If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
Especially when six nights a week working unsocial hours waiting tables, often with unpredictable actual hours worked as staff get sent home on quiet nights, can barely scrape a room in one of those sh1tty HMOs an hour’s commute away by public transport.
Wages in service industries will simply have to go up. Chefs, in particular, are just about the lowest paid trade, and have been quitting in droves since the pandemic.
Yup. A pub near me - Landlord complains because when he rings people up about doing shift the next day, they aren’t interested.
Chap in the pub next door to his (literally) plans his shifts months in advance (shock horror!). Does a laundry bag for the staff and provides polo shirts and aprons, so they can go home not smelling like a failed student pub crawl… plus pays a bit more.
Strangely he has staff.
Well it sounds like there will be pretty much unlimited temp work for the students this summer, as I used to do a quarter-century ago(!). A variety of crappy temp catering and retail work, plus some fun events like Ascot and Henley, but could get 90 hours a week in most weeks, which is somewhat easier when you’re 20 than when you’re 45!
Today’s students do want to work in the summer, rather than party and take out more loans that will affect them for decades - don’t they?
They certainly do. But I hope employers this year have a more realistic perspective than last year. My two, who were happy to do anything, struggled to find any work at all, as it seemed employers were still expecting to be able to take on experienced staff at minimum wage in London, and weren't prepared to compromise.
I’ve encountered employees who believe that an infinite supply of workers who will happily take minimum wage plus one groat, on any terms and conditions is a human right.
For the employers, that is.
Several seem to think that the Labour government will create the supply so they don’t have to deal with the current “difficult” lot.
Given the policies on employment law that are supposedly the first thing Labour will be pushing through Parliament I think they will be in for a "surprise".
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
1. Leon's wit and insights balance out the occasional grandiosity of PB 2. Leon's work is in the tradition of metaphysical PB commentary, after St. Augustine and Baudelaire. 3. Leon's self-examination encourages readers to reflect on their own behaviors. 4. Leon's passions and obsessions are not just external influences, but also parts of his own psyche. 5. Leon suggests embracing the flux of time and memory, finding wisdom and beauty in love, ruin, betting, and politics.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
There are demographic trends at work here as well. Under employment is the big economic story no one wants to talk about. I know many local councils who are struggling to find staff at all levels - they can't compete financially with the private sector in the professions but the problem is now organisation-wide. Even filling low grade admin jobs is a problem and mnay are carrying 15-20% vacancies which impinges in areas like social work.
And yet when South Cambridgeshire council tried to fix the problem with a 4 day week it was stamped upon immediately..
Like working from home, they view it as a culture war issue
Fixing the problem by moving to a four day week, working fewer hours, for no loss of pay and only for some workers.
😂😂😂😂
Was the difference between finding replacement workers or wasting £x000 advertising for jobs that got zero applications...
Also have to say if you are spend £x000 advertising jobs then perhaps you are part of the problem. When companies I have worked for have needed workers they goto an agency. The agency then gets paid a percentage of the first years salary....when and only when they have supplied an applicant the company accept and employ. You don't need to put ads in the guardian and pay for no applicants you know.
It's local Government.
Spend £10,000 on an agency to find a member of staff and you are going to have awkward conversations with your voters...
The point you seem to miss however that you only pay if they provide you a successful applicant and it is unlikely to be 10k, the average rate is usually 15 to 20% of first year salary. So to pay 10k you would have to be placing a 50k employee minimum. You seem to prefer to spend £x000 advertising and getting zero applicants instead.
May be just me but isn't only spending when you get a successful applicant better than blowing £x000 for no applicants
It's not a point I miss - its something I know would be used to attack the councillor next time round and your argument would simply result in the comment "your mate (the recruitment consultant) did well..
Now I'm not arguing that using agencies to recruit staff is a bad idea, just that politically it's incredibly problematic...
So define what you mean by £x000 which was in your first post? To me as a voter that would just say we wasted the money and got no one. Money down the drain
Do you have the first idea who local Government / Civil service works. You know that to get a job an application form is required and needs to be completed by the applicant...
You don't think agencies will do application forms?
Well they can but as the applicant won't have filled it in, the form isn't valid....
Meh, getting away with murdering two people is more interesting IMHO
He lost the civil action even if he was found not guilty in the criminal case
Alan Dershowitz, who was part of OJ's dream team of defence lawyers, reckons OJ was only acquitted because he was blatantly framed by police officers who were incompetent as well as corrupt.
So-called noble cause corruption or the police framing people they "know" are guilty has a long and inglorious history.
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
Why don't you just ignore me, if I push your buttons so easily? It's not like I ever personally attack you. Quite strange
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
Especially when six nights a week working unsocial hours waiting tables, often with unpredictable actual hours worked as staff get sent home on quiet nights, can barely scrape a room in one of those sh1tty HMOs an hour’s commute away by public transport.
Wages in service industries will simply have to go up. Chefs, in particular, are just about the lowest paid trade, and have been quitting in droves since the pandemic.
Yup. A pub near me - Landlord complains because when he rings people up about doing shift the next day, they aren’t interested.
Chap in the pub next door to his (literally) plans his shifts months in advance (shock horror!). Does a laundry bag for the staff and provides polo shirts and aprons, so they can go home not smelling like a failed student pub crawl… plus pays a bit more.
Strangely he has staff.
Well it sounds like there will be pretty much unlimited temp work for the students this summer, as I used to do a quarter-century ago(!). A variety of crappy temp catering and retail work, plus some fun events like Ascot and Henley, but could get 90 hours a week in most weeks, which is somewhat easier when you’re 20 than when you’re 45!
Today’s students do want to work in the summer, rather than party and take out more loans that will affect them for decades - don’t they?
They certainly do. But I hope employers this year have a more realistic perspective than last year. My two, who were happy to do anything, struggled to find any work at all, as it seemed employers were still expecting to be able to take on experienced staff at minimum wage in London, and weren't prepared to compromise.
I’ve encountered employees who believe that an infinite supply of workers who will happily take minimum wage plus one groat, on any terms and conditions is a human right.
For the employers, that is.
Several seem to think that the Labour government will create the supply so they don’t have to deal with the current “difficult” lot.
Erm, shouldn't that 'employees' in the first sentence be 'employers'?
The trials being judged by people advocating the policy. Marking their own homework and relying on people self certifying this.
From the Washington Post last month. Must be true of the respondents felt it to be the case.
