Smoking in pubs

[Bound2Please]

3 hours ago, springsong said:

I still maintain that a pub is largely down to the landlord.

you take two identical pubs, one with a manager one with a 

tenant / owner, which will be busier ? 

The hardest working landlord, whether that be tenant, lessee or manager

[BroadScot]

The one who knows how to rotate his stock, clean the pipes, drip trays etc etc etc...Show politeness to customers never goes wrong either. Refuse to serve at the Hen party table for the fear of getting yer bum nipped|! 

I have over the years had many a good nights libation in certain Broads Pubs, the ones I enjoyed most were run by landlords not managers. I smoked then, heavily, and it was part of your night out a fag n a pint! Life has moved on since then, some will say for the better others may not. Its all about choice, or with today's Nanny State, lack of it!

Iain

[ChrisB]

How I wish you could get a sandwich of good quality in a pub.

When we travel we mostly buy ready made M&S or Waitrose and picnic. 

Why? Because we don't want half a metre of bagette and a bucket of chips half way through ourjourney, just a round of beef or ham, something like that.

[BroadScot]

4 minutes ago, ChrisB said:

How I wish you could get a sandwich of good quality in a pub.

When we travel we mostly buy ready made M&S or Waitrose and picnic. 

Why? Because we don't want half a metre of bagette and a bucket of chips half way through ourjourney, just a round of beef or ham, something like that.

The Wherry at Geldeston, for ,many years did a superb Suffolk Ham Sarnie, not cheap but was delicious! The Waveney also at Oulton Broad, but that was a while ago.

Iain

[ranworthbreeze]

Tan was rather partial to the smoked salmon & cream cheese sandwiches that on the dinnertime menu at The Staithe & Willow a few years ago, the only issue was finding a mooring.

Personally I would go for the bagette filled with just cheese and that basket of chips with lashings of vinegar. 

Regards

Alan

[Islander]

Where can a man get scampi and chips or chicken and chips in a basket these days. Good simple food at a sensible price. I don't want something that looks like a mouthful served up on a slice of Acacia wood or a bit of slate. To me some pubs have lost the plot. 

Colin

[ranworthbreeze]

12 minutes ago, Islander said:

Where can a man get scampi and chips or chicken and chips in a basket these days. Good simple food at a sensible price. I don't want something that looks like a mouthful served up on a slice of Acacia wood or a bit of slate. To me some pubs have lost the plot. 

Colin

Hi Colin,

You forgot to mention fish balanced on half a dozen chips or worse still in a very small imitation frying basket

Regards

Alan 

[BroadScot]

36 minutes ago, Islander said:

Where can a man get scampi and chips or chicken and chips in a basket these days. Good simple food at a sensible price. I don't want something that looks like a mouthful served up on a slice of Acacia wood or a bit of slate. To me some pubs have lost the plot. 

Colin

Aye, Michelin have a LOT to answer for! 

Iain

[Islander]

Michelin should stick to tyres and pirelli to calendars 

colin

Edited December 22, 2015 by Islander
Spelling again, back in the corner!

[ExUserGone]

The idea of the landlord choosing wether to allow smoking or not is blown out of the water as soon as he employs someone be it bar staff or cleaner as it becomes a workplace instead of somewhere you just choose to go (or not).

As an ex-smoker I prefer pubs without all the smoke, only downside is you rarely smelt BO or a fart in a pub before the smoking ban, now theres no mask for it......

[imtamping2]

57 minutes ago, Dajen said:

It's blown out of the water well before that Leo, it's a work place for the Landlord whether he be the owner or the tenant, under the act it is still classified as a work place.

 

Dave

Good god,I didn't realise you couldn't fart in the work place....whatever next...

[BroadScot]

Kindly keep the air clean please !   

 

[senator]

On 12/16/2015 at 6:14 PM, jeffbroadslover said:

I know it's been hammered out before but it amazes me that a government will allow you to buy fags and then tell you that you can't smoke them in public places OR in your own private car if you have someone under 18 yrs old in it.

