Wow a fantastic independent pub near where I used to live in London is seeing its rateable value go up 480%! This website really puts the headlines in to a nice local perspective.
It seems like the taxes only go up while the services get worse in the UK, although I’ve been away for 5 years now so maybe things improved.
The services have certainly not got better in the last 5 years. This Government is fiscally illiterate and has hit the top of the Laffer curve and is now trying to go down the other side.
Unfortunately, if an election were to be held today, the morons at Reform would have the greatest chance of winning, thanks to Starmer's ostrich syndrome, Corbyn dividing the Labour vote and the Tories being absolutely irrelevant after 15 years of continuous rule.
My grandparents were publicans 70+ years ago. Even they they made very little on beer. All the profit was spirits and software drinks. Probably food as well now.
"Bar" is certainly the catch-all term in the U.S., but "pub" is also very widely understood to refer to a specific type of bar, especially (but not limited to) bars deliberately styled as Irish or British pubs.
Come to Virginia, where it's outright illegal for any establishment serving alcohol to not also serve food (and not only must food be served, it must account for at least 45% of revenue).
This is also a problem that exists within countries. My RSS feed is littered with Canadian independent (national) news agencies not defining what municipality article headlines relate to. E.g. "Mayor pushes back against province on xyz issue". Okay, that might be huge news for Timmins Ontario , but maybe BAU for Toronto. Even skimming the lead paragraph doesn't define the city often.
*Editting with a point: Perhaps everyone assumes a local audience.
Good luck. Americans won't even differentiate Washington State and Washington D.C. Even the AP guidelines say that "Washington" is ubiquitous shorthand for "Washington D.C." and recommends against shortening it to "D.C."
> In her November Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves scaled back business rate discounts that have been in force since the pandemic from 75% to 40% - and announced that there would be no discount at all from April. That, combined with big upward adjustments to rateable values of pub premises, left landlords with the prospect of much higher rates bills.
> Properties are assessed in a rating list with a rateable value, a valuation of their annual rental value on a fixed valuation date using assumptions fixed by statute. Rating lists are created and maintained by the Valuation Office Agency, a UK government executive agency.
Ah, interesting. So it sounds like the tax roughly scales with property value (or size). And pubs are probably a "poor use of land" because the revenue per square foot is not particularly high?
Many deaths were postponed because their taxes were reduced due to Covid. Those taxes are now returning to normal levels. This will result in a glut of deaths, as pubs that were just hanging on go under.
The policy question is, basically, do we want to subsidize pubs because they're part of our national culture, even though we don't use them nearly as much as we used to?
I’m not familiar with the UK, but is the tax on alcohol at pubs higher than at a store? My general understanding was that people have just shopped visiting pubs for other reasons - like diluted drinks, crappy food, loud music, etc.
Bars and pubs aren't really competing against the store or restaurants, they're competing against you drinking alone or with only close friends. If stepping in to have a beer and shoot the shit would cost a significant chunk of a day's wages, you just won't do it, but if I can buy more beer with an hours wages than I can drink in an hour, it's not a bad time.
Weatherspoons charge under £3 for a pint in town. That's 15 minutes at minimum wage.
Beer was far more expensive 25 years ago - £1.60 in 2000 in the student pub when I first started buying my own beer, that was about half an hour at minimum wage.
On the cost side: Wages are higher, energy costs more, rent is higher (because if the pub can't operate the owner can get planning permission to convert it to a private dwelling and sell it for £600k rather than making £12k a year in rent)
On the demand side: People are healthier and drink less. It's nowhere near as acceptable to go out for a few pints at lunch time. People can't drive to a rural pub.
"Does Britain really need?" has been responsible for the gutting of so much of what used to make Britain a nice place to live over the last 20 years. You can say she same about public libraries, local bus routes, civic architecture, arts funding, youth services, maintenance budgets. The damage has been incalculable.
> In her November Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves scaled back business rate discounts that have been in force since the pandemic from 75% to 40% - and announced that there would be no discount at all from April.
