On the other hand, and I'll use an example of The Queens on Burley Road, SOME dead pubs can be turned into useful community assets again long after they have been shunned as pubs by the local community (you can argue whether or not Tesco are worthy of the term "community asset" as a separate argument).

The Queens was an extremely busy pub 20/30 years ago, situated behind the YTV studios its clientele included the esteemed Richard Whiteley and most of the staff of the studios as well as the local working class community that surrounded it, and for that matter still does surround it.

Fast forward to ten years ago and its local clientele just don't support it so that on the last time I visited early on a Saturday evening on the way to a game at Elland Rd it was populated by a handful of local boozers with the boozers complexion to match and a couple of young kids running around the place.

Its now a Tesco Express and as I pass it frequently in an evening it looks to be very well supported - its a community asset again albeit you take its beer home to drink it.

Notice how the pubco's will blame anything and anyone but themselves, they increase the price of a paint by way more than the tax increase but it's all the governments fault, they create cavernous soulless places but its the fault of the smoking ban, they employ clueless managers who are only interested in the bottom line and its the economy.

Yeah, right. The only reason Tesco will have taken over the pub is taking advantage of planning loopholes which mean they don't have the bother of full planning applications for a new store. There is NO REASON why they couldn't have opened their "community asset" nearby, next door even, leaving the pub alone. If you discount that they probably either wouldn't have been allowed to, or else it would have cost them, a load of time money and effort. I don't know of a Tesco store that serves as a social meeting or gathering place, but it could be the exception I suppose. And it is in no sense a "community asset" unless locals had nowhere else to shop. It may be a convenience for some but that hardly clears the bar, now does it?

So they opened a shop for commercial reasons, its probably what they do.

And is it a community asset ?

Well I'm sure you probably know the pub and the area it sits in, and while a lot of its drinking customers in the past were from the commercial businesses around it the main bulk were from the council estates behind it , the simple fact is that like a lot of pub businesses the drink at lunchtime and after work clientele is non-existent these days and the "locals" who live in the estates behind just didn't go in there, if you look along that whole stretch of Burley Road and Kirkstall Road you'll see a lot less than half of the pubs remaining that were there 10 years ago, they are just not regarded as an asset by the community despite the old fashioned rose tinted spectacle view of being a social gathering place for them and in this respect the old bag Thatcher was probably correct in that there is no such thing as society anymore (which makes her protege Cameron wrong in his view that there is).

So what do the community do when Tesco take over the premises - they use it to shop there in enough numbers so that Tesco think its worth keeping it open, and again if you know the area you'll know that there is no other similar facility within walking distance for that community - hence it becomes a valuable asset to them, more than the pub ever turned out to be - and the beer is cheaper.

I assume you're wrong on this, as we have clearly been told by another poster that the pub industry is in fact thriving, so what you say simply can't be true. There must be double the pubs, and they are surely all packed to the gunwales.

I was hardly denying that there have been major changes in society and social activity, though, nor was I trying to advance some simplistic one-size-fits-all panacea. The fact is, supermarkets and developers have been responsible for closing down of hundreds of well-used community pubs by taking advantage of lax planning laws, these being the reason they target pubs if sited where the supermarkets want to be. They can be soft targets. Whether this particular pub was one of them doesn't affect the wider point, and if a pub really has lost its trade and can't replace it, then like any business, it is doomed, there's no argument there. The argument is that in very many cases the closing of valuable community pubs is a scandal, against the wishes of locals and nothing to do with viability. I don't argue that's the case in every closure.

On something else blamed on Muslims, an old bloke on the bus a few weeks back was pointing out to the woman sat next to him that the Henry Moore sculpture 'Reclining Woman' had been removed from in front of the Leeds Art Gallery as 'muslims had complained'. The bus then went down to Leeds City Square, with it's many naked nymphs. He didn't mention why the muslims had ignored those.

BTW, the sculpture has been on a bit of a tour, and was re-installed last week.

Maybe being on "tour" is a euphemism for Muslims in a variety of locations objecting to its presence!?

If it was a Henry Moore sculpture, then how, apart from reading the label, would you have any clue what the feck it was, though? Talk about stealing a living!

Agreed, likewise David Hockney, Kings new clothes and all that.

Or the RFL's version, Celtic Crusaders