Hallucigenia wrote:I suspect many people don't realise quite how much minimum wage has gone up beyond inflation (up over 60% in real terms) and in turn that's a major reason for higher beer prices, as the beer can cost as much as the labour to serve it once you add in now-compulsory extras like pension costs).
I hadn't realised that, and I would have to ask whether it's actually `a good thing'. In general terms I'm a free marketeer, and I suspect that one effect of such a high minimum wage is to deprive a lot of young people, who are living at home and don't actually need a high wage, of the opportunity to work.
Anyway, that's no doubt a subject for a different thread. Getting back to the subject, in my recent travels around the country I've found that the price of beer now seems to be set far more by the type of pub than its location within England. Certainly, the north / south divide is far less consistent than it was, and beer in my local pubs is at least the same price as that in the several Gloucestershire and Berkshire pubs I visited over Christmas / New Year. And even in an `ordinary' pub in London (i.e. not one aimed specifically at tourists or the wealthy) the prices seem about the same.
Although I'm very lucky that my local village (pop 1,000) still has three thriving pubs it's depressing to see how many pubs that I used to visit have now gone, and with them the social life that they engendered. But pubs are rather like libraries - everyone likes them, and thinks they add to the common good, but those same people have largely stopped using them, and I'm as guilty of this as anyone (in respect of both libraries and pubs).
I used to visit a pub several times a week, but now it's usually only once or twice a week, and I rarely now drink more than two pints, compared to the three or four (or more!) that I used to. It's also noticeable that my fellow drinkers are generally middle aged or older, whereas 20 or 30 years ago most of the drinkers would have been young.
I often think that Covid has had a far more drastic effect on everyday life than has been generally recognised, in that the prolonged periods of lockdown seem to have made people far more insular and introverted. I suspect that these characteristics were inherent in a lot of English people anyway, and that having been forced to isolate for long periods of time they actually found that they quite enjoyed it, and have never returned to their previous, more gregarious way of life.
The combination of all these factors has created a perfect storm for the pub industry, and I really can't see the present trend of closures ceasing any time soon.