That, combined with big upward adjustments to rateable values of pub premises, left landlords with the prospect of much higher rates bills.
brilliant website which manages to convey classic British humour on a classically British topic. Also shines much needed light on the very serious challenges independent British Pubs are undergoing - these are essential social institutions, social coherence is damaged every time one of these shut down.
While this is cool to see, would be nice to see some indication of the nation specific context for those outside that nation... especially since it's the more generic .com tld instead of say .uk ...
Maybe even a Union Jack in the corner as a background image, or something.
It is a "use it or lose it" style campaign by the looks of it.
Lots of Pubs in the UK are closing down in recent years. Pubs have traditionally been a big part of socialising in the UK.
I don't drink anymore so I don't bother unless I am having a pub lunch on a Friday.
Nearest town has 3 pubs where rates are going down significantly and 4 where they're going up. I wonder why, is it that the previous setup was unfair to those who are seeing their rates going down?
The pub I do go to each week is seeing rates going up +£3,300. That's not as big an impact from yet another inflation busting minimum wage increase.
However the much bigger concern is that people will be scared to drive there. Currently you can drive there, have a pint, and then go home, and be confident you're not triggering the limit. They're reducing this limit, which means no more trip to the pub.
I'm sure it's fine in big cities where people live in walking distance.
People only struggle because of a self-centered view that everything is supposed to be for them, and things that aren't for them are a weird exception. A reasonable person will realize that the fact that they don't understand any of what it's talking about means they're not the target audience, and move on (or poke around out of curiosity).
The one near me which is absolutely fucked, as far as I'm concerned, deserves it.
Fighty customers, crap beer, odd opening hours, and half their food menu is off ("sorry mate, we've got no cheese"). Oh, and now their credit card terminal prompts customers for a tip!
Having watched two alcoholic family members die horribly, spurred on by functioning alcoholic friends whos only social interaction is at the pub through habit only, fuck 'em. Let them die.
We need better social spaces which do not have the token cost of drinks to use.
Am I the only one that has no idea what this is talking about? Even the "About" section just dumps a ton of jargon about something being a problem for "pubs" - which, very unclear from the homepage, is actually talking about bars/places to drink beer/etc in the UK.
But again, now I know it's talking about that kind of pub, what is the actual issue? Some sort of rate being added to something? What rate? Is this related to a rating system? Taxes? Is it affecting the consumer? The owner?
To be fair, I'd say that most people in the UK who would be interested in the contents of this site are aware of the context and know what phrases like "rates increases" actually mean.
It's been in the news quite a bit over the years since the pandemic.
For a generic ".com" domain that isn't American, it's generally a good idea to yes, have a kind of minimal hint that tells you at least which country it's about, and at least a single link you can follow to get the broader context.
I'm following a link to it on HN. When I get there, I have zero context. Visitors to your site can come from anywhere, so it's generally considered a good idea to provide basic context.
Drinking is a _very_ weird cultural artifact from our past. It doesn't improve your life, it has been scientifically proven to not 'help you relax', and there may in fact be no safe amount of alcohol to drink; all the pop-sci headlines that say 'one glass of wine a week may improve your health' are really about studies that put the safe max at one glass per week.
From what I can tell, the UK is no longer subsidizing what is effectively a criminal enterprise that is centuries old.
With all due respect this opinion verges on neo prohibitionist alarmism. The social benefits of alcohol have been widely acknowledged and at a time when we are all spending too much time at home on our phones (arguably worse for health than a pint), communities need more social spaces. That place may not necessarily be a bar and it’s perfectly fine if you don’t wish to drink, but it’s a bit much to refer to a cultural product as a criminal enterprise.
Many people have written what you have written, trying to justify their life choices to strangers on the internet.
None of them have ever explained why alcohol, or any drug use, needs to be part of third spaces.
