Given the penchant for the right-wing press to blame just about everything on Muslims, I though we should have a thread to see over time the number of ills that are considered their fault. Start with this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ments.html So, dens of iniquity are now closing because there are too many Muslims! This in a country where the same right-wing press like to be outraged at the drunken debauchery that blights our country! Funny old world.

Given the penchant for the right-wing press to blame just about everything on Muslims, I though we should have a thread to see over time the number of ills that are considered their fault. Start with this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ments.html So, dens of iniquity are now closing because there are too many Muslims! This in a country where the same right-wing press like to be outraged at the drunken debauchery that blights our country! Funny old world.

If that picture is of the Cross Keys in Leeds (it's hard to tell), then that pub is now thriving and is probably one of the best pubs in the city centre.

The reason? It's not being run by another god-awful PubCo like Marston's who look to drive up rents at every opportunity. Instead, it has been taken over by a local independent firm (the same people who run North Bar I believe), who have invested in making it a fantastic pub serving excellent beer. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't really fit in with the Marston's business ethos.

It's not the only one - The Hop (owned by Ossett Brewery) is another great pub, Leeds Brewery now run several and outside the city centre, The Bridge has been transformed from a failing ****hole into a cracking pub by Kirkstall Brewery.

Given that you can't walk more than five minutes around Leeds City Centre without coming across somewhere selling craft ale, I'd say that there is still a massive market for the traditional pub. The problem that the likes of Marston's, Punch and Enterprise want to ignore is that market is, by and large, no longer interested in spending close to £4 on a pint of whatever nitro-keg swill that they want to pass off as lager in grotty surroundings.

I suspect Lord Hodgson names Leeds and Manchester in his critique because those cities seem to be embracing the culture of indy breweries and bar operators selling craft ale - and that's a much bigger threat to Marstons' business than the local Muslim population.

Spot on. This is just some PubCo old boy who isn't happy about people actually doing something about their market dominance. The pubs that are closing deserve to close in my opinion. They're obviously not doing things right. There are loads of pubs that are thriving and it's because they're doing their own thing and offering customers what they want, quality and choice.

I doubt whether his Lordship "blamed" Muslims, but the DM used "blames" in its headline, which was rather my point.

Seems pretty unequivocal to me.

What a prat.

If I have 50,000 potential customers in my catchment area, then it's up to me to attract my share of that trade.

If 25,000 non-drinkers move in to that area, it makes little difference to my trade. It may increase slightly, as non-drinking is not mutually exclusive to visiting pubs, but my 50,000 market is still there.

If 25,000 of my former market move away, and are REPLACED by 25,000 non-drinkers, then my business will be affected. But not by the "increase in the muslim population" but the decrease in target market. For which he can't blame muslims. They may choose to move into a house. But it is not their choice or doing or responsibility if the people next door choose to move out. It's a free country. If his target market moves away, he should castigate his target market for having the temerity to move. Or maybe he thinks someone moving away should be blamed if they "sell to a muslim". Pillock.

No, he is just a small part of the huge lobby that has fought tooth and nail against abolition of the beer tie, and he and they are smarting, and mounting a rearguard action, when CAMRA finally had a substantial victory the other week when the government was defeated in the Commons on pub tenants' rights to exercise a market rent option. That's what's upset him. even this crass and pigheaded government has decided to stop flogging a dead horse and announced they won't overturn the vote, and he doesn't like it.

He also seems to be trying to articulate a yearning for the "good old days" when the area around the pub was heavily populated by good ole white drinking boys, and is railing against the indisputably massive changes in demographics that have occurred in short order in a number of large conurbations. But whilst these changes are a valid topic for discussion, if bringing them into the topic of pubs, it is selective and disingenuous since we all know that the biggest recent influxes of immigrants have been from white, hard-drinking countries such as Poland and other parts of East Europe not noted for abstinence. And they have taken their turn to move, in large numbers, into areas that previously had become largely Asian-populated. So as a country, the target market of potential pubgoers has, far from diminishing, considerably increased.

Yes, if what used to be a noted and busy pub, but has lost its market because only a small percentage of its former locals now bother coming, if it isn't possible to market and attract enough old or new punters into a well-run pub then supply and demand dictates that it must close. But we must be extremely vigilant as the tactics of various pub owners regularly include causng a good pub to become a bad, badly run, pale shadow of a pub, so its trade declines, and then saying tehy have no choice biut to get PP for conversion and sell it as a dwelling, when in fact cashing in on development potential was the actual aim. Again, CAMRA has been having some success so that for example locals can get a pub listed as a community asset etc and while asset stripping (because that is what it is) has done irreparable and widespread damage to the nation's pubs, at least the surviviors belatedly are getting some limited weapons at their disposal to fight against such malpractices.

What has led to legion pub closures is a large mix of things. These include rapacious pubcos, in multi-billion debt, trying to screw tenants to the ground and penalise them for making a successful pub; exorbitant taxation (where CAMRA had another notable victory a year ago in halting, if not yet abolishing, the so called "beer escalator"; the cost of running a pub; rapidly changing social habits; and the widespread availability of cheap alcohol from supermarkets etc.

So far as I know, no significant numbers of former pub regulars have fled the country because of muslims, and if they have then they are terminally stupid as no other country, er, has pubs, so that was a bit self-defeating, I'd say.

Last month we took a short break in Ambleside and frequented a few (less than a dozen) pubs in the area, one of our party is/was a lab technician in a large Yorkshire brewery until it closed (can you guess which one) and so he likes his beer, so do I but unfortunately my brain doesn't so I have to limit myself to just a couple of pints which makes it all the more important to make sure that the beer you're choosing is a decent pint - we never had a bad beer and loved the third of a pint "tasters" which most pubs were proud to offer when you asked them what they had on, I love cask beer and having six different thirds is a great way to enjoy it.

Contrast this to our monthly Friday night lads nights out in Otley in which "they" (not me) always choose to meet up in one of the huge Pubco owned premises, probably the largest PubCo in the country (can you guess which one it is), and in which on the last two occasions they have sent beer back to the bar to be met with a blank stare from the young bar staff who don't understand what the former (almost) master brewer on the customer side of the bar is telling them. One night they sent two rounds of six pints each back to the bar and ended up ordering cooking lager just so they'd get a pint that even the inept cellar man couldn't ruin, I don't know why they choose this pub every time (well I do, its cheap) when not 100 yards away there are two independent owned free houses selling some cracking cask beers, breaks my heart to have to have my two pint ration taken in the cheap-but-crap PubCo owned premises.

I liked the pork scratching comment

On a more positive note, Citizen Khan is on at 8.30pm. I am finding this series even better than the first. Great stuff.

Could be better though, the last time the BBC did this sort of thing they had Spike Milligan blacked up to play a Pakistani, that was much funnier, as was Peter Sellers in a similar role, its alright these asians getting in on the act but they aren't as funny as a white man playing blackface.