Closing pubs is the easy way to ‘do something’ but is it the right thing?
IWROTE last week that CAMRA annually celebrates cider and perry in October, the time of year when apples are harvested.
Here are three more local pubs that sell real cider:
Vestry Tap Room, Church Road, Tarleton.
Black Horse, Westhead Road, Croston.
The Crown, Station Road, Croston.
Croston is outside the CAMRA Southport & West Lancs area, but only just, and it has a number of good pubs worthy of your attention.
Despite lockdown restrictions announced on Monday you are still able to enjoy real ciders and perries in the British public house.
Pubs in the nearby Liverpool City Region had to close yesterday in the latest measures against Covid-19.
CAMRA has written to the government demanding it releases evidence that pubs, along with other hospitality outlets, are hotbeds of Coronavirus infection.
To date, no reply has been received.
My experience as a regular pubgoer is pubs are taking their responsibilities for the health and safety of staff and customers seriously.
They have to because they do not want their businesses to be closed down.
The restrictions currently in place have significantly changed the experience of going to the pub, and have also reduced the numbers of people they can take in.
Most pubs are small, individual businesses not supported by the pub company that owns the building.
Unlike in the past when most pubs were run by breweries with a salaried manager on site, nowadays the pub is a stand-alone business with the licensee renting the premises from the company.
The success or failure of these businesses rests entirely upon the licensee.
If a pub fails, the owning company simply has a valuable piece of property to sell for redevelopment, while the licensee loses everything.
One pub landlady told me a few days ago she is slowly going bankrupt during the current restrictions.
Hospitality accounts for a huge amount of employment in our economy, and pubs provide a valuable antidote to isolation, especially nowadays when the number of single-occupied households is at its highest ever.
Closing pubs is an easy fix for a government to show that it is ‘doing something’.
It is not enough to do something, it is essential to do the right thing, especially when small businesses and jobs are at stake.