Forget, The Price Of Beer Or The Smoking Ban, The Reason For The Closure Of Many British Pubs Is Because Many Of Our Immigrants Are Tee-Total.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11370963/Somali-immigrants-cause-pub-closures-says-minister.html

[jackthehat]

Bloomin' furriners....coming over here and not drinking our good old British beer.......or falling down drunk......or clogging up A&E with their drunken mishaps on a Friday/Saturday night.....

[-Talbot-]

What a load of botox..............the Poles can give us a good run for our money
(They have even opened up their own pub here)

[paddywak]

Quite right Talbot,for several years an association of Polish ex-mineworkers used to hire the local welfare for their annual men only get together.The amount of alcohol they could shift was unbelievable.

[Old_Geezer]

Culture has shifted anyway. It's much rarely for men off their shift to spend an hour or two at the pub before going home to the family these days. But there are also tax and commercial reasons for the drop. If change of use is permitted then the site is worth more that it is as a tavern. Then there was the brewer / landlord tie ups that stifled what was offered tot he customer and competition generally. I'm sure there are other factors too but I'd doubt they were decisive.

[jno]

jack is right, these people must integrate! (Though I don't know why the natives don't drink more to make up for it.)

On the other hand they may be closing our pubs but they are saving our churches from being pulled down, by putting them to new use.

[naomi24]

Sarcasm in this instance purposefully disregards reality. He’s right. Whilst changes in demographics isn’t the sole reason for pub closures nationwide, just as some high streets are now practically devoid of shops catering to western tastes, pubs in some areas have closed because of demographic change. When the majority of residents in a particular area are predominately Muslim, what would you expect? Muslims don’t drink alcohol.

[Brenden]

I think a lot of pub problems are due to the collosal rise in council taxes and brewery price hikes.

[Quizmonster]

What arrant nonsense! How many Dorset - for example - villages are awash with Somali immigrants? (I refer to the mention of that nationality specifically in the link-heading.) I'd go as far as to say, "Absolutely none!" Nevertheless, such pubs are closing, not only in Dorset, but all over the country.
What's really killing pubs is the fact that supermarkets are allowed to sell pubs' stock-in-trade...alcohol...at substantially reduced prices. French supermarkets were (are?) not allowed to sell tobacco, in order to ensure that tobacconists' shops could continue to thrive. Why can't we do a similar sort of thing for pubs by ensuring that they are not undercut?

[BlackadderV]

///what would you expect? Muslims don’t drink alcohol.///

Is that a fact? Not in my experience. That's like saying Jews don't eat bacon sarnies.

[naomi24]

Oh gawd ..... ok, 'generally' - and they don't - 'generally'.

[jno]

QM has put his finger on the real reason, of course.

[Gromit]

The majority of recent immigrants are from eastern Europe, and they are definitely not tee-total. The asian population, and their second and third generation British born descendents have been here for decades, so that does not account for closures now. I know of a few asians who do go to the pub.

There have been many pub closures in my town and I don't think any can be attributed to immigration even though we have a Bangladeshi community and have had a recent influx of Poles.

The reason is a change in society. When I go the pubs, the majority of customers are over 45. Younger people are less interested than they were. There is a lot more to interest young people than there were 30 years ago. You can pay half the price for alcohol in Supermarkets so a lot drink at home. The home has changed as well, it is also a cinema, a games centre, disco or library, there are more reasons to keep you in.

[naomi24]

jno, he did say in some areas - and he's right. In some areas there are very few customers.

[BlackadderV]

The smoking ban cannot be overlooked. I smoke, and like Nigel, like a pint and a fag. I can enjoy both in the comfort of my own home, which I cannot do at my local pub/club.

[-Talbot-]

I've always said cheap supermarket beer has been the biggest problem for pubs, I stick by that.
Although programs like Britains got talent and X-Factor are another big reason why the lads are not going out any more on a Saturday night.

[Prudie]

That is statistically so irrelevant - immigrants come over and don't drink in our pubs OR immigrants don't come over and don't drink in our pubs. Same difference, same effect.

[knowabit]

It's more to do with the greedy breweries charging tenants extortionate rents and forcing them where to buy stock... and the business rates and separate council tax. y parents ran a pub, the costs were shocking.

[Retrochic]

I live in a typically white rural well off area where you rarely see any black or Asian people, and apart from some East European workers, everyone who lives here are white British. In the past five years, in a four mile area there have been two pubs turned into houses, one pub is for sale and another has had three managers in the last two years and can't make a living. Reason? Pubs tried to change to 'gastropubs ' and it didn't work -people go to work in cars and don't want to call in after work and drink and drive, villages are no longer inhabited by people who've lived there generations as the kids can't afford to live there so there is no community spirit or need to 'have a drink with the neighbours.

[ichkeria]

There are next to no immigrants from alcohol-free cultures in our town, and yet pubs here are closing all over the place.
There may be a couple of places in the UK where the pub-going folk have upped and left to be replaced by non-drinkers, but then you'd expect pubs in other places to have benefitted from that.

Sounds like the Lib Dems have finally cracked and are courting the UKIP vote :-)

[237SJ]

You can`t pin it down to one factor - it`s a combination of things. Immigration has probably scuppered pubs in some areas but coffee shops have sprung up in their place to cater for a different culture. Drink driving scuppered a lot of pubs. When I used to work in one when I was at college (in a rural area) the local police clamped down on drink driving and the pub emptied overnight. People in a town might drop into a pub for one drink but there`s no way someone`s going to drive 5 miles for just one beer so the landlords had to diversify into selling restaurant style food to get people in. One of the largest cultural changes is that people drink wine now. I`ve noticed that at work - just about everybody (from most parts of the world) drinks wine - they don`t want a gin and tonic or a beer and wine can be drunk at home for a much cheaper price.