“ Studies have shown that workers are either equally or more productive during a four-day workweek — one study found that worker productivity rose, with 55 percent saying their ability at work increased after companies adopted this new schedule”
The Chief Executive of S Cambridgeshire Council did a PHD on it. Would be stunned if she came out against it or said it didn’t work.
So basically you don't like it and can't prove it isn't good. I remember when somebody got wound up the other day when I used anecdotal evidence to prove a point.
I’ve literally provided links and sources in that post 😂😂😂😂
Oh, and they could be racist and widen social inequality too 👍
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
Why don't you just ignore me, if I push your buttons so easily? It's not like I ever personally attack you. Quite strange
Because of you I was inspired to create an extension to block people on this site.
I do until you are rude to people. Then I call you out.
Just as others call me out when I've been rude, you deserve nothing more and nothing less.
This site would be so much better if you just posted 85% less than you do.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
There are demographic trends at work here as well. Under employment is the big economic story no one wants to talk about. I know many local councils who are struggling to find staff at all levels - they can't compete financially with the private sector in the professions but the problem is now organisation-wide. Even filling low grade admin jobs is a problem and mnay are carrying 15-20% vacancies which impinges in areas like social work.
Yes, this is a problem at my work too.
We cannot recruit competent, reliable receptionists and clinic clerks at the AFC2 grade, or retain the few we have. Could we if they were paid more? Perhaps, but when they put in for a pay rise last year they were told to piss off by the government.
The resultant gaps in clinics reduce my productivity considerably.
It's the same where I work - as a Consultant because the organisation I work for strangely can't recruit anyone to do my job on a salary of about 30% less than I earn, which means they have to pay my employer about double what it would cost them to employ me or someone else directly at a market rate.
I really don't understand why a governing party that claims to believe in the free market doesn't just leave it to that market to set the rate. But then of course there would be no market for their donors who run Consultancies like mine...
As to "I've never been rude to you", you once called me an autistic weirdo and put in a photo of what you thought I looked like, I believe you said it was generated from "sad autistic virgin".
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
Especially when six nights a week working unsocial hours waiting tables, often with unpredictable actual hours worked as staff get sent home on quiet nights, can barely scrape a room in one of those sh1tty HMOs an hour’s commute away by public transport.
Wages in service industries will simply have to go up. Chefs, in particular, are just about the lowest paid trade, and have been quitting in droves since the pandemic.
Yup. A pub near me - Landlord complains because when he rings people up about doing shift the next day, they aren’t interested.
Chap in the pub next door to his (literally) plans his shifts months in advance (shock horror!). Does a laundry bag for the staff and provides polo shirts and aprons, so they can go home not smelling like a failed student pub crawl… plus pays a bit more.
Strangely he has staff.
Well it sounds like there will be pretty much unlimited temp work for the students this summer, as I used to do a quarter-century ago(!). A variety of crappy temp catering and retail work, plus some fun events like Ascot and Henley, but could get 90 hours a week in most weeks, which is somewhat easier when you’re 20 than when you’re 45!
Today’s students do want to work in the summer, rather than party and take out more loans that will affect them for decades - don’t they?
They certainly do. But I hope employers this year have a more realistic perspective than last year. My two, who were happy to do anything, struggled to find any work at all, as it seemed employers were still expecting to be able to take on experienced staff at minimum wage in London, and weren't prepared to compromise.
I’ve encountered employees who believe that an infinite supply of workers who will happily take minimum wage plus one groat, on any terms and conditions is a human right.
For the employers, that is.
Several seem to think that the Labour government will create the supply so they don’t have to deal with the current “difficult” lot.
Given the policies on employment law that are supposedly the first thing Labour will be pushing through Parliament I think they will be in for a "surprise".
I hope so. They make it hard for decent employees to exist.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
There are demographic trends at work here as well. Under employment is the big economic story no one wants to talk about. I know many local councils who are struggling to find staff at all levels - they can't compete financially with the private sector in the professions but the problem is now organisation-wide. Even filling low grade admin jobs is a problem and mnay are carrying 15-20% vacancies which impinges in areas like social work.
And yet when South Cambridgeshire council tried to fix the problem with a 4 day week it was stamped upon immediately..
Like working from home, they view it as a culture war issue
Fixing the problem by moving to a four day week, working fewer hours, for no loss of pay and only for some workers.
😂😂😂😂
Was the difference between finding replacement workers or wasting £x000 advertising for jobs that got zero applications...
Hmmm given we keep getting told that public services both national and local are declining I am not sure how you sell a 20% decline in productivity from them for the same monetary input to voters who finance them
There wasn't a decline in productivity - compressed hours have the magic impact of people often being more efficient because the work hasn't been reduced you just have less time to do it so you are more efficient..
And even if there was a slight fall in productivity best to have 90-95% of the work done rather than 0% (which is what gets done if you don't have any staff).
"If employers can't get the staff, they should improve pay and conditions."
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
I don’t want to see anyone banned, even that moronic old pisshead Ishmael. I like @Leon . He’s entertaining and provides value. I think we should also appreciate a paid, professional, writer provides us content FOC.
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
Why don't you just ignore me, if I push your buttons so easily? It's not like I ever personally attack you. Quite strange
Because of you I was inspired to create an extension to block people on this site.
I do until you are rude to people. Then I call you out.
Just as others call me out when I've been rude, you deserve nothing more and nothing less.
This site would be so much better if you just posted 85% less than you do.
I've been on the site for about 20 minutes total, today, and yet here you are popping a blood vessel. Perhaps the problem is not mine
But anyway, if you have this extension which blocks me, by all means use it! I never personally attack you because I am aware you have had issues, and I don't ever knowingly get into spats with people like that (this is true, btw)
Some rich old geezer like @SouthamObserver can handle it, and he's smart enough to know I'm only joking, anyway
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
I don’t know who this “Sean” is but Leon is like mudlarking, there is a lot of mud, dirt and crap to wade through but there will be gems that you are happy to find. There are posters who post the same old shit with no nuance, wit or insight every post.
I will take having the unexpected and rare insights and different perspectives every day than someone posting “call an election now” and weedy insecure posts wanting other posters banned and other inane bollocks. So clearly different posters appreciate different things and the variety is good as it is.
Young people would come to the UK from all over the EU for a year or two to work in pubs, bars, restaurants etc. They'd improve their English and earn some cash, then go home to start their adult lives. They left a very low footprint because they were young, healthy and did not come with families. As a result, everybody won - the young people, the hospitality industry, customers and local economies. It's a real shame we have thrown that away. This is not a consequence of Brexit. It is a consequence of the Brexit that was chosen. There is a very big difference.
