Pubs - going, going, gone

Gordon Brown seems to agree with Joseph Stalin. One death is a tragedy, one million a statistic, said the Russian dictator as he explained why he could get away with what he did. Our Prime Minister seems to think the death of thousands of pubs - and all the human suffering that entails - will be similarly dismissed as just another statistic of modern life.

The trouble is, he may well be right. For all the horrific surveys on pub closures that are coming out from the British Beer & Pub Association and Camra - 1,400 pubs closed last year - what reaction has there been from Government, or even the public, come to that? Apathetic resignation just about sums it up. No one seems to care.

What's happened to the pub and its standing in modern Britain that these closures don't arouse more anger in the community? Are we just all so used to losing our local shops and post offices that the loss of local pubs is all part of a trend that we feel powerless to halt?

One of the reasons must be that there are still plenty of great pubs still thriving. When you start with 60,000 pubs - the figure for Great Britain for much of the past 20 years - then you've got to lose more than a few thousand before you really start to personally suffer from their absence. So we probably have to face the fact that we are over-pubbed: there really are just too many pubs. Life has changed in so many ways since the heyday of the pub, probably in the 1950s, that modern styles of living have bypassed the old-style boozer. And that's why everyone says pubs must re-invent themselves and become more relevant to people.

Fair enough. Of course pubs must change. But the sad thing about the current rate of pub closures is that so many of these pubs were trying to change. They were putting on food and offering new services. This is where the tragedy really lies: many perfectly good pubs have been forced to close their doors because they've lost smoking customers or their rents are so high that they can't afford to make the necessary investment in the property, or because this Government has turned a blind eye to supermarkets selling alcohol below cost.

This week's budget is likely to hasten the rate of pub closures. And the economic conditions are worsening by the day. Many thousands more pubs will close over the next two years.

That Belloc quote springs to mind: "When you have lost your inns, then drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England."