or even Tooting Broadway.
I'm against the voicing of agendas in general, even when I might be pro or con the same things as the voicers, but I may come back having followed Point of Fact's link, to see what company I am inadvertently keeping
Well I don't know about all that New Labour, Old Labour banter on David Lindsay's site. I'm a Cameron supporter with a soft spot for Cuba.
I wouldn't worry about Lindsay. I do take your point about provincial life; but that's part of the problem. Wetherspoons is trying to undercut the smaller pubs (in the same way the likes of Starbucks and McDonalds have tried to dominate the high street) - generally that's detrimental to everyone.
(They also have a reputation in places like Northern Ireland for being breeding grounds for yobbish violence. Like Ulster needed any).
Of course, some of the pubs that are going out of business might not be all that good. But this won't be universal.
I have been to the Wetherspoons in Beeston, Nottingham: it was not a pleasant experience. Luckily, there is one truly outstanding pub nearby - the Victoria. More places like that would be the best solution.
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