Society is losing third spaces, largely due to unchecked capitalism eroding the society it serves... but 'pubs' are just another form of rent-seeking by landlords. It has been proven without a doubt that third spaces as a commercial venture is ultimately non-functional, yet that is what pubs and bars have always been, and now they are dying out.
Again, with all due respect, I’m not seeing how my comment is pushing a “life choice” on anyone, and the movement to restrict alcohol consumption equally qualifies as pushing a life choice on someone.
Commercial pubs have existed for hundreds of year. But drinking doesn’t have to be commercial. In Berlin where I live there’s a non-profit hacker space that has a bar with at-cost drinks. It’s also perfectly legal to buy a beer and sit in the park. And of course, nothing is better than having friends over for a wine tasting.
> None of them have ever explained why alcohol, or any drug use, needs to be part of third spaces.
Third places need to have some kind of draw, else nobody will show up. "If you build it, they will come" is for the movies. In the real world you need to have a compelling reason to have others come in your door. Space alone is not sufficient to establish a third space.
That draw doesn't necessarily have to be alcohol (or another drug), but it was the thing that many people used to want. Threatening use of a third space by fear of the wrath of a mighty deity only buys you one day out of the week, I'm afraid.
You're quite right that people don't want alcohol like they used to. Why nurse a hangover when you can get the same dopamine rush scrolling through TikTok at home on your couch? This means that many third spaces of yesteryear no longer serve a purpose, and as you call out, have closed as a result.
Which is all well and good, I guess, but some segment of the population still wish that there were third spaces for them to exist in. Trouble is that they've never been able to find anything as compelling as alcohol used to be, making a different kind of third space of the same scale a complete no-go, so trying to salvage the remaining alcohol-centric third places is the only path they can see.
What's especially American about this remark isn't the experience of consuming alcohol in public. What is characteristically American, I think, is the assumption that we can pronounce a thing good or bad merely on the basis of its effect on the individual, with no regard for one's relationships with other people. Drinking in a pub is a social activity, and the alcohol is a lubricant for that activity. Yes, doing too much of it can cause great harm; doing any amount of it could cause some harm; it does not follow that the thing is a net detriment to society, and that it should be banned.
Maybe it is that way for people in the UK, or maybe people of a certain age group.
However, I am, as I said, an American, but also a Millennial. For many Millennials, drinking isn't a social activity, it is a form of quiet shame. We saw our parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents destroy their lives because of alcoholism, we lost friends and family because of being victims of drunk drivers, we saw people die of complications of a lifetime of drinking.
A lot of us simply chose not to repeat those mistakes as those mistakes effect the people around us in grave ways.
If anything, drinking is an anti-social activity, even if you do it entirely socially.
It sounds like you don't understand what a pub is like.
Whilst this is definitely not what's it's like, this quaint video is all about the lineage of the pub in the UK, and explains the third-spaceness of them, which I'd argue still exists[1].
Pubs are so important for our communities in the UK, whether that's watching the game, seeing a friend's band, celebrating a birthday or just catching up after work.
Many of the parts of my life have been lived in a pub. If it's criminal, I'd happily be locked up. Or maybe lock me in, a sadly rarer occurrence these days.
Exactly, designing a 'third place' that isn't alcohol focused seems to be a tough nut to crack. Alcohol greases the wheels for socialization and is a highly profitable item for a place to sell that keeps the lights on (people may have several drinks an hour, drinking leads to more drinking both in the long and shot terms, etc). Meanwhile a typical coffeeshop here in seattle is, aside from the espresso machines, is a near silent library-like space. Many people heads down in a book or a laptop. Instead of having a few drinks per hour you instead may have a single coffee and maybe a pastry or sandwich.
If someone opened a social space with maybe a kitchen that let you pay by the hour to hang out, credit for kitchen orders. All the other bar/pub accoutrements gaming (darts, pool, shuffleboard, pinball, whatnot), sports on the tv, whatever .. I still don't think people will go for it.
I think the only non-boozy option that comes to mind is the small town diner but those are thin on the ground.