The beauty of leaving is we can now, or in the future, offer those young people the chance to do that, whilst preventing the mass immigration of low paid workers and tradesmen that left a deep footprint, put breadwinners out of work, or pressure on their wages & job security, whose kids took up school places etc
If that had been an option while we were a member I doubt Leave would have won
And how’s that going in practice? It’s just that the UK has record immigration since Brexit…
The prevention of low paid workers and tradesmen undercutting the family breadwinner seems to be going quite well I think. The increase in immigration appears to be students, skilled workers and refugees from Hong Kong and Ukraine .
Probably not what a lot of Leave voters were desperate for, but puts paid to the lie that Boris was about to run the country as a frothing, right wing, foreigner hating racist. It shows we can choose lots of immigration or not much at all.
Lots of low paid workers in the immigration figures, most notably those working in the care sector.
The trials being judged by people advocating the policy. Marking their own homework and relying on people self certifying this.
From the Washington Post last month. Must be true of the respondents felt it to be the case.
“ Studies have shown that workers are either equally or more productive during a four-day workweek — one study found that worker productivity rose, with 55 percent saying their ability at work increased after companies adopted this new schedule”
The Chief Executive of S Cambridgeshire Council did a PHD on it. Would be stunned if she came out against it or said it didn’t work.
So basically you don't like it and can't prove it isn't good. I remember when somebody got wound up the other day when I used anecdotal evidence to prove a point.
I’ve literally provided links and sources in that post 😂😂😂😂
Oh, and they could be racist and widen social inequality too 👍
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
I don’t know who this “Sean” is but Leon is like mudlarking, there is a lot of mud, dirt and crap to wade through but there will be gems that you are happy to find. There are posters who post the same old shit with no nuance, wit or insight every post.
I will take having the unexpected and rare insights and different perspectives every day than someone posting “call an election now” and weedy insecure posts wanting other posters banned and other inane bollocks. So clearly different posters appreciate different things and the variety is good as it is.
Leon is Sean, obviously.
I don't much care for your posts either. So we're even
I've been on the site for about 20 minutes total, today, and yet here you are popping a blood vessel. Perhaps the problem is not mine
But anyway, if you have this extension which blocks me, by all means use it! I never personally attack you because I am aware you have had issues, and I don't ever knowingly get into spats with people like that (this is true, btw)
Some rich old geezer like @SouthamObserver can handle it, and he's smart enough to know I'm only joking, anyway
Never personally attacked me = literally said I was an autistic virgin and you posted a ChatGPT image of what you thought I looked like. So quit the rubbish.
I will go back to ignoring you now but I won't have lies.
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
I don’t know who this “Sean” is but Leon is like mudlarking, there is a lot of mud, dirt and crap to wade through but there will be gems that you are happy to find. There are posters who post the same old shit with no nuance, wit or insight every post.
I will take having the unexpected and rare insights and different perspectives every day than someone posting “call an election now” and weedy insecure posts wanting other posters banned and other inane bollocks. So clearly different posters appreciate different things and the variety is good as it is.
Leon is Sean, obviously.
I don't much care for your posts either. So we're even
I really am not this Sean person, and you are treading closely to objectionable commenttary. Do please stop
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
I don’t want to see anyone banned, even that moronic old pisshead Ishmael. I like @Leon . He’s entertaining and provides value. I think we should also appreciate a paid, professional, writer provides us content FOC.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
Especially when six nights a week working unsocial hours waiting tables, often with unpredictable actual hours worked as staff get sent home on quiet nights, can barely scrape a room in one of those sh1tty HMOs an hour’s commute away by public transport.
Wages in service industries will simply have to go up. Chefs, in particular, are just about the lowest paid trade, and have been quitting in droves since the pandemic.
Yup. A pub near me - Landlord complains because when he rings people up about doing shift the next day, they aren’t interested.
Chap in the pub next door to his (literally) plans his shifts months in advance (shock horror!). Does a laundry bag for the staff and provides polo shirts and aprons, so they can go home not smelling like a failed student pub crawl… plus pays a bit more.
Strangely he has staff.
Well it sounds like there will be pretty much unlimited temp work for the students this summer, as I used to do a quarter-century ago(!). A variety of crappy temp catering and retail work, plus some fun events like Ascot and Henley, but could get 90 hours a week in most weeks, which is somewhat easier when you’re 20 than when you’re 45!
Today’s students do want to work in the summer, rather than party and take out more loans that will affect them for decades - don’t they?
They certainly do. But I hope employers this year have a more realistic perspective than last year. My two, who were happy to do anything, struggled to find any work at all, as it seemed employers were still expecting to be able to take on experienced staff at minimum wage in London, and weren't prepared to compromise.
I’ve encountered employees who believe that an infinite supply of workers who will happily take minimum wage plus one groat, on any terms and conditions is a human right.
For the employers, that is.
Several seem to think that the Labour government will create the supply so they don’t have to deal with the current “difficult” lot.
Indeed, and the sooner we can weed them out the better. Hopefully because all the staff go elsewhere.
I've been on the site for about 20 minutes total, today, and yet here you are popping a blood vessel. Perhaps the problem is not mine
But anyway, if you have this extension which blocks me, by all means use it! I never personally attack you because I am aware you have had issues, and I don't ever knowingly get into spats with people like that (this is true, btw)
Some rich old geezer like @SouthamObserver can handle it, and he's smart enough to know I'm only joking, anyway
Never personally attacked me = literally said I was an autistic virgin and you posted a ChatGPT image of what you thought I looked like. So quit the rubbish.
I will go back to ignoring you now but I won't have lies.
Fair enough, but that was after you harangued me for about ten days straight. i did eventually hit back
ANYWAY this is unedifying. Let us ignore each other, and peace shall prevail, and the sweet lyres of concord shall play upon the ether
On immigration, I do not see the current settlement as sustainable. I think we are going to inevitably end up having to liberalise immigration again to fill the shortfall. I cannot see any government enjoying a load of pubs and high street shops going bust.
The trials being judged by people advocating the policy. Marking their own homework and relying on people self certifying this.
From the Washington Post last month. Must be true of the respondents felt it to be the case.
“ Studies have shown that workers are either equally or more productive during a four-day workweek — one study found that worker productivity rose, with 55 percent saying their ability at work increased after companies adopted this new schedule”
The Chief Executive of S Cambridgeshire Council did a PHD on it. Would be stunned if she came out against it or said it didn’t work.
