Britain Lost 14,000 Pubs, a Quarter, in 13 Years (substack.com)
- Reference: 0180812770
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/17/1836238/britain-lost-14000-pubs-a-quarter-in-13-years
- Source link: https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/britain-lost-14000-third-places-they
Leek trained a random forest model on 49,840 pubs and found spatial isolation -- how far a pub stood from its nearest neighbour -- was the single strongest predictor of closure. Median nearest-neighbour distance for surviving pubs is roughly 280 metres; for closed pubs, 640 metres. Each closure pushes remaining pubs further into isolation, a dynamic Leek calls a "spatial death spiral."
Much of that isolation traces to ownership. Stonegate, Britain's largest pub company and a holding of PE firm TDR Capital, carries over $4 billion in debt from its 2019 leveraged acquisition of Ei Group. PE-backed and overseas-owned companies now control roughly a quarter to a third of all British pubs.
[1] https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/britain-lost-14000-third-places-they
No money, no friends (Score:4, Interesting)
Gosh, maybe somebody should have thought about the poor public house before destroying the economy and telling the rest of the world to fuck off.
It turns out if everyone hates each other and is poor, they don't hang out in bars much.
Oh well. Maybe if they turn the island into an even poorer, meaner place, the good times will come back.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you sure about that? It seems like exactly the sort of time when people want to be drunk.
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Best place to be drunk is at home, either with or without friends. Paying retail price for drinks is insane.
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I don't know about best.
Cheapest, yes.
Safest, probably.
Saddest, absolutely!
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It wouldn't be so bad, but there are hardly any lumberjacks in the UK.
*runs away and hides from an irate mob of Monty Python fans
Seriously, it very much depends on the area. Rugby, a town-borderline-city, has fewer pubs than the Marple/Mellor collection of villages up in t' norf. This is mostly because Rugby is a run-down dump with a dying town centre and hardly anything left in it, whereas Marple (although it lost its engineering back in the 60s) is a major commuter/retirement town with just enough rationa
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I always thought that Rugby was a game with an oval ball, and 15 players on each side.
Those distances sound backwards. (Score:1)
You'd think that the pubs most likely to close would be the ones close to other pubs if demand is falling.
Is this about population density?
Oh... this may get some angry responses, but is it because Muslims don't drink? Obviously a large part of this is Covid, but the Brits are well known for their love of booze.
Re: Those distances sound backwards. (Score:2)
This muslim population is a part of it yes.
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Gosh, I hope that recognition doesn't make us racists.
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Not exactly. If you read again, you will notice that places with higher Muslim population tend to retain more pubs. It's the places where not many Muslims live, where the pubs are closing.
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> You'd think that the pubs most likely to close would be the ones close to other pubs if demand is falling.
> Is this about population density?
Maybe because "pub-crawling" - visiting multiple establishments over the course of an evening - is (was?) a thing. Clusters have an additional appeal that isolated locations don't.
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Diversity is strength.
Re:New Neighbors (Score:5, Insightful)
> Said nobody with evidence.
The evidence contradicts your racist hypothesis - the higher fractions of Muslims correlates with fewer closed pubs. Muslims in UK:
England: 3,801,186 (6.7% of the population).
London: Has the highest concentration, with 14.3% of Londoners identifying as Muslim.
North-West: 6.6% of the population.
Yorkshire and the Humber: 4.8% of the population.
West Midlands: 4.2% of the population.
Scotland & Wales: Both have a 2.2% Muslim population.
Northern Ireland: 0.6%.
Kindly go back to your echo chamber for emotional support.
Re: (Score:2)
Which in this case is the same: Smaller density of Muslim population correlates with higher pub closing rates.
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Yup. 6.5% of the population. That must be it.
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> The thousands of indians and muslims you have flooding your country don't drink in pubs. Good luck maintaining your culture with the flood of 3rd worlders.
Ahhh yes a country of 70 million people is suddenly having pubs close because *checks notes* a few additional people coming don't drink?
Have the immigrants caused you indigestion or something? Based on everything I've seen they seem to make you depressed and want to drown your sorrows. So wouldn't those scary brown people cause you to drink more and keep your pubs more open?
You got some serious non-sequitur racism there.
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While there's some truth in what you say, wealth redistribution trends in all Western countries show that billionaire elites remove way more wealth from working class families than immigrants ever did. All you're doing is creating a convenient strawman to shelter the real social parasites.
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Indians drink alcohol and make great curries for after the pub.
Muslims do not drink alcohol but they do make great kebabs for after the pub.
But then again, they don't like dogs, so I'm with Ricky Gervais.
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Because it doesn't stink to high heaven.
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Who said anything about smoking? Edibles are nice too.
Correlation Does Not Equal Causation (Score:2)
> found spatial isolation -- how far a pub stood from its nearest neighbour -- was the single strongest predictor of closure.
