THE PUB: There's a war going on but no one can see it

THE PUB: There's a war going on but no one can see it

I just posted the below on a forum called Britain's Lost Pubs. I've been posting shorter or even longer more detailed versions of this FACTUAL situation on pub related forums, including on DISCOURSE the CAMRA official social media forum - for over a decade now.  Being a lone voice is tedious. 

"use em, or loose em, same up and down the country" (sic)

This is probably the MOST COMMON and least insightful comment we see on threads about any pub  that's about to be bulldozed or converted to alternative use on ANY supposedly 'special interest' forum about The Pub, anywhere on the Internet. 

The endemic ignorance of the British population is breathtaking when it comes to knowing what's happened and is happening to OUR shared irreplaceable most precious social asset: "The Pub" recognised worldwide as unique and particularly special to Britain.

But that ignorance is consequence of endemic deliberate gaslighting by pub companies whose interests it's in to see the population roll over and accept their quality of life is being eroded for the benefit of rich offshore wankers. 

With respect, that's an enormously over simplified phrase coined by pubcos and big business to excuse their chronically asset sweating tens of thousands of public houses they own in enormous pub estates they acquired after the 1989 Beer Orders... They've not invested in the fabric of the national pub estate for forty years, running them into the ground leaving most pubs simply unfit for 21st century purpose... And then conveniently they gaslight the general public saying 'if you don't want to lose them you should have used them'.

How this turns out in our localities all over the UK is in run down pubs people don't go to because they are, as we colloquially, romantically describe them. 'shithole boozers no one would go to'. Basically it boils down to egregious shockingly badly run hedge fund owned asset stripping machines we call 'pub companies' taking Britain for a ride by profiteering from our collective priceless common social capital built up over generations in communities everywhere - and selling OUR assets for peanuts to fill offshore bank accounts and fund their yacht and suntan habits. We're being HAD.

The Campaign for Real Ale - CAMRA - knows this, government departments know this, even thr courts know this, and basically no one in authority gives a flying fag packet about it because most of them don't use pubs like proper people do.

The outcome is as above - thousands of essentially perfectly useful, viable, purpose built pubs running on building infrastructure and services that should have been upgraded and renewed literally decades ago -consequences are businesses that have traded expensively and inefficiently way beyond their life cycle that have bankrupted countless thousands of publicans, churned tied pub tenants, which, if refurbuished and retrofitted sensitively now would easily attract a bustling clientel and quickly become busy, profitable, successful businesses again.

Instead they're put on the market as spent husks that no normal licensee can afford to take on and spend £200K getting up to scratch and they're flogged for alternative use leaving a community bereft of any social glue or any chance to meet down the Local - for ever.

It is a cultural crime, a national scandal of international importance, impact and proportions.

This is the #GreatBritishPubcoScam  

And the ONLY way it will end, as with Climate Crisis, is if WE TAKE ACTION to end it because what's manifestly clear when it comes to #SavingBritainsPubs NO ONE IN AUTHORITY IS GOING TO do it for us.