So basically you don't like it and can't prove it isn't good. I remember when somebody got wound up the other day when I used anecdotal evidence to prove a point.
I’ve literally provided links and sources in that post 😂😂😂😂
Oh, and they could be racist and widen social inequality too 👍
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
I don’t know who this “Sean” is but Leon is like mudlarking, there is a lot of mud, dirt and crap to wade through but there will be gems that you are happy to find. There are posters who post the same old shit with no nuance, wit or insight every post.
I will take having the unexpected and rare insights and different perspectives every day than someone posting “call an election now” and weedy insecure posts wanting other posters banned and other inane bollocks. So clearly different posters appreciate different things and the variety is good as it is.
Leon is Sean, obviously.
I don't much care for your posts either. So we're even
A 4 day week has long been considered "full time" for GPs.
Slackers.
I'd much rather they worked three days if they were actually open when people wanted to go and see them. But they're never open around here after work so I've screwed if I am in trouble. Luckily I rarely am.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
There are demographic trends at work here as well. Under employment is the big economic story no one wants to talk about. I know many local councils who are struggling to find staff at all levels - they can't compete financially with the private sector in the professions but the problem is now organisation-wide. Even filling low grade admin jobs is a problem and mnay are carrying 15-20% vacancies which impinges in areas like social work.
And yet when South Cambridgeshire council tried to fix the problem with a 4 day week it was stamped upon immediately..
Like working from home, they view it as a culture war issue
Fixing the problem by moving to a four day week, working fewer hours, for no loss of pay and only for some workers.
😂😂😂😂
Was the difference between finding replacement workers or wasting £x000 advertising for jobs that got zero applications...
Hmmm given we keep getting told that public services both national and local are declining I am not sure how you sell a 20% decline in productivity from them for the same monetary input to voters who finance them
There wasn't a decline in productivity - compressed hours have the magic impact of people often being more efficient because the work hasn't been reduced you just have less time to do it so you are more efficient..
And even if there was a slight fall in productivity best to have 90-95% of the work done rather than 0% (which is what gets done if you don't have any staff).
"If employers can't get the staff, they should improve pay and conditions."
"NO, NOT THOSE STAFF!"
Awesome, so we can look forward to the public sector unions being all in favour of individually negotiated contracts then?
On immigration, I do not see the current settlement as sustainable. I think we are going to inevitably end up having to liberalise immigration again to fill the shortfall. I cannot see any government enjoying a load of pubs and high street shops going bust.
What shortfall? We have net inwards migration of about half a million people, there's no shortfall.
Trying to fill an employment shortage by adding more people is like trying to solve a traffic jam by adding more cars, without adding any extra roads..
More people creates more demand, which creates more employer demand, which means more jobs need filling.
The only thing that balances employment levels is supply and demand. Increase prices (wages) until supply = demand.
On immigration, I do not see the current settlement as sustainable. I think we are going to inevitably end up having to liberalise immigration again to fill the shortfall. I cannot see any government enjoying a load of pubs and high street shops going bust.
What shortfall? We have net inwards migration of about half a million people, there's no shortfall.
Trying to fill an employment shortage by adding more people is like trying to solve a traffic jam by adding more cars.
More people creates more demand, which creates more employer demand, which means more jobs need filling.
The only thing that balances employment levels is supply and demand. Increase prices (wages) until supply = demand.
If there's no shortfall, why are the pubs even around here in London constantly short staffed? This has only become an issue since Brexit.
On immigration, I do not see the current settlement as sustainable. I think we are going to inevitably end up having to liberalise immigration again to fill the shortfall. I cannot see any government enjoying a load of pubs and high street shops going bust.
What shortfall? We have net inwards migration of about half a million people, there's no shortfall.
Trying to fill an employment shortage by adding more people is like trying to solve a traffic jam by adding more cars.
More people creates more demand, which creates more employer demand, which means more jobs need filling.
The only thing that balances employment levels is supply and demand. Increase prices (wages) until supply = demand.
If there's no shortfall, why are the pubs even around here in London constantly short staffed? This has only become an issue since Brexit.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Yes I suppose so.
But they didn’t want the waiting jobs before or after.
They didn’t want them AT THE WAGES THE EMPLOYERS WERE OFFERING
Outside London (and even inside most of it) the vast majority of the low paid jobs in question are actually done by U.K. residents. And always were.
It may surprise Londoners, but there are an awful lot of Britons in Britain.
Yes, the notion that Brits don't do jobs in Britain is a completely alien one. There isn't a job that people don't do. Overwhelming majority of waiters, care staff or any other job role in the UK are British.
If businesses in London can't hire enough staff at the wages they're offering, they need to increase the wages. That's supply and demand in action. Maybe their staff can afford to pay London house prices then, what's wrong with that?
No, it just means that there are fewer restaurants and bars, and the ones that remain become more expensive and are open for shorter periods. That's what is happening. It's happening here in the South West too. All the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants in Sidmouth are now advertising for summer staff, just as they did last summer. And as was the case last summer the supply of labour will not meet the demand. So, as was the case last summer, a few places will close others will restrict their opening hours and others will stop serving food. No-one wins.
What is happening, I think, is a reversion to an older structure of work. Because of rising wages at the very low end, the number of jobs in certain occupations will shrink, as the overall prices rise.
The cost of personal service will go up. The days when a bunch of teenagers in a park will get pizza delivered to the tree they are sitting under is numbered.
Something similar is being seen in much of the developed world. One suggestion is that COVID pushed the long term low paid out of the jobs they were in and forced them to look around. Another is that rising housing costs have finally broken something - even hideous HMOs are becoming expensive.
Near where I live, Amazon are offering pay way above minimum wage to deliver the last mile. You get to drive the same van each day - your space. Sit in a comfortable cab - clean and dry. Deliver packages - with a low maximum weight. With that about - why would anyone want to wait tables?
Especially when six nights a week working unsocial hours waiting tables, often with unpredictable actual hours worked as staff get sent home on quiet nights, can barely scrape a room in one of those sh1tty HMOs an hour’s commute away by public transport.
Wages in service industries will simply have to go up. Chefs, in particular, are just about the lowest paid trade, and have been quitting in droves since the pandemic.
Yup. A pub near me - Landlord complains because when he rings people up about doing shift the next day, they aren’t interested.
Chap in the pub next door to his (literally) plans his shifts months in advance (shock horror!). Does a laundry bag for the staff and provides polo shirts and aprons, so they can go home not smelling like a failed student pub crawl… plus pays a bit more.
