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The Pub Curmudgeon

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I ’ve been pondering whether to write something on the death of the Pub Curmudgeon , whose column in the Stockport CAMRA magazine and long running blog was always a must read. Whether you agreed with his view or not, he had something interesting to say and in the age of internet blogging he had the means. With a focus on lifestyle issues as much as beer and pubs he soon developed a blog that was arguably more widely read than most of the bloggers seeking a paid career in beer writing. In the early 90s I would return from University to stay with my parents and go out for a drink in the pubs of Stockport with friends. An era more of tied pubs than pub company chains and independents, the town was very much dominated by Robinson’s beer. Cask ale appeared universally available and you would encounter the Opening Times magazine racks in most pubs. Free to read it proved a useful resource to discover the pubs of the town and the Pub Curmudgeon column arguably stood out as the more interes...
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The inhospitality industry

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  I don’t often blog but I wanted to tell the story of a pub crawl I didn’t go on. A niece of mine recently turned 18 and her weekend celebrations involved a pub crawl and house party. I can speak of the latter being a fun evening, but this is the short tale of the former. A cheeky WhatsApp informed me my niece was starting her evening out in a Wetherspoons. The app is the greatest innovation of the age and after asking whether they all had ID she replied yes, they were 4 of them, I sent them a bottle of prosecco and enough glasses. My sister would have disapproved of shots or the lurid coloured cocktail jugs they may have preferred. The following evening I noticed there were 4 times the number at the house party. Alcohol availiable and no divide between those that hit the magic 18 and those that hadn’t. Why only 4 on the night out? A simple reason. Only 4 of them were 18. Not only in Wetherspoons, they were ID’d in every bar they went in. Further to this each were ID’d an...
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Pub Queues

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During the Covid pandemic the hospitality industry was subject to a series of idiotic nonsensical restrictions that at the time the majority of politicians, journalists, commentators and the public vigorously supported. I would credit most of the restrictions to be well intentioned but ultimately governed by ignorance and fear with a significant degree of group think. Not mixing, touching or breathing on each other being a governing principle. Expressing scepticism to the obviously more ridiculous elements would be met with the view that you were accepting the death of the vulnerable just to get a pint or make a quid you disgraceful person you. Nevertheless I stuck to it. At the time I was the main support for elderly parents and fully understand the caution and the anger towards the incautious that ultimately stiffed the likes of Boris Johnson. A feature of the era was people keeping their distance from each other. People swerved each other when passing in the street. Shops had forma...
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The Wetherspoons App is fantastic

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  Eating a free Big Mac I “won” on the McDonalds app has prompted this download of thoughts. Over the past couple of years a combination of factors have changed much of customer service either for the better or worse, depending on your opinion. Increasing costs of hiring minimum wage employees either via national insurance hikes or hikes to the minimum wage have prompted employers to alter those jobs to increase productivity though automation. By productivity, I mean more customers served by fewer people. Fast food joints have seen touch screen terminals and app ordering replace counter staff with the human job being to shout out the number you are given on ordering. I can tell you what I think of those experiences but whether we are talking McDonalds, Burger King or KFC, I’d say the customer experience has degraded considerably through automation. You could argue these places were never the pinnacle of customer service. The McDonalds brothers devised a quick service sy...
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Small is Beautiful The End

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By far the largest part of Schumachers book is in regard to the third world and this section really hasn’t aged well at all. The world is different place 50 years on, but it exposes in one way just how little economic progress some countries have developed and just how much progress countries have made.   Schumachers approach is very much a what we can do for them or really to them, not how can we give a leg up to their own efforts. He gives little agency to the people of developing countries or consideration to what they might want for themselves. Schumacher knows best and they should get what they are given.   I may be writing with the gift of hindsight but maybe the difference in outcomes in the examples Schumacher uses have less to do with the aid given but the system of law and levels of corruption and stability of government in those countries that allow enterprise and prosperity to flourish or stagnate depending.   Schumachers big idea is one of in...
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Small is Beautiful Part 3

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 In the second and third parts of book, Schumacher tackles resources & the third word. The resources Schumacher addresses are education, land, the inputs of industry, nuclear energy and something he describes as “technology with a human face”   The first four of these are the type of arguments you could easily make today and often see writers in the Guardian do if you’re bored enough to read that stuff. You can see all the germinating seeds of todays nonsense. Schumacher problem with education is that it is not instilling in people the correct values, his values. His argument on education comes down to “we need to indoctrinate the kids”. I’m guessing you can see the results now in a generation that believes we are all doomed.   Maybe I’m expecting something different from an economics book. On education there is a failure to acknowledge that the economic argument for education is that educated people are more productive than uneducated. The work they do has ...
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Small is Beautiful Part 2

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This was meant to be the post. Honest. A look at E.F Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful as an explainer of the underlying philosophy of the Campaign for Real Ale. Explaining why the preference for small breweries and independent pubs. Explaining why went on longer than I expected and it’s bloggery so there’s no editor crossing stuff out. Part 1 of Schumachers book addresses what he sees as the modern world. In 1971. From production of consumer products (like beer!) to national issues of peace and war, the role of economics, a diversion into Buddhist economics (yeh really, imagine that) before tying it up with a question of size.   In the first chapter, The Problem of Production, he argues that the modern economy is unsustainable. Natural resources (fossil fuels), are treated as expendable income, when in fact they should be treated as capital, since they are not renewable, and thus subject to eventual depletion. Schumacher's philosophy is one of "enoughness", appreciatin...
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