 

Along the same lines Tesco's sell Durex, that didn't end well either.

[MauriceMynah]

Tee hee Senator, I beat you to it on that one,,last Thursday

The definition of "the work place" has been a sticky wicket from day one. If for example I was a gardener, would I be allowed to smoke in somebody's garden? We all know the final objective of the government (irrespective of party) which is to weaken the tobbacco industry to the point where smoking can become illegal, and whilst I can sympathise with those who would fight for that at any cost I find myself wondering if we really want this to happen given the precedent that would set. There are other things we do that potentially put other people at risk. those too would have to come under scrutiny. As is so often said, be careful what you wish for.

[Timbo]

Every Saturday I'm confronted with a group of people that through their lifestyle choice inflict a potential hazard to my health in a public place. In addition their lifestyle choice places a great strain on NHS budgets and damages the environment. I'm wondering who I should report them to?

I'm talking about those inconsiderate anti social people who 'jog'! Saturday mornings a host of these inconsiderate people congregate on the medieval fields and woodland close to my home and then 'on mass' proceed to run in endless laps, making it impossible for me to get past with my dogs on my morning 'drag' through the woods. I've been knocked over as these idiots charge down country lanes which are now rutted and mered from constant jogging. My local GP's surgery sees a constant stream of joggers limping in to see the mountebank. Recently I spotted a large number of raptors circling over the woods. On closer inspection I heard the problem before I saw it. The joggers now have an idiot ringing a bell mounted on a tripod every time they pass him. Incidentally the woods are now bereft of large raptors and the deer herd that sheltered through the winter in this location due to the noise pollution.

On weekdays these inconsiderate people run all over the roads and pavements in the dark. Last night they forced an old couple into the road and into oncoming traffic. The year before one of the joggers died whilst running to work at 4am, gulping in freezing air he suffocated at the side of the road as his lungs froze.

Worse still Saturday lunchtimes means these hyper active idiots make drinking in the local pub extremely unpleasant as they sit filling the air with noxious smells of sweaty clothes and minging trainers. 

I for one would like to see a complete ban on the activities of these inconsiderate people. Running shoes and gym clothing should be kept in locked cabinets in sportswear shops to discourage this unhealthy and antisocial activity. Special outdoor areas so the sweaty oiks can be segregated from those of us who smell like lilacs, with hints and overtones of musk and citrus should be created in pubs. Restaurants that cater to these people by supplying food of limited nutritional value like salad should be restricted to over 18's only. And government health warnings need to be placed on all accoutrements associated with this activity. Magazines and images of muscular slim people need to be controlled, wrapped in opaque cellophane and only stored on the top shelf of newsagents.

Something has to be done!

 

 

[FairTmiddlin]

On 21/12/2015 at 2:10 PM, SteveO said:

Some good points have been made on here. Another observation I would add is that the pubs which seem to be struggling are often run by people who either don't have the faintest idea how to run a pub, who leave the running to clueless staff or who are not sufficiently interested in their clientele to provide something which differentiates their offering from everyone else's. How many times have I seen the frozen food vans delivering ready meals to such places! Frankly, if I wanted to, I could eat "ping" food more cheaply and of better quality at home or on the boat. And yet they wonder why they struggle.

We visited a pub in Faversham the other day. Nothing fancy, just a shop premises which had been converted, with a little bar in one corner and a few small tables down either side. Good selection of local real ales, ciders and wines and no food to speak of, save for perhaps a pickled egg. The place has been there for about a year and was absolutely packed. Friendly and knowledgeable staff, lovely atmosphere. We will certainly be back there. Compare and contrast to the "local" in a village near us, which offers food of the Brakes variety, where "real ale" means Sharps Doom Bar - 300 miles out of territory and where conversation, amongst the 2 or 3 hard bitten regulars that somehow keep the place alive, stops when you enter. The smoking ban must impact on both of these, yet one flourishes whilst the other limps on.