Strangely he has staff.
Well it sounds like there will be pretty much unlimited temp work for the students this summer, as I used to do a quarter-century ago(!). A variety of crappy temp catering and retail work, plus some fun events like Ascot and Henley, but could get 90 hours a week in most weeks, which is somewhat easier when you’re 20 than when you’re 45!
Today’s students do want to work in the summer, rather than party and take out more loans that will affect them for decades - don’t they?
They certainly do. But I hope employers this year have a more realistic perspective than last year. My two, who were happy to do anything, struggled to find any work at all, as it seemed employers were still expecting to be able to take on experienced staff at minimum wage in London, and weren't prepared to compromise.
I’ve encountered employees who believe that an infinite supply of workers who will happily take minimum wage plus one groat, on any terms and conditions is a human right.
For the employers, that is.
Several seem to think that the Labour government will create the supply so they don’t have to deal with the current “difficult” lot.
Indeed, and the sooner we can weed them out the better. Hopefully because all the staff go elsewhere.
How about my plan to kill the “black” economy as well?
Any undocumented worker or anyone being paid below minimum wage who gives evidence leading to conviction gets -
1) half the fine - half of £50k 2) if undocumented, indefinite leave to remain 3) directors of companies liable, so that the old “company that only own debt” gag doesn’t shields
On immigration, I do not see the current settlement as sustainable. I think we are going to inevitably end up having to liberalise immigration again to fill the shortfall. I cannot see any government enjoying a load of pubs and high street shops going bust.
What shortfall? We have net inwards migration of about half a million people, there's no shortfall.
Trying to fill an employment shortage by adding more people is like trying to solve a traffic jam by adding more cars.
More people creates more demand, which creates more employer demand, which means more jobs need filling.
The only thing that balances employment levels is supply and demand. Increase prices (wages) until supply = demand.
If there's no shortfall, why are the pubs even around here in London constantly short staffed? This has only become an issue since Brexit.
Similar stuff in Germany, France and USA. And elsewhere. My theory is that COVID dislocated the treadmill of low paid jobs - forcing the long term low paid to try for new jobs. Which pay more and have better conditions.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
I guess by the two likes we now know two of Leon's alter egos.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
I guess by the two likes we now know two of Leon's alter egos.
Three likes now. I am sure they are genuine: some people like Leon and that's fair enough; I think he's a twat, which is also fair enough (although has got me flagged, I see).
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
I guess by the two likes we now know two of Leon's alter egos.
Three likes now. I am sure they are genuine: some people like Leon and that's fair enough; I think he's a twat, which is also fair enough (although has got me flagged, I see).
I don't see what there is to flag you for. You stated an opinion.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
I agree with you on pubs closing, but if they can’t make a profit they need to either raise prices or cut costs. Their biggest costs are wages, taxes, and fuel bills, so it would be good if the government were to adjust the one of these that they control. Dropping VAT on prepared food might be one good starting point, as might dropping business rates on small licenced premises.
The other issue is that many local pubs are owned by large companies, and either leased on very unfavourable terms or managed by the company themselves. As the cost of housing has continued to rise, it becomes more attractive to simply sell the asset rather than keep it as a going concern. The people making these decisions aren’t the local ‘landlord’, but a someone far away who looks at spreadsheets all day.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
It's useful to distinguish between different types of pub - at one end, proper boozers for old men like me, and some young 'uns, who go to drink and not to eat; at the other, pubs that are really just glorified restaurants.
It's tougher for the first kind, because the price of beer etc. is now so much higher than supermarket booze, and those without much money are being priced out. They really can't afford to raise prices further, so it's tricky for them to raise bar staff wages. So the answer has to be: reduce the price of pub ales and lager and narrow the differential with shop booze.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
I don't think it is "some", I really do think it is most pubs.
What you don't get, is that it's not just about "go to another pub", it's where you feel comfortable, it's the building, the smell, the pints, the organisation etc it's unique. That is something we really should try and avoid losing.
The problem I have is that you reduce it down to the numbers which is fine as far as it goes (and I don't disrespect you for thinking that way) but it's more than just about the numbers for most people.
It's useful to distinguish between different types of pub - at one end, proper boozers for old men like me, and some young'uns, who go to drink and not to eat; at the other pubs that are really just glorified restaurants.
It's tougher for the first kind, because the price of beer etc. is now so much higher than supermarket booze, and those without much money are being priced out. They really can't afford to raise prices further, so it's tricky for them to raise bar staff wages. So the answer has to be: reduce the price of pub ales and lager and narrow the differential with shop booze.
In technical parlance, the two types you have identified are called either "wet led" or "dry led", i.e. they get most of their income from either the demon drink or grub.
It's useful to distinguish between different types of pub - at one end, proper boozers for old men like me, and some young'uns, who go to drink and not to eat; at the other pubs that are really just glorified restaurants.
It's tougher for the first kind, because the price of beer etc. is now so much higher than supermarket booze, and those without much money are being priced out. They really can't afford to raise prices further, so it's tricky for them to raise bar staff wages. So the answer has to be: reduce the price of pub ales and lager and narrow the differential with shop booze.
Indeed.
Deal with that, and the pubs will be able to afford to pay their staff a living wage. Especially since non-food pubs, the landlord tends to do a not insignificant amount of the labour themselves. So cutting operational costs means more to bottom line than cutting wages anyway.
Restaurant-style pubs obviously need more staff as wait staff, chefs etc. Dealing with the fact that VAT is on restaurant food but no VAT exists on supermarket food would make a big difference for them.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
Our first AI post? I do hope so.
Today the weather was, for once, fine. So we ventured out to a fine pub lunch near Ulverston followed by a piano and violin concert in a beautiful Pugin-designed church in Barrow. The music playing was superb: Beethoven's Dvorak and Faure.
On Friday we had a performance in our village hall from a London-based Klezmer band - Loshn (it means language on Yiddish) and, again, the musicianship was outstanding. A revelation.
It's useful to distinguish between different types of pub - at one end, proper boozers for old men like me, and some young'uns, who go to drink and not to eat; at the other pubs that are really just glorified restaurants.
It's tougher for the first kind, because the price of beer etc. is now so much higher than supermarket booze, and those without much money are being priced out. They really can't afford to raise prices further, so it's tricky for them to raise bar staff wages. So the answer has to be: reduce the price of pub ales and lager and narrow the differential with shop booze.
In technical parlance, the two types you have identified are called either "wet led" or "dry led", i.e. they get most of their income from either the demon drink or grub.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
Agreed entirely, I was talking specifically about BCH's moan about London-pubs.
