"Pubs are closing down at an astonishing rate across the UK"

Pub landlords ‘must serve better beer’ and stop boorish behaviour to save the Great British boozer

What the CAMRA reps are saying in this article is fine; People want good, well looked after pubs selling great beers and quality comfort, where they can enjoy spending hard earned time and money with friends, not run down shit holes. To that extent Wilkinson and Stainer are bang on the money. The problem is with what the 'pub industry' says:

"The pub industry has blamed a combination of high business rates, cheap supermarket alcohol, the rise of the minimum wage, the smoking ban and changing social habits which have seen more people drinking at home for the decline of the pub."

CAMRA needs to be highly critical of the way the pub sector is funded and operated by private equity; sweated and asset stripped by pubcos whose agendas are not based around core values of being 'pub companies' but around being vehicles for extraction of the maximum amount of return on the back of minimum investment possible; ultimately by selling pubs as alternative assets and reducing the size of the national pub estate.

"Office for National Statistics figures earlier this year suggested more than a quarter of Britain’s pubs have closed their doors since the turn of the millennium – with a drop from 52,500 in 2001 to 38,815."

According to 'the pub industry' that scale of failure has nothing to do with them... it's all external factors. Nothing to do with profiteering rent and supply prices that make it close to impossible for 'low cost entry into the pub business' publicans to make money they might invest back into their pubs - in turn leading over decades to chronic under-investment in the whole sector and dilapidation of pubs to the degree that they aren't fit for purpose.

People don't/won't socialise in a run down sticky floored stinky toilet boozer with a row of expensive global lagers that are badly looked after served by publicans with thousand mile stares waiting for the bailiffs to turn up and turf them out of business and home.