Here is what I will say. Drinking certainly is not a healthy choice. However hanging out with your peers for a few hours a night in public certainly is.
Unfortunately I haven't found any place that cracks that problem in america, especially into the later hours. There isn't really a place for people to hang out and socialize without it being a boozy bar. As someone who doesn't really enjoy drinking I don't even really want to go to boardgame/chess/trivia nights at bars because I feel like I'm freeloading. ( I imagine any given bar patron is having 1-3 drinks per hour and potentially ordering some food if that is an option. I might order some food and have a soda...)
I assume part of the problem being that alcohol has the helpful side effect of greasing the wheels socially. Coffee houses that are open late are generally library like affairs, a lot of people sitting around on laptops or with books, any attempt to start a more social night is, in my experience, refused because of this.
Wow a fantastic independent pub near where I used to live in London is seeing its rateable value go up 480%! This website really puts the headlines in to a nice local perspective.
It seems like the taxes only go up while the services get worse in the UK, although I’ve been away for 5 years now so maybe things improved.
Here’s the Lamb and Flag in Oxford
https://www.ismypubfucked.com/pub/11447801200
> the Inklings, a literary group including J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, started meeting at The Lamb and Flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_%26_Flag,_Oxford
Amateurs. One close to me is at an +821% increase in its tax bill and rateable value at 613%.
The services have certainly not got better in the last 5 years. This Government is fiscally illiterate and has hit the top of the Laffer curve and is now trying to go down the other side.
Unfortunately, if an election were to be held today, the morons at Reform would have the greatest chance of winning, thanks to Starmer's ostrich syndrome, Corbyn dividing the Labour vote and the Tories being absolutely irrelevant after 15 years of continuous rule.
Great idea!
https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/personal-finance/finance-expe... shows how little pubs make per pint, very sad.
If anyone's curious about cask beer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ud_eTwY4nc&list=PLyDTS7ZG3z... is a very interesting youtube video series by The Craft Beer Channel.
My grandparents were publicans 70+ years ago. Even they they made very little on beer. All the profit was spirits and software drinks. Probably food as well now.
> software drinks
I knew java was good for something
Must have been muscle memory.
> All the profit was spirits and software drinks.
What are the margins on a Codeacola?
15 quid for a 25ml of whisky is ridiculous however.
For anyone else who entered a US zip code and was confused by the ‘invalid zip code’ error: this is UK only.
your first clue might have been that it does not say "zip code" in either the field label or the error message, it says "postcode".
Australia and NZ have postcodes, too.
If they had made this a .co.uk rather than a .com, there would be no confusion.
The site has since changed the content from when I made the comment. It used to say zip code in the label and error.
Or the term "pub." In the US it's much more usual to say "bar." Maybe "tavern" but that sounds rather dated to my ear.
When I lived in the PNW people used the word pub more than bar.
My sense is that it is an affectation meant to indicate an aspiration to something more than a bar (and its coarse patrons).
That’s because everybody up there thinks that liking soccer makes them English.
"Bar" is certainly the catch-all term in the U.S., but "pub" is also very widely understood to refer to a specific type of bar, especially (but not limited to) bars deliberately styled as Irish or British pubs.
Along a similar note, I hate when a Bar is labelled as a "Pub" and doesn't serve food. IMO, in the US, if it's labelled a "pub" it should serve food.
Come to Virginia, where it's outright illegal for any establishment serving alcohol to not also serve food (and not only must food be served, it must account for at least 45% of revenue).
every now and then you'll find a public house or similarly named
"Pub" is a fairly common term throughout the world. But "pub that needs you" made it pretty obvious that it was about pubs in England.
I doubt most people would bother to think about that detail.
Any plans to release the code? Would be nice to allow others to do something similar for their local pubs.
Seems to be England only. No results for Edinburgh.
Business rates are a devolved matter, Scotland set their own rates.
I see results on both sides of the border here, Wales and England.
