Uncredited cause of pub closures (From The Oxford Times)

Uncredited cause of pub closures

2:50pm Wednesday 25th January 2012 in Gray Matter By Christopher Gray

These are tough times for British pubs, which are said by the Campaign for Real Ale to be closing at the rate of 16 a week — 2,000 of them over the past two years.

A spokesman for Camra attributed their decline to cheap supermarket alcohol, high taxes, “greedy owners” and our changing lifestyle.

He might have added a fifth factor — the inexorable rise of the pub chain JD Wetherspoon.

Ask any licensee about his worst fear and he is likely to say the opening of a Wetherspoon pub nearby.

They cannot hope to compete with a rival able to cut prices to the bone through the huge economies of scale its size permits. On Tuesday night, for instance, Rosemarie and I enjoyed steak, chips and all the trimmings, plus a bottle of Shiraz, at The Four Candles, in George Street, for £15.99.

The company’s seemingly unstoppable expansion is recorded in the (excellent) in-house magazine, Wetherspoon, wherein can also be found each issue a full-page article from a Camra official.

The pressure group has always been cosily in bed with the company because of its long-term support for real ale. Fair enough. But Camra members should not let this blind them to the damage it is doing to our heritage. The organisation should either pipe down about pub closures or cease talking up Wetherspoon.