The billionaire developer closing London's pubs | Hacker News Reader

The billionaire developer closing London's pubs

the-londoner.co.uk

65 pointsrwmj34 comments

What a shame. The pub culture in London was excellent when I visited - a real highlight of the people. The amount of friendly strangers I chatted with over a beer at a pub that had outlasted (or at least been repaired) through the Blitz in WW2 is astounding. A really beautiful city.

I think they’re crap tbh, born and raised in England. Pubs now charge way too much for alcohol, in many areas they have grumpy bouncers, rude service, and bad food. You can’t look away from your belongings for a moment without risking them being stolen. Try Japanese izakayas, way better.

Go to zone4 for a real decent pub culture. You can see families with their kids there on a Friday/Saturday night serving drinks for reasonable prices (£2 ales, £4 lagers)

That's the second time I've read about this random London landlord in the span of a month on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44682759

Have a third! https://www.londoncentric.media/p/picturehouse-central-cinem...

Pub and banks have been disappearing from communities rather rapidly over the last 20 - 30 years. With pubs its because fewer people are drinking and its cheaper to buy your drinks from a supermarket or an off-licence. Communities in London are also changing, the white working class have moved out to the suburbs or out of the city entirely, the newer communities either dont drink or dont have a pub going tradition. But there are no real community hubs that have taken over.

Interesting... I could easily see this becoming a Guy Ritchie film (British crime comedy) :-)

Do you not think Londoners have suffered enough?

A friend of mine from the UK told me that pubs might be the country’s greatest contributor to the downward spiral of the legal system and government there. It was anecdotal but he joked that the reason they have all this authoritarianism on the table is because no one can be arsed to do anything but commiserate at the pub.

What a strange thing for your friend to say.

Why is that? Pub culture is probably deeper there than the drinking culture in America. Just because there are healthy social aspects to it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t rotted over time.

America tried to ban alcohol via amendment and had to unban it. I think we Americans are standing in a bit of a glass house if we go criticizing other country's relationships with alcohol (to say nothing of conflating "pub culture" with some kind of mandatory alcohol consumption).

Sorry where is the criticism?

Sounds like a shill for whoever that billionaire monster is that’s swinging their proverbial dick around here just to have more stuff than his also empty billionaire friends.

How about the community aspect of it? Anything positive from people gathering, being social?

Sure. How about the alcoholism aspect? Anything negative from people peer pressuring others to socialize a certain way with poison?

It's OK, you don't have to go to the pub. Or if you do go, just have a lemonaid.

Oh don’t worry , I don’t plan to step foot in the UK considering how deep into authoritarianism it has slipped. I don’t see it unslipping in the next decade. Plenty of bars with nearly the same culture here.

Clearly there should be some truth to my friends anecdotal joke if you’re responding this way.

Are you somehow required to drink alcohol at a pub?

That’s been the social projection of a pub, yes. Though you aren’t required, we agree that pubs overall have done a lousy job advertising to the non-alcohol-inclined. Not only that but if most of the patrons are drinking, it makes sense that people who want to visit a pub do so for the access to the drinking patrons. If they wanted sober patrons they’d probably attend a church meeting.

I don't need advertising to not drink alcohol. There's always drinks that don't contain alcohol too, water for example.

Yes but a bar specifically caters to an alcohol heavy crowd. To attract more non-alcohol drinkers you need to advertise the pub as a non-alcohol friendly place to socialize. Since pubs are known to have alcohol drinkers it is the stigma of alcohol that keeps the non-drinkers away.

> Anything negative from people peer pressuring others to socialize a certain way with poison?

You mean like Apple or Microsoft ? /s

Sounds kind of glib.

Pubs are now incredibly expensive, a lot of this comes from the pubco scandal. At the other end you have people like Mr Aziz ensuring these hubs of the community get shut down.

People are more likely to organise if they have somewhere to meet.

> the pub campaigners and the council won: the China Hall was ordered to remain as a pub. But it was too late for Norris. The fight had taken it out of him, and his health deteriorated rapidly. He died on 22 June 2023, aged 74. Some 250 people turned up to his funeral in Honor Oak.

Sounds like a class act.

As long as there are no negative consequences for billionaires to behave like this they will continue to do so. Only a matter of time until people take matters into their hands.

Thing is, for it to truly stop an incentive has to be removed. It shouldn't be a profitable idea. A business open in a particular place has to be the most profitable business possible there. What's the problem if it's not the pub? Drinking rates are nosediving in UK, and that's a good thing, a generation ago half the country was spending their life sloshed days long.

He's making it unprofitable by doubling the rent.

The pubcos have made it unprofitable by profiteering.

Neither of these are indicative of a free and functioning market.

Are you a sockpuppet for the other user here that wrote a very similar comment ?

But that is the same thing! The rent reflects maximum profit that can be extracted at a particular place. If some other business is able to pay the rent, the rent will be higher than a pub can afford.

No, it is not the same thing.

Money is NOT the entire (nor even accurate) scorecard for all things. The "free market" is not the best solution to all problems (e.g., start with the Tragedy Of The Commons, which "free markets systematically exacerbate).

Just because the external benefits of a more cohesive society and pleasant neighborhood cannot be full monetized does not mean they don't exist or there is not much more value there than appears in your idea of profit.

Tautologically using profits as the measure of value is idiotically reductionist.

>A business open in a particular place has to be the most profitable business possible there.

Why?

Because this is what naturally happens. The more you try to bend economic reality by forcing people to do less optimal things, the more the economy starts to resemble Soviet Union - i come from there and i don't want to go back. I agree, it is sometimes necessary, but it should be approached with great care, to do only when indeed absolutely necessary.

In a free market it WILL be, regardless of must or not.

You can debate if a business has cultural value beyond that (and I think they do) but that's not the reality of today.

I don't think that follows at all. If a business is on the area and successful, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is the most successful business that could be there.

It’s why we call Billionaires the Parasite Class - because like a true parasite, they bleed the community of its vitality and vigour in favour of the obscenely fat, labour-free profit margins that they are so greedily obsessed by.

I'm wondering whether this is targeted and islamic beliefs are playing a role in this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com