MyShout

This is my final contribution to the "My Shout" column - I am retiring soon from the trade after nearly 30 years. I have greatly enjoyed my periodic rants from these pages - who wouldn't enjoy the luxury of a soapbox that allows a swipe at the half-baked initiatives thrust upon our industry, without pressure to develop fully-baked solutions ourselves?

Goodness knows there's no shortage of targets - local authorities making it up as they go along; the health and safety gestapo, which really does contain nuts; the equality brigade for whom it's OK to be as weird as a box of frogs as long as you're not overweight, and of course the health lobby, making binge drinkers out of anybody who enjoys more than a couple of pints at the pub. The list seems endless.

Yet despite this interference, the improvements we have seen over the last 30 years are immeasurable.Mid-'70s pubs were male-dominated, smoke-filled and sold lots of draught beer to quench the thirsts of men in engineering and manufacturing jobs that were swept away in the '80s. Pub food came courtesy of Golden Wonder, straddling gastronomic peaks from prawn cocktail to smoky bacon.

Now we have stylish pubs with impeccable standards, trained and qualified staff serving high-quality food, of a standard only found in restaurants until recently. Women feel at ease in pubs and have contributed enormously to their evolution. We've come a long way!

These changes have been brought about by operators with their ears to the ground, who listen to customers and are bold enough to innovate and challenge the status quo. They are quick off the mark and swift and skilful in understanding people. Contrast this skill with the ill-conceived and badly-implemented changes inflicted by the leaden hand of government over the years. The Beer Orders, Working Time Directive, Licensing Act 2003... another endless list.

The words I have grown to fear most are, "The Government is in consultation with the industry and will introduce legislation in the next session". The whole process is certain to take aeons: mandarins will consult the industry's wise and good, produce politically-expedient and lengthy reports and emerge with something riddled with compromise and ambiguity that fails to deliver what was required.

I hope the future will reveal more commercially-minded people in local and national Government. Of course, we need rules and people to enforce them but this Government's regulatory instinct seems to prevail over responsibility to foster and encourage commerce.

The introduction of the smoking ban next year will be a great opportunity for our regulators to work with us to develop effective solutions that will protect licensees' businesses whilst upholding the spirit of the law, rather than emerging from the white corner with a tape measure and a clip-board.

I've always believed a "can-do" attitude is one of the most valuable traits a person can have - most successful pub operators have it in spades.

Let's see if we can infect our Town Halls with it!