Non-London pubs already hire locals as their staff anyway and don't rely on au pairs.
Taking what this three year old said at a wishing well seriously, then acting on it should be enough for the social services to be called. Not fit to be parents
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
I think even in London which I know might have the "anonymity" of a lot of these places, a lot of pubs are institutions in their own right and it would be a great shame to lose them.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
But the sad reality is that there are far fewer drinkers to go round than there once were. What else is there to do but have fewer pubs? The words stick in the craw. But I can't think of another way to do it.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
I think even in London which I know might have the "anonymity" of a lot of these places, a lot of pubs are institutions in their own right and it would be a great shame to lose them.
Then they should pay their staff a living wage, in which the staff can afford a home in London of their own.
If the staff can't afford a place to live at that wage, why would the jobs be filled?
Alternatively dealing with the housing shortage and building more houses would lower rent and make wages higher relatively.
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
Why don't you just ignore me, if I push your buttons so easily? It's not like I ever personally attack you. Quite strange
Because of you I was inspired to create an extension to block people on this site.
I do until you are rude to people. Then I call you out.
Just as others call me out when I've been rude, you deserve nothing more and nothing less.
This site would be so much better if you just posted 85% less than you do.
It's not your site.
It's the variety which makes this site worthwhile.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
But the sad reality is that there are far fewer drinkers to go round than there once were. What else is there to do but have fewer pubs? The words stick in the craw. But I can't think of another way to do it.
Demographically a growing proportion of young people don't drink alcohol, which is disappointing. I hope that reverses in the future.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
I guess by the two likes we now know two of Leon's alter egos.
Three likes now. I am sure they are genuine: some people like Leon and that's fair enough; I think he's a twat, which is also fair enough (although has got me flagged, I see).
Not me, I don't flag. I am afraid someone ELSE thinks you're a twat
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
As usual, things are a little different up here in west central Scotland. The local "Rangers" pub has closed (and become a boxing club!). I doubt if many of the clientele will go to the local "Celtic" club.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
But the sad reality is that there are far fewer drinkers to go round than there once were. What else is there to do but have fewer pubs? The words stick in the craw. But I can't think of another way to do it.
Demographically a growing proportion of young people don't drink alcohol, which is disappointing. I hope that reverses in the future.
As a taxpayer I agree with you.
Their livers and stomachs, however, beg to differ.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
what a lot of cold wank in custard
A bit harsh, Foxy.
OTOH, while I recall Cicero, I must have missed the contributions of St Augustine and Baudelaire. Or did Leon dream them ?
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
I think even in London which I know might have the "anonymity" of a lot of these places, a lot of pubs are institutions in their own right and it would be a great shame to lose them.
Let us find a point of agreement. I completely concur on pubs
One of the saddest sites in the British countryside is coming upon a lovely village which, for some inexplicable reason, does not have a pub. Of course it used to have a pub, and you can always find it, the weirdly big building with grass all around and oddly large windows, now converted into expensive housing, and thereby reducing the appeal of the village, which is why the owners wanted to live there in the first place
I hate it. A village needs a church, a pond, a green, a corner shop, and a pub. And the first and last are the most important. And yes they serve the same purpose in big cities, including London
On the decline of pubs, round here we are seeing the rise of farm shops with cafes and restaurants attatched and some are very good indeed. Today we walked in woods near Shaftesbury, filled with gorgeous bluebells, then ate lunch at a farm shop in East Stour, which had a full on restaurant, coffee shop option and lots of superb food in the shop. @Benpointer may know it. Are other venues taking over from pubs? Wouldn’t surprise me.
Then they should pay their staff a living wage, in which the staff can afford a home in London of their own.
If the staff can't afford a place to live at that wage, why would the jobs be filled?
Alternatively dealing with the housing shortage and building more houses would lower rent and make wages higher relatively.
As I said to you above and I can sense we're not going to agree, it's more than just about shouting "pay the minimum wage". I don't disagree with you in principle but I do see you do this a lot, you turn it into a numbers thing.
I was just saying that pubs are a cherished British thing and for me this is more about losing a building and people in it in a certain configuration and I know a lot of people feel the same. I don't think you really wish to understand what that's like and that's fine.
Losing a pub in the local community is a travesty - and just saying "too bad they should pay more" dehumanises it for me when it's more than just about money.
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
Why don't you just ignore me, if I push your buttons so easily? It's not like I ever personally attack you. Quite strange
Because of you I was inspired to create an extension to block people on this site.
I do until you are rude to people. Then I call you out.
Just as others call me out when I've been rude, you deserve nothing more and nothing less.
This site would be so much better if you just posted 85% less than you do.
It's not your site.
It's the variety which makes this site worthwhile.
I disagree. But I won't say anymore on it as I can sense I've said more than enough and everyone knows what I think.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
Hang on…
New arrivals creating extra demand also leads to more customers per pub. Why was that unsustainable? The number of pubs certainly didn't increase - it's been falling steadily since about 2002.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
I guess by the two likes we now know two of Leon's alter egos.
Three likes now. I am sure they are genuine: some people like Leon and that's fair enough; I think he's a twat, which is also fair enough (although has got me flagged, I see).
Not me, I don't flag. I am afraid someone ELSE thinks you're a twat
Stonegate is domiciled in the Cayman Islands and ultimately owned by TDR Capital, a private equity firm that also owns Asda.
It became the UK’s largest pub group with the £1.3bn purchase of Ei Group (formerly Enterprise Inns) in 2019, a deal that included £1.7bn of debt and completed just days before the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a series of nationwide lockdowns that hit the hospitality trade particularly hard.
Is there anything left in this country that hasn't been bought up by PE on a pile of debt?
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
But the sad reality is that there are far fewer drinkers to go round than there once were. What else is there to do but have fewer pubs? The words stick in the craw. But I can't think of another way to do it.
If pubs in London can't make it work then I don't disagree with you at all - I just think it's sad all the same to see a pub that's sat there for so long disappear. These places mean a lot to me and others - and it's not just about drinking, a lot of my friends go and don't drink alcohol. They are genuinely the home of my social life so they mean a lot to me.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
But the sad reality is that there are far fewer drinkers to go round than there once were. What else is there to do but have fewer pubs? The words stick in the craw. But I can't think of another way to do it.
Demographically a growing proportion of young people don't drink alcohol, which is disappointing. I hope that reverses in the future.
