Christmas, inexorably, is coming and, along with the New Year celebrations, we can only hope that it will bring some much needed business for our pubs. Week in, week out recently it is so sad to see reports of so many top class publicans, perhaps the industry\u2019s most valuable resource, being forced out or just giving up in the face of impossible odds. The same applies to small brewers, especially those who, you would have hoped, were well established. The Government\u2019s autumn statement will be announced just as we go to print (see the News & Views column). Let\u2019s hope that it brings some help, although there was no mention of the hospitality industry in the recent King\u2019s Speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some hopeful news comes from a survey commissioned by Greene King for Cask Ale Week (21 September to 1 October). This found that cask ale is regarded as essential to the UK\u2019s pub culture by 80% of those drinkers who participated and nearly half of them believe that a pint of cask ale is the freshest drink you can order at the bar. Some 27% of participants drink cask ale because they value the brands that brew it and 26% said that they prefer to drink cask ale because of its superior taste. Keep it up!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To close, I will repeat my customary annual comments about \u2018Dry January\u2019. I appreciate that this is a tradition for many people and, quite often, it raises money for charity but, if you are a regular pub-goer, are you being fair to your local by withholding your custom in the most difficult trading month of the year? Also, while I\u2019ve no medical expertise, I suspect that, if you want to cut down on your drinking, you are better off having two or three \u2018dry\u2019 days a week rather than one \u2018dry\u2019 month a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Season\u2019s Greetings to you all. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christmas, inexorably, is coming and, along with the New Year celebrations, we can only hope that it will bring some much needed business for our pubs. Week in, week out… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4079,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions\/4079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Tony Hedger<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n