Yeah, they could reduce confusion by changing "the government" to "the UK government."
If Americans did the same it would be great
This is also a problem that exists within countries. My RSS feed is littered with Canadian independent (national) news agencies not defining what municipality article headlines relate to. E.g. "Mayor pushes back against province on xyz issue". Okay, that might be huge news for Timmins Ontario , but maybe BAU for Toronto. Even skimming the lead paragraph doesn't define the city often.
*Editting with a point: Perhaps everyone assumes a local audience.
Americans, hm? I see what you did there.
Good luck. Americans won't even differentiate Washington State and Washington D.C. Even the AP guidelines say that "Washington" is ubiquitous shorthand for "Washington D.C." and recommends against shortening it to "D.C."
Would be much more helpful if it indicated literally anywhere on the homepage that this was specific to the UK.
Being a .com as opposed to a .co.uk, you can't even tell from the domain.
Like the big red letters in the title that say "IN BRITAIN"?
I don't see that. Ctrl+F and zero "Britain" anywhere on the page. Or even in the HTML source.
The only big red letters are "THAT NEEDS YOU".
Kinda wish there was some way to quickly scroll through the pages... Also data seems to be different when ordered by different values?
When ordered by RV£ there are 43703 entries with data. Most negative RV£ change is -£137,500 for 33 Main Road
When ordered by RV% there are 43303 entries with data. Most negative RV% change is -87.0% for PAVILLION HOTEL
Interest in context on "government pub rates". New tax scheme?
Existing tax. Proposed new calculation for the "value" of business property, disproportionately affecting pubs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e57dexly1o
> In her November Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves scaled back business rate discounts that have been in force since the pandemic from 75% to 40% - and announced that there would be no discount at all from April. That, combined with big upward adjustments to rateable values of pub premises, left landlords with the prospect of much higher rates bills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_rates_in_England
> Properties are assessed in a rating list with a rateable value, a valuation of their annual rental value on a fixed valuation date using assumptions fixed by statute. Rating lists are created and maintained by the Valuation Office Agency, a UK government executive agency.
Ah, interesting. So it sounds like the tax roughly scales with property value (or size). And pubs are probably a "poor use of land" because the revenue per square foot is not particularly high?
Pubs are dying. Have been for years.
Many deaths were postponed because their taxes were reduced due to Covid. Those taxes are now returning to normal levels. This will result in a glut of deaths, as pubs that were just hanging on go under.
The policy question is, basically, do we want to subsidize pubs because they're part of our national culture, even though we don't use them nearly as much as we used to?
The government has decided that they know what’s good for you better for you than you do. So they tax alcohol at incredibly high rates.
Without this more pubs could exist. So I don’t think it’s a case of subsidising as much as removing the disincentive.
I’m not familiar with the UK, but is the tax on alcohol at pubs higher than at a store? My general understanding was that people have just shopped visiting pubs for other reasons - like diluted drinks, crappy food, loud music, etc.
Bars and pubs aren't really competing against the store or restaurants, they're competing against you drinking alone or with only close friends. If stepping in to have a beer and shoot the shit would cost a significant chunk of a day's wages, you just won't do it, but if I can buy more beer with an hours wages than I can drink in an hour, it's not a bad time.
Weatherspoons charge under £3 for a pint in town. That's 15 minutes at minimum wage.
Beer was far more expensive 25 years ago - £1.60 in 2000 in the student pub when I first started buying my own beer, that was about half an hour at minimum wage.
On the cost side: Wages are higher, energy costs more, rent is higher (because if the pub can't operate the owner can get planning permission to convert it to a private dwelling and sell it for £600k rather than making £12k a year in rent)
On the demand side: People are healthier and drink less. It's nowhere near as acceptable to go out for a few pints at lunch time. People can't drive to a rural pub.
> Weatherspoons charge under £3 for a pint in town. That's 15 minutes at minimum wage.
Yeah but then you've to drink at spoons.