Stonegate is domiciled in the Cayman Islands and ultimately owned by TDR Capital, a private equity firm that also owns Asda.
It became the UK’s largest pub group with the £1.3bn purchase of Ei Group (formerly Enterprise Inns) in 2019, a deal that included £1.7bn of debt and completed just days before the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a series of nationwide lockdowns that hit the hospitality trade particularly hard.
Is there anything left in this country that hasn't been bought up by PE on a pile of debt?
That’s the result of a decade of zero interest rates, low inflation, and rising property values - most pubcos are basically property holding companies.
These companies are now screwed when they need to refinance, and will have to either sell shares or sell assets.
I would actually pass a law saying pubs cannot be converted into housing. They can stop being pubs, but then they have to be some other kind of shared open space, for all. Cafe, farm shop, community hall, something that brings people together
We are all atomised quite enough. This would also stop the hideous Crooked House bollocks of people "accidentally" burning down pubs so they can be demolished and turned into flats
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
I think even in London which I know might have the "anonymity" of a lot of these places, a lot of pubs are institutions in their own right and it would be a great shame to lose them.
Let us find a point of agreement. I completely concur on pubs
One of the saddest sites in the British countryside is coming upon a lovely village which, for some inexplicable reason, does not have a pub. Of course it used to have a pub, and you can always find it, the weirdly big building with grass all around and oddly large windows, now converted into expensive housing, and thereby reducing the appeal of the village, which is why the owners wanted to live there in the first place
I hate it. A village needs a church, a pond, a green, a corner shop, and a pub. And the first and last are the most important. And yes they serve the same purpose in big cities, including London
We're not quite in the position of all those villages in the Spanish interior- the ones with 2 old crones, 5 goats and a crumbling pile of buildings because anyone who could moved to the coast- but there are lots of villages that need more people to have a future.
There are clever things you can do like running the village shop out of the back of the church, but they only get you so far.
Radical thought - is pb (and it’s ilk) one of the reasons pubs are dying? We sit here, randomly chatting rubbish with others, all the time NOT heading the pub to chat rubbish with others. It’s so much easier to get social interaction (of a kind) online, and add in the price of booze in pubs vs Aldi/Lidl and you see why they close.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
I think even in London which I know might have the "anonymity" of a lot of these places, a lot of pubs are institutions in their own right and it would be a great shame to lose them.
Let us find a point of agreement. I completely concur on pubs
One of the saddest sites in the British countryside is coming upon a lovely village which, for some inexplicable reason, does not have a pub. Of course it used to have a pub, and you can always find it, the weirdly big building with grass all around and oddly large windows, now converted into expensive housing, and thereby reducing the appeal of the village, which is why the owners wanted to live there in the first place
I hate it. A village needs a church, a pond, a green, a corner shop, and a pub. And the first and last are the most important. And yes they serve the same purpose in big cities, including London
We're not quite in the position of all those villages in the Spanish interior- the ones with 2 old crones, 5 goats and a crumbling pile of buildings because anyone who could moved to the coast- but there are lots of villages that need more people to have a future.
There are clever things you can do like running the village shop out of the back of the church, but they only get you so far.
The answer of course is affordable housing for young people in villages. It keeps pubs, schools and sports clubs open. Nimbys are killing their own villages.
Radical thought - is pb (and it’s ilk) one of the reasons pubs are dying? We sit here, randomly chatting rubbish with others, all the time NOT heading the pub to chat rubbish with others. It’s so much easier to get social interaction (of a kind) online, and add in the price of booze in pubs vs Aldi/Lidl and you see why they close.
It is indeed. Not just tinternet, though - there is just a much greater array of ways to spend our time, and (it seems, though no doubt it always did) much less time.
When my Dad was my age, he'd be out at the pub twice a week. I'm lucky if I get out twice a month. Mind you, I've got three times as many kids as he had. Perhaps that's why there's no time.
Radical thought - is pb (and it’s ilk) one of the reasons pubs are dying? We sit here, randomly chatting rubbish with others, all the time NOT heading the pub to chat rubbish with others. It’s so much easier to get social interaction (of a kind) online, and add in the price of booze in pubs vs Aldi/Lidl and you see why they close.
Yes - he's by far the worst part of this site. But hopefully he will have another flounce soon and we'll have some peace.
Welcome BTW.
Talking of flouncing arent we due your next one anytime soon?
I didn't flounce though. I used a bad word some time ago (that I should have just starred out - I was not advocating the word and I wasn't using it as an insult, it was basically paraphrasing) and was banned for it. You're clearly very wound up again. Take a chill pill brother
You’ve flounced a few times too.
I left in protest at Sean being a member here which I stand by, I think he brings down this site in every possible way and whenever he isn't here it's better.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
Why don't you just ignore me, if I push your buttons so easily? It's not like I ever personally attack you. Quite strange
Because of you I was inspired to create an extension to block people on this site.
I do until you are rude to people. Then I call you out.
Just as others call me out when I've been rude, you deserve nothing more and nothing less.
This site would be so much better if you just posted 85% less than you do.
It's not your site.
It's the variety which makes this site worthwhile.
I disagree. But I won't say anymore on it as I can sense I've said more than enough and everyone knows what I think.
@Cyclefree as with many things is 100% correct on this point
Radical thought - is pb (and it’s ilk) one of the reasons pubs are dying? We sit here, randomly chatting rubbish with others, all the time NOT heading the pub to chat rubbish with others. It’s so much easier to get social interaction (of a kind) online, and add in the price of booze in pubs vs Aldi/Lidl and you see why they close.
A problem is that you can’t drink and drive which puts off those who live a little too far from the pub to walk, however I am told (although not sure I believe it) you can drink and post on PB.
@isam, I sent you a PM asking if you could review a prepublication version of an article. You're the most knowledgable about gambling and its history and you are well placed to check the historical parts. You don't have to if you don't want to, and you are perfectly free to turn it down, just let me know.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
what a lot of cold wank in custard
Just as I was about to launch my new niche pr0n site too. Now the surprise element is totally gone.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
But the sad reality is that there are far fewer drinkers to go round than there once were. What else is there to do but have fewer pubs? The words stick in the craw. But I can't think of another way to do it.
Demographically a growing proportion of young people don't drink alcohol, which is disappointing. I hope that reverses in the future.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
I think even in London which I know might have the "anonymity" of a lot of these places, a lot of pubs are institutions in their own right and it would be a great shame to lose them.
