My Shout: The disappearing industry trick

11-Jun-2008 - Last updated on 11-Mar-2017 at 18:53 GMT

Peter Linacre ponders whether pubs are going the same way as petrol stations

I heard a tremendous snippet on a Radio 4 programme today.

I am not a big fan of You and Yours, but there was only rubbish on Radio 5 Live, and Radio 3 was being too ponderous, so I stuck with You and Yours.

The piece I heard was about petrol stations.

Evidently the number of petrol stations in the UK peaked in the mid-1960s with 40,000 or so places to fill up.

Since then it's not only been a one-way bet, it's actually been a one-way torrent. In 2006, the number sank below 10,000 for the first time and now seems to be stabilising at a loss of circa 250 per annum.

So we are now at circa 9,500 petrol stations. Alternative use and nice apartments seemed to propel the momentum.

It got me thinking about everyday life.

I remember that when Arthur Scargill started to save the British coal-mining sector it had 200,000 mineworkers.

By the time he, or Mrs Thatcher, had finished there were less than 5,000 mineworkers.

What struck a chord about both those statistics of national life is how quickly an industry can disappear — whether or not someone is shouting about it. Excuse the pun.

We in this trade are, of course, great at talking to each other about how challenging it all is. I think we could all talk "challenging" for a few hours.

But do the great unwashed give a damn? Methinks not. (Another great Radio 4 piece informed me that the expression "the great unwashed", attributed to Thackeray, was first coined to express the distaste that the aristocracy had for smelly workers — once they had started to put in proper plumbing in the early 19th century.)

Every survey that I currently see tells us that the number of customers visiting pubs/drinking in pubs/eating in pubs is declining at a great rate — and at a greater rate than ever before.

The turning point we talked about last year seems a long time ago. So much so that when some of the leading lights from the pubcos tell us how well we the tenants are doing it no longer brings forth anger — merely bemusement about what planet their empires sit astride.

There are clearly huge trends now in place — but life goes on and successes will be there to be celebrated.

After all, in 1882 England lost the Ashes and some thought it was the end of the world.

It wasn't and our current malaise will not be the end of pubs.

But this time it is different and this time it sure looks scary. Clearly, we will never be like petrol stations...