Alcohol can be purchased virtually 24 hours a day, and it has created a significant rise in anti-social behaviour.

Many of these drinkers will get their fix this way prior to hitting the nightclubs. Taxes on the price of beer make buying a pint in a pub a luxury. The cost of buying a round with a few friends could purchase a budget return air fare to Barcelona. Then there was the smoking ban. Many folk were happy to pop into a pub for a pint and a smoke, chat with their friends, for an hour or two, but that is not possible anymore.

These types of customers were a pub's core business, and no amount of garden heaters will encourage them to sit outside when it's blowing a nine force gale. It works in more warmer climes, but it doesn't work in the northern hemisphere.

So pubs had to diversify, become more geared to eating houses than public houses, and this alienated the regulars. Those which were located in environments where this was impractical, in built up towns with limited space or off the beaten track, lost their custom and died.

The draconian measures enforced by the British New Labour government allowed very little room for the publican. There could be no enclosed areas for smokers, so even those who didn't partake in the weed, but were tolerant of their friends who did, were affected by this new rule.

Pubs were for the community. The elderly don't visit anymore, they have been alienated. If their local pub has survived, they no longer feel welcome. Landlords have sold up, to be replaced by entrepreneurs who need to change the pub's character totally in order to survive. The days of the young sharing experience, knowledge and wisdom with the old have gone - they don't meet anymore.

This current generation is as far removed from its previous one as any gone before. If young people cannot connect with their elders in a pub, they are not likely to connect with them at all. It is this generation gap that governments have failed to foresee, which is rampantly changing the culture and society of a nation.

The English pub is in terminal decline. Better come over and see what's left before they're dead and buried for good.

Learn more about this author, Bar de Ness.
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