"Does Britain really need?" has been responsible for the gutting of so much of what used to make Britain a nice place to live over the last 20 years. You can say she same about public libraries, local bus routes, civic architecture, arts funding, youth services, maintenance budgets. The damage has been incalculable.
Lower taxes is not subsidising a business.
It is, when it gets a favourable treatment over other businesses
Changes to property taxes on business premises.
> In her November Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves scaled back business rate discounts that have been in force since the pandemic from 75% to 40% - and announced that there would be no discount at all from April.
That, combined with big upward adjustments to rateable values of pub premises, left landlords with the prospect of much higher rates bills.
brilliant website which manages to convey classic British humour on a classically British topic. Also shines much needed light on the very serious challenges independent British Pubs are undergoing - these are essential social institutions, social coherence is damaged every time one of these shut down.
While this is cool to see, would be nice to see some indication of the nation specific context for those outside that nation... especially since it's the more generic .com tld instead of say .uk ...
Maybe even a Union Jack in the corner as a background image, or something.
Find an English pub that needs you.
Not true, it also covers pubs in Wales
Yeah, I have NO clue what this site is even about.
It is a "use it or lose it" style campaign by the looks of it.
Lots of Pubs in the UK are closing down in recent years. Pubs have traditionally been a big part of socialising in the UK. I don't drink anymore so I don't bother unless I am having a pub lunch on a Friday.
Broken - getting `ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR` when trying to open it in Chrome
I like how the status values could be used as labels of economic wellbeing for people, too:
Stealing this for error logging levels
The bristol stool scale also works well. Although that’s better for sprint planning maybe..
I live in south Bristol where the “Bristol stool scale” and the “pubs that need your help” overlap distressingly.
so...you got me. thinking it might have something to do with out worn the stools in your pub are. nope it's just, you know, stool.
s/Somehow/Possibly/g haha but I like that idea!
For a dumb american, what is a 'pub rate'?
A tax based on property value.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgjwgzwe2eyo
UK only
England & Wales only. The website is a response to new business rates (taxes) arriving this year.
Scotland, Northern Ireland & the rest of the world play by different rules.
Nearest pub
2023 Rateable Value £13,800
2026 Rateable Value £12,250
Change -£3,300(-23.9%)
I guess "no" would be the answer then.
Nearest town has 3 pubs where rates are going down significantly and 4 where they're going up. I wonder why, is it that the previous setup was unfair to those who are seeing their rates going down?
The pub I do go to each week is seeing rates going up +£3,300. That's not as big an impact from yet another inflation busting minimum wage increase.
However the much bigger concern is that people will be scared to drive there. Currently you can drive there, have a pint, and then go home, and be confident you're not triggering the limit. They're reducing this limit, which means no more trip to the pub.
I'm sure it's fine in big cities where people live in walking distance.
People really struggle when given a link to a web site that isn't for them, huh.
No. It's when the web site doesn't say who it's for at all, that's when everybody struggles. And understandably so.
People only struggle because of a self-centered view that everything is supposed to be for them, and things that aren't for them are a weird exception. A reasonable person will realize that the fact that they don't understand any of what it's talking about means they're not the target audience, and move on (or poke around out of curiosity).
This might be the single most British website on the internet.
I wonder if there's an equivalent use case in the US.
what is a "rateable value" here?
Property tax valuation.
The nearest "absolutely fucked" pub to me hasn't existed since 2008. I'd say they have bigger problems than a rates increase.
They do acknowledge this on the site
> Based on VOA data (Nov 2025) which is often inaccurate. Many pubs have also closed since then.
Just getting a totally black map with anonymous coloured dots on both chrome and Firefox. The pub may or may not be fucked, but the website is.
(Yes I tried disabling all the dark settings, no difference)
The one near me which is absolutely fucked, as far as I'm concerned, deserves it.
Fighty customers, crap beer, odd opening hours, and half their food menu is off ("sorry mate, we've got no cheese"). Oh, and now their credit card terminal prompts customers for a tip!
