Who can afford to drink out these days?
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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I think this when I see the cost of pints, and yet practically every pub I go to is so rammed it's frequently difficult to find a seat unless you go early. Same with restaurants.
Apparently a lot of people can afford it
How will a few drunkards hit up the economy, when most people struggle to buy their second round?
Also, how are you going to help the economy if you're staying out until 1am, when you should be going to work the next day hungover?
I imagine it's not seen as a magic silver bullet that will fix our whole economy, but rather as a bit of help for one specific industry.
E: yes, confirmed:
Ministers are pushing ahead with plans to allow premises that sell alcohol to extend their opening hours in order to boost “the British night out” and help the hospitality sector.
The headline is just misleading.
Honestly, I support this.
Pubs are constantly getting squeezed out by competition from supermarkets and whilst I'm not a big drinker or even a regular at a pub, it's a part of British culture that should be preserved.
HOWEVER, if we're talking about legal reforms to preserve pub culture, there's many other issues that need addressing.
Examples include: Brewery-owned pubs being one of the worst types of franchise business for squeezing "owners" out of every last penny and having a ridiculous amount of control on how the pub is run even if the Landlord/lady has other ideas about how it should be run.
The power of brewerys over the pubs they control needs to be weakened.
It's fairly easy to convert a pub into a single residencey and little to no planning permission is required. It's impossible to return a former pub back to being a pub even if the community consents. Given that pub is short for "Public House" when more of these were vital parts of the community, said community should have first right-to-buy dibs to keep it going for the community.
Freehouses should have lower rates and brewerys should not be allowed to pressure freehouses into dropping that status in exchange for not paying exorbitant prices for produce.
Weatherspoons and StoneGate need to be broken up and the Franchise model needs replacing with a Cooperative model.
And as a last example, repealing the ban on gambling games and replacing it with more sensible regulation. E.g. games cannot allow the house to take a cut of winnings, must be organised by a regular patron, limited to a single night of the week, with a simple one page from registering with the gambling association so the appropriate authorities are aware, and a limit on the monetary value per round.
That last one is two fold:
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Small friendly bets on card games in pubs is less likely to drain gambling-prone people's income than a betting shop and comes with an inbuilt support network.
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Smaller "don't-take-the-piss" events and clubs with a light touch of regulation is much better for keeping the peace and not causing social problems than letting large corporate betting shops swallow the high street whole along with desperate and addicted people's money to a tax haven.
it's a part of British culture that should be preserved
Why?
It's the cornerstone of interacting with your local community in the UK. You don't even have to drink, it's a cozy, generally quiet place to socialise.
It's the cornerstone of interacting with your local community in the UK.
No it isn't. My interactions with my local community never take place in a pub. I don't think I know anyone who would consider the pub to be the "cornerstone of their interacting" with anybody at all, local community or otherwise. Frankly your description seems bizarre.
You don't even have to drink, it's a cozy, generally quiet place to socialise.
This doesn't accord with my experience at all. I'd feel very out of place if I just hung around in a pub for any length of time without buying anything. Pubs aren't social centres, they're businesses.
While at the same time we're banning fizzy drink refills....? Make it make sense!
We aren't.
We are banning free refills only for high-sugar drinks.
E: why are objective factual statements being suppressed?
Late licences (to 5am in Scotland) are the main reason I fled Edinburgh's Old Town for the suburbs. No fun having your front door used as a toilet, drunks ranting and fighting in the close at 3am, having to dodge "pavement pizzas" every night. Yay, growth!
Can’t they just reduce the tax on drinking in a pub so they can take more profit from what’s spent? Most alcoholics drink at home now anyway.
Seriously!
Feeding the prison industrial complex
Prison industrial complex... in the UK? Where we don't utilise prison Labour, and prison spaces are highly unprofitable?
Schism is highly valuable to societies organized on eternal growth, and the failure of keeping the masses divorced from understanding profit, abundance, and value as more than actual money is highly profitable to those societies. Although in indirect ways, these things are indeed monitarily profitable.
Something about the cost of everything and value of nothing.
🤦♀️
Because we all know how much more efficient you work when hungover and still a little drunk ...