I just thought I would share an anecdote from my experience of the beer tent at the local music festival I attended recently which for the first time was largely empty despite the fact that smokers were welcome. In previous years, there hasn't been a problem with people using the tent to drink their own supermarket-bought cheap alcohol but this year, it was banned. Quite rightly, a notice appeared stating that only alcohol bought in the tent could be drank in the tent and the few times that I popped in for a welcome cold beer, there was only a handful of die-hard pub drinkers in there.
The problem is that as much as people wanted to support the landlady, they didn't have the cash. Crates of supermarket beer and spirits were therefore drunk in the social setting of various camps outside tents. Those that could afford it, popped in occasionally for the beer tent's speciality brews but there just weren't the crowds of people that there used to be.
If the Govt really wants to help the pub it has to either lower tax or stop the big, rich, supermarkets from selling it at a much lower cost. It is their alcohol that is creating our binge drinking culture. Underage drinkers could not get served at the beer tent but loads of them had their own supply of cheap beer which caused them to over-indulge, vomit, and, in one instance, be so loud and rowdy it led to yours truly sticking her head out of the tent at 4am one morning telling a bunch of foul-mouthed teenage girls to keep the noise down a bit.
The one occasion when the tent was back to its usual standing room only, was when the popular event (pictured above) was held. It is because the tent supported choice that many of the festival goers wanted to do their best to support it. If smoking was not allowed , then even this would have been a ghost setting.
Tax on alcohol, and unfair competition is playing a huge part in the decline of the pub but, as the figures also reveal, and experience shows, so is the smoking ban. Judging by the public health minister's recent comments on the dangers of alcohol, one can only assume that this Govt doesn't really want to save the pub at all. It appears to have been intent on destroying pub culture from the start in its aim to ensure that we all follow it's own puritanical and enforced view of what is right and good for the country's health. They don't seem to understand that there is much more to life than that.