I love a good pub, but most are crap.
The UK government hates its populace, particularly its natives. Downvote all you want.
Having watched two alcoholic family members die horribly, spurred on by functioning alcoholic friends whos only social interaction is at the pub through habit only, fuck 'em. Let them die.
We need better social spaces which do not have the token cost of drinks to use.
Ok so because your family were alcoholics nobody should have a space to drink? What an absurd thing to say.
No I'm saying we have a social problem with alcohol in this country and brush it under the table as a cultural identity thing.
Its extremely hard to cope with how bleak life is in the UK without frequent intoxication (source: abandoned the uk, no longer drink at all)
Fair. That's what they invented planes for :)
Am I the only one that has no idea what this is talking about? Even the "About" section just dumps a ton of jargon about something being a problem for "pubs" - which, very unclear from the homepage, is actually talking about bars/places to drink beer/etc in the UK.
But again, now I know it's talking about that kind of pub, what is the actual issue? Some sort of rate being added to something? What rate? Is this related to a rating system? Taxes? Is it affecting the consumer? The owner?
So confused.
Nope, I have utterly no idea what "rate increases" are being referred to. Doesn't seem to have a single explanation or link anywhere that I can find.
A form of property tax it looks like, charged on businesses: https://www.gov.uk/introduction-to-business-rates
To be fair, I'd say that most people in the UK who would be interested in the contents of this site are aware of the context and know what phrases like "rates increases" actually mean.
It's been in the news quite a bit over the years since the pandemic.
Not every site has to provide an ELI5.
The homepage doesn't even say it's about the UK.
For a generic ".com" domain that isn't American, it's generally a good idea to yes, have a kind of minimal hint that tells you at least which country it's about, and at least a single link you can follow to get the broader context.
I'm following a link to it on HN. When I get there, I have zero context. Visitors to your site can come from anywhere, so it's generally considered a good idea to provide basic context.
Man, it's weird being an American sometimes.
I do not drink. I am half Irish and half German.
Drinking is a _very_ weird cultural artifact from our past. It doesn't improve your life, it has been scientifically proven to not 'help you relax', and there may in fact be no safe amount of alcohol to drink; all the pop-sci headlines that say 'one glass of wine a week may improve your health' are really about studies that put the safe max at one glass per week.
From what I can tell, the UK is no longer subsidizing what is effectively a criminal enterprise that is centuries old.
With all due respect this opinion verges on neo prohibitionist alarmism. The social benefits of alcohol have been widely acknowledged and at a time when we are all spending too much time at home on our phones (arguably worse for health than a pint), communities need more social spaces. That place may not necessarily be a bar and it’s perfectly fine if you don’t wish to drink, but it’s a bit much to refer to a cultural product as a criminal enterprise.
Many people have written what you have written, trying to justify their life choices to strangers on the internet.
None of them have ever explained why alcohol, or any drug use, needs to be part of third spaces.
Society is losing third spaces, largely due to unchecked capitalism eroding the society it serves... but 'pubs' are just another form of rent-seeking by landlords. It has been proven without a doubt that third spaces as a commercial venture is ultimately non-functional, yet that is what pubs and bars have always been, and now they are dying out.
Again, with all due respect, I’m not seeing how my comment is pushing a “life choice” on anyone, and the movement to restrict alcohol consumption equally qualifies as pushing a life choice on someone.
Commercial pubs have existed for hundreds of year. But drinking doesn’t have to be commercial. In Berlin where I live there’s a non-profit hacker space that has a bar with at-cost drinks. It’s also perfectly legal to buy a beer and sit in the park. And of course, nothing is better than having friends over for a wine tasting.
> None of them have ever explained why alcohol, or any drug use, needs to be part of third spaces.
Third places need to have some kind of draw, else nobody will show up. "If you build it, they will come" is for the movies. In the real world you need to have a compelling reason to have others come in your door. Space alone is not sufficient to establish a third space.
