Hard times for pubs

click photo to enlarge

The smoking ban, increased taxes on alcohol, cheap beer, wine and spirits in supermarkets, rapacious "pubcos" and the recession. In the past few years pubs and their tenants and owners have had a lot to deal with. Small wonder that wherever you go in the UK you see closed premises, "for sale" signs or advertisements for people to run pubs. As a career the management of a public house looks like a one way street to bankruptcy or, at best, penury.

I came across the pub shown in today's photographs on a recent visit to Newark in Nottinghamshire. Ye Olde Market on Boar Lane had clearly succumbed to the belt-tightening that has affected much of the country. But, to lessen the impact of a derelict premises on the surounding shops and streets suitable pictures/window boarding had been commissioned, each advertising a local business. As I studied the images and the building I couldn't help but notice the unwitting commentary on the present-day difficulties of runnning a successful pub that the juxtaposition of the early twentieth century traffic sign and the picture offered. It was either that or a mischievously contrived pairing by an advocate of the temperance movement. It seemed good enough for a picture.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Lament for our disappearing pubs

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The evening shadows slowly enveloping the Red Lion pub at Bicker, Lincolnshire, could be a metaphor for the gloom that is snuffing out pub after pub in villages across Britain.

Those running village inns have been hit by the "double whammy" of the ban on smoking in public buildings and work places, followed by the recession. There were those, and I count myself among them, who welcomed the restrictions on smoking, thinking it would make places like pubs more customer friendly as well as healthier places to be. There was the feeling that whilst the new legislation would be a disincentive to smokers to continue to visit pubs (though many would, using the alternative arrangements that enabled them to smoke outside), this reduction in customers would be made up by the non-smokers who would now find the pubs more acceptable. Well, that doesn't seem to have happened: the number of smokers in pubs did decline, but the increase in non-smokers didn't compensate, and so landlords' incomes fell. That started the closures which hit pubs in cities and towns, but particularly those in villages with their smaller customer base and their reliance on the "passing trade." But it was the tightening of consumer spending brought on by the recession that accelerated the number of pubs permanently closing their doors. There are those who think this doesn't matter, and even some who celebrate the closures. However, the pub is a traditional and welcome feature of British life, offering not just drinks, but food and a meeting place. They inject life into their communities, and many are sorry to see them go.

It won't be all village pubs that close of course: many will find a way to struggle along until an upturn in the economy eases their situation. However, pubs in very small villages, like the one in the photograph, that has seen a turnover of three or four landlords in the past year or so, may well cease trading. This particular pub dates from the seventeenth century (a datestone at the top of the central gable says, "John Drury 1665"), and is built in what is described as a Fen Artisan Mannerist Style. It would be a shame if permanent closure prevented it celebrating, in 2065, four hundred years of serving beer to the village!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Snowdrops and capitalism

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Capitalism and a market economy seem to be the worst mechanisms for securing a high standard of living and increasing prosperity - except for all the other systems that have been tried.* But, whilst it can deliver quantity of life (though rarely for all citizens) it frequently fails to deliver quality of life. In the recent "boom" decades, psychologists, sociologists and everyday experience demonstrated that the increasing affluence of western societies brought increasing stress, anxiety, overwork, disatisfaction, and an unhealthily high regard for self: the condition that was labelled "affluenza". And now, as the world economy contracts, and joblessness increases, those unhealthy traits of the times of plenty are not lessened, but grow ever stronger: we are, apparently, no happier in times of "bust".

It seems to me that advanced capitalism and the market economies that characterise western economies, especially the U.S.A. and the U.K., are ill-equipped to deliver happiness and fulfilment for everyone. The reason they can't do this is that they lack an underpinning morality. It is surely time that people objected to: the idea that it is always "right" to charge for a product what the market will bear; the notion that envy, greed and ostentatious display are qualities (virtues even!) to which we should aspire; the feeling that however much money you have, it's always better to have more; the acceptance that the proper role of advertising is to stimulate avarice and covetousness; companies where the highest paid person in a company is judged to be "worth" 1,000 or 2,000 times what the lowest paid receives; the belief that it's right to pay someone a weekly wage that is insufficient to live on. In the years to come there will be much talk by politicians of a "new order", of controlling the excesses of the past few years, of a new social contract. But, if such talk amounts to no more than a tinkering with the edges of the existing system, it will be worth little. Reforms that get to the heart of capitalism, that inject it with a morality that ensures that all citizens benefit from, and participate fully in the society to which they contribute, are necessary. I'd like to think such changes could happen - but I'm not optimistic.

I was thinking about this as I processed my photograph of some snowdrops that are in full flower in my garden. The way that the plants soldiered on through the snow and ice of the past few weeks, going from tentative shoots to full bloom, impressed me, and reminded me that people have a similar fortitude and will surely deal with the icy blast of this recession too. I posted an image of some very early snowdrops on January 13th. It was a fairly conventional treatment of the subject. This time I went for a "dreamier" approach, and used the shallow depth of field of the macro lens to throw the background out of focus.

* adapted from: "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Winston Churchill (1874-1965), speech in the House of Commons, 11th November 1947

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On