I'd be curious to know the cause of all these closures. But, I'm quite confident that isolation from other pubs -- isolation from competition -- is not it.
Whether it's a change in demographics, the byzantine regulations and requirements, economics... I don't know. But, it's not isolation.
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Well, Covid would have to be a major factor.
A large number of immigrants that are violently anti-alcohol may also be a factor.
Rapes outside of pubs may also be a thing. I can't find numbers on that, but I see a bunch of headlines, and scary headlines make people stay home.
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Ohh! Did you hear about poor Mrs. McTavish. Some drunken Irishman ate her dog, outside the pub. Eee did. Irish, no less.
Such a shame. Eee were a good dog.. Tsk tsk.
The problem is obvious (Score:1)
$4 billion in debt
Leverage buyouts are evil
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If you're suggesting that legislative action be taken against Private Equity to the end of eliminating it as a workable organizational structure...
I'll vote for it. They're structured like old-school trusts, and we broke those up. Time for round #2.
Bad business model (Score:2)
Identified several issues:
1) Bad business models. Many pubs are owned by large companies. One company (Stonegate) owns about 1/11 pubs in the UK and they got that big by taking out massive debt to buy other pubs. But apparently, they (like many leveraged buyout firms) are good at purchasing pubs but are not good enough at running them to service the debt, so they are now selling dead pubs.
2) Pubs in London thrived. Apparently if you can walk to lots of pubs and take the Tube (subway) home, you get lots
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> 2) Pubs in London thrived. Apparently if you can walk to lots of pubs and take the Tube (subway) home, you get lots of people drinking at all the pubs.
I wouldn't call the smallest decline thriving, but alright.
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Brits are famous drinkers, so I'm surprised on that angle alone. That pubs without any nearby competition are failing makes no sense. If you have a population that drinks enough to count as alcoholic in the US, and you find some that don't have a local pub, opening one should make great sense. If you find a town with no fast food, open a Taco Bell and you should do pretty well.
But maybe it is that Private Equity does a really, really, bad job of running a pub. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a spec
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Enshitification wins again!
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Generational divide.
Younger generations don't drink alcohol like the older ones did. They consume other drugs, or no drugs.
Younger generations don't go out as much as the older ones did. They stay at home and socialize via their phones.
etc.
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Well part of that is it's so fucking expensive to do that compared to how it used to be.
14,000 pubs and one quarter ? (Score:2)
Sounds like an old joke.
"I lost 14,000 pubs ... and one quarter"
"How did you lose the quarter ?"
"See, I knew no-one cared about the pubs"
I'll come in again.
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the rigged pub quiz machines took that.
Areas of London (Score:3)
A few months back I visited the part of London where I grew up. The 3 pubs nearest to my childhood home are all dead.
Where I live now there have been no pub closures for as long as I have lived there, about 8 years.
Some areas of London kill pubs, others keep them alive. Without serious study it is not easy to say why the difference.
Corporate Holding Companies (Score:2)
They buy up a type of business and then it become's middle management's job to justify their section or local by meeting or failing quarterly numbers. Upper management then demonstrates their employability by cutting locations and 'improving the bottom line'.
The same thing has been happening in the US, with chains of restaurants and retail stores going under.
Fuck the corporations.
Boomers are dying off (Score:2)
and X'ers now have access to legal weed which is much more fun than alcohol.
Re: Boomers are dying off (Score:3)
Last I checked, weed is still very much illegal in the UK (where all the pubs have gone bust) so "legal weed" is not the reason for the pubs closing.
Re:Boomers are dying off (Score:5, Interesting)
Pubs are very expensive now, and even with the smoking ban tend not to be great places to go. Loud, not very comfortable or clean, not much atmosphere. Younger people tend not to drink much anyway.
I'm not going to miss them.
Re: Boomers are dying off (Score:2)
I doubt you've visited many pubs franky. Some are old style boozers but most have upgraded to serving food and coffee and welcome families.
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Yes, crap and overpriced coffee, and increasingly crap and overpriced food as well.
Weatherspoons is apparently still good, but I avoid it because, excuse the King's English, the owner is a brexity cunt.
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But apparently, the pub closing rate is higher in places with less Muslim population. So your logic is somewhat flawed.
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Loud,
Yeah so many pubs you go with a few friends, and there are a few groups of people scattered round trying to talk and the staff put on loud, obnoxious music and completely ruin it for the people who are actually in there. No one's trying to party it up on a Tuesday night in a businessy area.
Re: Boomers are dying off (Score:2, Offtopic)
Even small amounts of weed stinks like a cross between boiled cabbage and body odour so if that's your idea of fun knock yourself out. Most people however like a nice beer or glass of wine which doesnt make others give you a 10 foot wide berth.