Open all hours?

I see a fair number of pubs advertising the fact that they are "Open All Hours". However, I've often seen them with their doors closed well after noon. Since 24-hour drinking is now possible, the claim is questionable anyway. But, if it means anything, it should mean that they are open all the hours that were permitted before the liberalisation of licensing laws, which in this area should mean they throw open their doors promptly at 11 am Monday to Saturday. A pub that does not open until noon is not "Open All Hours". "Open All Afternoon" would be a more accurate slogan.

Sir John Mortimer RIP

Sad to hear of the death of Sir John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, who was a passionate lover of liberty and enemy of the nanny state. Courtesy of Mr Eugenides, here is a splendid tirade from him against the antismoking tendency, published in 2005.

What with him gone, and Simon Gray recently, and Auberon Waugh a few years ago, where are the curmudgeons who will speak out against political correctness and the ban-everything brigade?

Where have all the customers gone?

I know the period after Christmas is traditionally the slackest time of the year, and many people must be feeling “credit crunched”, but even so I have been struck by the echoing emptiness of several pubs I have visited recently. The amount of food and drink sold can’t have covered the heating bills let alone paid the bar staff’s wages. I know this sounds depressing, but there does seem to have been a downward step-change in the level of custom in pubs away from the normal busy times of Friday and Saturday nights and (for food houses) Sunday lunchtimes. Even on Friday nights I’ve been in what to me are decent enough pubs that are well under half full. If most of the drinking space in pubs is lying unused for 90% of the time they are open, this must call into question their viability.

It also must have a “vicious circle” effect, as drinking in a near-empty pub is rather dispiriting, however good the beer is, and is likely to put people off going the next time. But I don’t think all those former customers are sitting at home at those particular times cracking open cheap cans of Stella, it’s more that social changes mean that for more and more people, visiting a pub is simply no longer part of their normal routine.