Hamish Champ: Shock, horror! A Daily Mail reader calls for a return to the 'good old days'

Reading recent press coverage of Christmas and New Year festivities you'd think public wrath is once again being summoned against the Great British Pub.

Commenting on an anti-licensing law article in the Daily Mail​ the other week one online reader argued for a return to the 'old' trading hours. "Properly 'policed' licensing hours would allow police, NHS and other resources to be properly planned for and targeted," he opined, adding that in the process "many pubs will go out of business, [while] the intelligent and imaginative will survive".

Ironically there are senior pub industry executives who concur with this last bit, in the hope that fewer pubs will, by their absence, help those that remain. Particularly, one assumes, their own.

The publicity surrounding excessive drinking and its unpleasant consequences is nothing new; one only has to read about the various Gin Acts of the mid-18th Century to see that. But this doesn't stop folk seeing footage of drink-fuelled carnage in our city centres and demanding something be done.

While the British Beer & Pub Association and others rightfully argue that much drunken behaviour stems from cheap booze bought in supermarkets, many people envision a Hogarthian landscape of high streets across the UK awash with booze. They see pubs as part of the problem, despite their regulated environment, even though most of these same people would never want to see the end of the pub as an institution.

The industry, while pointing the finger at the off-trade, is trying its best to be responsible. But cock-ups occur, and where a pub fails its community - which happens now and again - it should rightly be held to account.

Sadly the thousands of great pubs who serve their local communities well, with professionalism, enthusiasm and standards to be proud of, don't grab the public's attention with quite the same force. We're doing our bit, though.

Wetherspoon, parents and kids in pubs

I was rather bemused by the furore surrounding Wetherspoon's and the parents' "two drink" rule which attracted a lot of publicity last week.

It might not appear the most consumer-friendly policy in pubdom, but at least here is an operator trying to tackle the issue of kids/families in pubs from what it sees as a responsible and even-handed standpoint.

For some it rankles, being inconsistent with the goal of opening up pubs to a wider customer base in the new licensing and non-smoking regimes we now work under. For others it is about time grown-ups stood up for the pub as somewhere they can go without tripping over the little bleeders.

As a parent I respect those establishments that say "Sorry, your child can't come in here," even if it means I have to find somewhere else to go with the boy.

And once we have found a nice pub that tolerates children? My eight year-old is on a leash, albeit an invisible one, to such an extent that I often get labelled 'Victorian Dad' in the process. But hey, if he wants to run around we'll go to a park…