Steve

 

Mind you Steve that always has been a weird pub even when I lived in Sellindge many moons ago

[FairTmiddlin]

The biggest problem with most pubs is the transient tenants

Pubco's selling tenancies to every Tom, Dick or Harry who has a pension pot or redundancy money who go into the trade half blind as to the amount of work (not only physical) that it takes to run a successful hostelry, then run out of money half way through the tenancy. In the town where i live I can think of two long term tenants and one free house where the landlord has been for more than two years 

I'm sure half of these people have little or no training from the Pubco and are basically given the keys and left to get on with it. and most of them seem to have the social graces of Tyson Fury.

Most of them seem to think this will be a nice little earner with not much work. Wakeup people running a pub is 24/7 365 day commitment. Your day doesn't start when you turn the key on the front door and it sure as hell doesn't end when you lock it at night

One of my locals when you walk in you are lucky if you see the same staff for two weeks in a row. and if you see the tenant it's sitting the wrong side of the bar.

As for food Whitbread who I worked for forced the menu on you but you were allowed to do your own specials. Ours were so popular when I was in the kitchen, we outsold the menu by 70/30%, because it was unpretentious, wholesome home cooked food, all made from scratch and not from the back of a Brakes lorry.

[Bound2Please]

40 minutes ago, FairTmiddlin said:

Most of them seem to think this will be a nice little earner with not much work. Wakeup people running a pub is 24/7 365 day commitment. Your day doesn't start when you turn the key on the front door and it sure as hell doesn't end when you lock it at night

 

Running a public house isnt a 24/7 365/6 day commitment at all. IT IS IN FACT A LIFESTYLE not a job, if anyone calls being a Landlord/Lady a job they are certainly in the wrong lifestyle

[MauriceMynah]

"Job" "Living" "Lifestyle" ... this is just symantics. Anyone who's been there will know already what is involved, and those thinking about it for the first time need to do a lot of homework to seperate the facts from the myths.
 

[FairTmiddlin]

MM That just seems to be the problem with most of the tenants nowadays they just see the "Lifestyle" (Charlie I call it Bloody hard work. Having worked all day on a Bank holiday Monday. With nothing to eat, hardly anything to drink for 16 hours, non stop thats not a "Lifestyle) that goes into running a pub . All they ever see is what happens when they are drinking in their local.

So as you say they need to do a lot of soul searching from many other landlords before they commit to signing on that dotted line

[ChrisB]

I am afraid that is true of not only the pub trade. Some years ago I worked as a mentor/consultant in new start ups. It was really worrying seeing so many who thought working for yourself was an easy option and who didn't want someone telling them what to do.

When I said that "you will be working twice the hours and working to satisfy the bank is worse than any boss" they thought I was mad. 

I have seen not only broken dreams but the nightmares of divorce, repossessed homes, cars and the knock of the Bailiffs. You really need to be honest about your strengths and weakness before jumping in.

[unclemike]

he definition of "the work place" has been a sticky wicket from day one. If for example I was a gardener, would I be allowed to smoke in somebody's garden?

 

this happens john, gardeners working for north lincs council and also the park warden at a large country park are not allowed to smoke at work

[ranworthbreeze]

Being self employed can be rewarding, but forget having time off, no sick pay, long hours, being an unpaid tax collector. The job only finishes when its completed. I have spent 35 years being self employed in the service industry, long hours sometimes little money with the VAT and Taxman always holding out their hands for their cut.

Regards

Alan

[BroadScot]

14 minutes ago, ranworthbreeze said:

Being self employed can be rewarding, but forget having time off, no sick pay, long hours, being an unpaid tax collector. The job only finishes when its completed. I have spent 35 years being self employed in the service industry, long hours sometimes little money with the VAT and Taxman always holding out their hands for their cut.

Regards

Alan

Customers not paying you promptly in the service industry, was most annoying! Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!! 

Iain

 

[Timbo]

Of course...I had fully intended giving up smoking on January 1st but for two problems. Firstly it's my birthday....so I will be enjoying myself too much to be giving up smoking, and secondly my daughter bought me a gift from Cuba for Christmas...perhaps when I've finished these I mi...not a snowball's chance in hell!