The Stop Smoking Megathread [ including Champix]

[garypeacock]

The tax on booze is just one of the taxes and regulations which cost business' dear. I did as you say and asked myself why a pint in York costs £4 as apposed to £2.40 in Dewsbury and to be honest I'm amazed that you didn't know, it will be due to business taxes and the cost of property is far higher in York because it's a tourist area therefore completely different from Dewsbury.

The comparison is a bit silly really, the 2 places are chalk and cheese...

I did my research and came up with 4 when calculating 2+2.

 

I'll take a look at your book if you send me a free copy and maybe point you towards other inaccuracies.

 

You are kidding yourself if you think that such a price differential is down to such things as business rates. It's greed and all about the ability to rip off tourists. There are people in York on minimum wage, where do they drink? Maybe in the Sam Smith's and wetherspoons pubs, where they have to pay the same wage/property/business rates as everyone else.

 

I look forward to your book on the economic realities of modern life and how the taxes on pubs and punters go to pay to bomb 'brown people'.

 

Open your eyes, its to do with what I've mentioned plus more choice for people ie: 500 tv channels, facebook and drinking at home. Add in the lack of young people being welcomed in pubs and you have the reason for our dying pubs. The smoking ban was a very minor reason for the death of local pubs, which is where I started my argument with you.

 

I repeat do Sam Smiths/Wetherspoons pay different tax rates? No they have different business models to the pubcos. Get over it.

[Anna Glypta]

That figure is clearly wrong. The percentage of smokers amongst the population may be 20%, but you are assuming that 100% of the population go to the pub. They do not.

 

 

 

 

It is pretty simple really. the stats are readily available.Of the age group who are old enough to smoke only 21% actually smoke. If you are old enough to smoke you are old enough to go to the pub. It's all pretty simple really.

 

There is also another aspect to this. Drinking habits are changing. Aroun Sheffield and almost every other city there are dozens and dozens of cafebars and winebars. I would imagine inside the Sheffield Inner ring road they now outnumber pubs. These are opening at a faster rate than pubs are closing. You only have to go through Leopold Square. It is a new development and every single building is a cafe bar. THe same is the case at West One.

 

I'm sure that folks notice some shed of a pub that has closed because they never went into it. But they have been replaced with new pubs such as The Hop or Bar 23. I would hazzard a guess that Sheffield now has more licenced premises than before the smoking ban came into force. So what's the problem? There are still loads of pubs for those who want to use them. There are hundreds of cafebars which the young people prefer.

I defy anyone to go down Division Street and West Street on a Friday or Saturday and tell me that there's no one using the bars.

[garypeacock]

I'm not denying the fact that City centre pubs and wine bars are full on a weekend, crikey they should be. My fear is the closure of many of our local pubs.

 

http://www.deathoftheregular.com

[mathew26]

In some place price for it is really affecting because it is really getting expensive.

[alchresearch]

Between 1980 and 2010 the number of pubs in Britain fell by a quarter, from 69,000 to 52,000. The smoking ban was only in force for a couple of years of that period. CAMRA said that the 3 main pressures on pubs were beer duty, competition from supermarkets and pub companies putting the financial screws on landlords with their alcohol prices.

 

That's a very good point. I drink a lot and read the CAMRA magazines and they never cite smoking as an issue or a factor to blame for the decline in the pub.

 

I was drinking in a backstreet pub in Liverpool on Saturday. It was just around the corner from where Bread was filmed. There used to be three pubs on the one street but only one is left. It was heaving (prob due to the match) but the choice of beers was disappointing. But the reason there is only one pub and not three is just down to demographics and the way people don't talk to their neighbours anymore. People don't go out to socialise as much as they used to in the suburbs. They'd rather stay in with a takeaway and the big telly.

Edited August 20, 2012 by alchresearch

[Rupert_Baehr]

...

We could then twin our wonderful paradise with North Korea ! What a great future awaits us !

Cheers !

 

I thought the People's Democratic Republic of South Yorkshire was twinned with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?

Edited August 20, 2012 by Rupert_Baehr

[choogling]

People who complain about the smoking ban need to shut up, seriously.

 

IMO it was the best thing the previous Government ever did.

some would say the only thing they got right but hold on didn't Brussels force it on us.

[choogling]

You are kidding yourself if you think that such a price differential is down to such things as business rates. It's greed and all about the ability to rip off tourists. There are people in York on minimum wage, where do they drink? Maybe in the Sam Smith's and wetherspoons pubs, where they have to pay the same wage/property/business rates as everyone else.

 

I look forward to your book on the economic realities of modern life and how the taxes on pubs and punters go to pay to bomb 'brown people'.

 

Open your eyes, its to do with what I've mentioned plus more choice for people ie: 500 tv channels, facebook and drinking at home. Add in the lack of young people being welcomed in pubs and you have the reason for our dying pubs. The smoking ban was a very minor reason for the death of local pubs, which is where I started my argument with you.

 

I repeat do Sam Smiths/Wetherspoons pay different tax rates? No they have different business models to the pubcos. Get over it.

This is a very interesting site it gives the view from the other side of the bar-http://samsmiths.info/

[Rupert_Baehr]

It is pretty simple really. the stats are readily available.Of the age group who are old enough to smoke only 21% actually smoke. If you are old enough to smoke you are old enough to go to the pub. It's all pretty simple really.

 

...

 

No, that's simplistic - which is not the same as simple.

 

If a mere 21% of people who are old enough to smoke do smoke, that does not suggest that 21% of people who go to pubs smoke. You have not established a connection.

 

It could be (it's not though) that only 21% of the population go to pubs and they are all smokers. - If that was the case. 100% of the customers of pubs would be smokers.

 

Your statistics are based on flawed premises.

 

As you, I and others have said, people's habits have changed. Pubs used to be full every night. People went there for a pint and a chat (and some people smoked, too.)

 

Now they go elsewhere.

 

How many times have you heard strident complaints when a pub closure is announced?

 

"They shouldn't be allowed to close our pub! It's a vital part of community life! We can't do without it!" But when you press the complainer, he says: "Of course I'm a regular! - I go there every New Year's Eve without fail for a half of shandy!"

 

I've never heard of a pub which closed because it had too many customers and the landlord was worked off his feet. Quite a few closed because - although they were good pubs - fewer people used them and operating costs increased steadily.

 

Smoking may have had some effect (I know a few people who did reduce their visits to pubs [and some of them were major customers] because they could no longer smoke in the pub,) but - thinking back to when I was looking at running a pub in 1991 - the writing was already on the wall. The breweries were screwing the landlords, business rates were screwing the landlords and people - particularly younger people - were going elsewhere.

[Rupert_Baehr]

I ... asked myself why a pint in York costs £4 as apposed to £2.40 in Dewsbury and to be honest I'm amazed that you didn't know, it will be due to business taxes and the cost of property is far higher in York because it's a tourist area therefore completely different from Dewsbury.

 

You are kidding yourself if you think that such a price differential is down to such things as business rates. It's greed and all about the ability to rip off tourists...

 

The UK isn't known as 'Rip-Off Britain' and 'Treasure Island' for nothing.

 

Prices in tourist areas are often somewhat higher than elsewhere - because the people in those areas rely on tourists for their livelihood.

 

The UK is renowned for ripping-off tourists.

 

I wonder how many repeat tourists places like York get?