That draw doesn't necessarily have to be alcohol (or another drug), but it was the thing that many people used to want. Threatening use of a third space by fear of the wrath of a mighty deity only buys you one day out of the week, I'm afraid.
You're quite right that people don't want alcohol like they used to. Why nurse a hangover when you can get the same dopamine rush scrolling through TikTok at home on your couch? This means that many third spaces of yesteryear no longer serve a purpose, and as you call out, have closed as a result.
Which is all well and good, I guess, but some segment of the population still wish that there were third spaces for them to exist in. Trouble is that they've never been able to find anything as compelling as alcohol used to be, making a different kind of third space of the same scale a complete no-go, so trying to salvage the remaining alcohol-centric third places is the only path they can see.
What's especially American about this remark isn't the experience of consuming alcohol in public. What is characteristically American, I think, is the assumption that we can pronounce a thing good or bad merely on the basis of its effect on the individual, with no regard for one's relationships with other people. Drinking in a pub is a social activity, and the alcohol is a lubricant for that activity. Yes, doing too much of it can cause great harm; doing any amount of it could cause some harm; it does not follow that the thing is a net detriment to society, and that it should be banned.
Maybe it is that way for people in the UK, or maybe people of a certain age group.
However, I am, as I said, an American, but also a Millennial. For many Millennials, drinking isn't a social activity, it is a form of quiet shame. We saw our parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents destroy their lives because of alcoholism, we lost friends and family because of being victims of drunk drivers, we saw people die of complications of a lifetime of drinking.
A lot of us simply chose not to repeat those mistakes as those mistakes effect the people around us in grave ways.
If anything, drinking is an anti-social activity, even if you do it entirely socially.
I just don't see the point in keeping it around.
It sounds like you don't understand what a pub is like.
Whilst this is definitely not what's it's like, this quaint video is all about the lineage of the pub in the UK, and explains the third-spaceness of them, which I'd argue still exists[1].
Pubs are so important for our communities in the UK, whether that's watching the game, seeing a friend's band, celebrating a birthday or just catching up after work.
Many of the parts of my life have been lived in a pub. If it's criminal, I'd happily be locked up. Or maybe lock me in, a sadly rarer occurrence these days.
[1] https://youtu.be/_GCcoaSq3x4?si=QunsiKqk4D4IRV0M
Exactly, designing a 'third place' that isn't alcohol focused seems to be a tough nut to crack. Alcohol greases the wheels for socialization and is a highly profitable item for a place to sell that keeps the lights on (people may have several drinks an hour, drinking leads to more drinking both in the long and shot terms, etc). Meanwhile a typical coffeeshop here in seattle is, aside from the espresso machines, is a near silent library-like space. Many people heads down in a book or a laptop. Instead of having a few drinks per hour you instead may have a single coffee and maybe a pastry or sandwich.
If someone opened a social space with maybe a kitchen that let you pay by the hour to hang out, credit for kitchen orders. All the other bar/pub accoutrements gaming (darts, pool, shuffleboard, pinball, whatnot), sports on the tv, whatever .. I still don't think people will go for it.
I think the only non-boozy option that comes to mind is the small town diner but those are thin on the ground.
Here is what I will say. Drinking certainly is not a healthy choice. However hanging out with your peers for a few hours a night in public certainly is.
Unfortunately I haven't found any place that cracks that problem in america, especially into the later hours. There isn't really a place for people to hang out and socialize without it being a boozy bar. As someone who doesn't really enjoy drinking I don't even really want to go to boardgame/chess/trivia nights at bars because I feel like I'm freeloading. ( I imagine any given bar patron is having 1-3 drinks per hour and potentially ordering some food if that is an option. I might order some food and have a soda...)
I assume part of the problem being that alcohol has the helpful side effect of greasing the wheels socially. Coffee houses that are open late are generally library like affairs, a lot of people sitting around on laptops or with books, any attempt to start a more social night is, in my experience, refused because of this.