Let us find a point of agreement. I completely concur on pubs
One of the saddest sites in the British countryside is coming upon a lovely village which, for some inexplicable reason, does not have a pub. Of course it used to have a pub, and you can always find it, the weirdly big building with grass all around and oddly large windows, now converted into expensive housing, and thereby reducing the appeal of the village, which is why the owners wanted to live there in the first place
I hate it. A village needs a church, a pond, a green, a corner shop, and a pub. And the first and last are the most important. And yes they serve the same purpose in big cities, including London
We're not quite in the position of all those villages in the Spanish interior- the ones with 2 old crones, 5 goats and a crumbling pile of buildings because anyone who could moved to the coast- but there are lots of villages that need more people to have a future.
There are clever things you can do like running the village shop out of the back of the church, but they only get you so far.
The answer of course is affordable housing for young people in villages. It keeps pubs, schools and sports clubs open. Nimbys are killing their own villages.
Nimby's moved into the village and then spent all their time complaining about the outrageous noise of the Church bells and the smell of beer from the Local.
See also people moving to 'quaint' Cornish fishing villages then complaining that the fishing boats weren't quite in keeping with what they imagined.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
I think even in London which I know might have the "anonymity" of a lot of these places, a lot of pubs are institutions in their own right and it would be a great shame to lose them.
Let us find a point of agreement. I completely concur on pubs
One of the saddest sites in the British countryside is coming upon a lovely village which, for some inexplicable reason, does not have a pub. Of course it used to have a pub, and you can always find it, the weirdly big building with grass all around and oddly large windows, now converted into expensive housing, and thereby reducing the appeal of the village, which is why the owners wanted to live there in the first place
I hate it. A village needs a church, a pond, a green, a corner shop, and a pub. And the first and last are the most important. And yes they serve the same purpose in big cities, including London
We're not quite in the position of all those villages in the Spanish interior- the ones with 2 old crones, 5 goats and a crumbling pile of buildings because anyone who could moved to the coast- but there are lots of villages that need more people to have a future.
There are clever things you can do like running the village shop out of the back of the church, but they only get you so far.
The fucking planning system round here prevents any villages which don't have a pub and a shop from acquiring them because said villages are deemed too small for development thus no new building is allowed. Utter madness.
Radical thought - is pb (and it’s ilk) one of the reasons pubs are dying? We sit here, randomly chatting rubbish with others, all the time NOT heading the pub to chat rubbish with others. It’s so much easier to get social interaction (of a kind) online, and add in the price of booze in pubs vs Aldi/Lidl and you see why they close.
It is indeed. Not just tinternet, though - there is just a much greater array of ways to spend our time, and (it seems, though no doubt it always did) much less time.
When my Dad was my age, he'd be out at the pub twice a week. I'm lucky if I get out twice a month. Mind you, I've got three times as many kids as he had. Perhaps that's why there's no time.
I reckon also people live on average further (both in distance and time) from their mates. Bit sad to think about to be honest.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
But the sad reality is that there are far fewer drinkers to go round than there once were. What else is there to do but have fewer pubs? The words stick in the craw. But I can't think of another way to do it.
Demographically a growing proportion of young people don't drink alcohol, which is disappointing. I hope that reverses in the future.
I would actually pass a law saying pubs cannot be converted into housing. They can stop being pubs, but then they have to be some other kind of shared open space, for all. Cafe, farm shop, community hall, something that brings people together
We are all atomised quite enough. This would also stop the hideous Crooked House bollocks of people "accidentally" burning down pubs so they can be demolished and turned into flats
Pubs are about the only type of institution that benefit from being made an Asset of Community Value (ACV) as there is a fighting chance that people will be able to continue to run them. But not usually.
As a favourite Daily Mash headline had it: People disappointed that their local pub closed that they never went to.
I would actually pass a law saying pubs cannot be converted into housing. They can stop being pubs, but then they have to be some other kind of shared open space, for all. Cafe, farm shop, community hall, something that brings people together
We are all atomised quite enough. This would also stop the hideous Crooked House bollocks of people "accidentally" burning down pubs so they can be demolished and turned into flats
Quite a few councils did that. Which results in hideous “non conversions” of pubs. Used as housing.
But more often than not, Leons's barbed, self-lacerating wit and hard-won insights redeem the site's occasional forays into grandiosity. In the end, Leon takes his place in a lineage of metaphysically-minded PB commentary that encompasses St. Augustine and Thomas De Quincey, Baudelaire and William James — a work of self-examination so fearless it achieves a kind of hortatory power, inviting the PB lurker or reader to conduct an inventory of their own compulsions and evasions.
Leon's passions and obsessions, we come to understand, are not only the figures of his personal constellation — the mercurial moderator, the volatile postwomen, the partners in crime and Dionysian revelry. They are also the pieces of his own psyche, ever in tenuous relation, the mosaic of a self perpetually rearranged. As the pre-Socratic sages intuited, in our helpless thrall to the flux of time and memory, perhaps the best we can hope is - like Leon - to step gratefully into its current — to find, in the cascade of love and ruin, of betting and politics, some glimmering rivulets of wisdom and beauty.
what a lot of cold wank in custard
A bit harsh, Foxy.
OTOH, while I recall Cicero, I must have missed the contributions of St Augustine and Baudelaire. Or did Leon dream them ?
Lord wean me off endlessly and self-indulgently blathering on PB, but not yet.
But why has this only become an issue since Brexit?
Because it was possible to get an infinite supply of new people to fill jobs at minimum wage pre-Brexit.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
I would like to agree with you but I can't see how it's sustainable. I mean, these pubs barely make a profit at all as is and many don't open. At some point soon we're going to see a load of pubs go bust.
So some go bust.
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think it's not "some". It's most.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
Its not most, its some.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
All true to a point. Pubs aren’t really interchangeable, if the one in your village closes then there’s an emotional attachment and it’s to the detriment of the whole village, especially if the next pub isn’t really walking distance. They’re social spaces that mean more than just four walls and a bar, at least to a lot of the visitors.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
I think even in London which I know might have the "anonymity" of a lot of these places, a lot of pubs are institutions in their own right and it would be a great shame to lose them.
Let us find a point of agreement. I completely concur on pubs
One of the saddest sites in the British countryside is coming upon a lovely village which, for some inexplicable reason, does not have a pub. Of course it used to have a pub, and you can always find it, the weirdly big building with grass all around and oddly large windows, now converted into expensive housing, and thereby reducing the appeal of the village, which is why the owners wanted to live there in the first place
I hate it. A village needs a church, a pond, a green, a corner shop, and a pub. And the first and last are the most important. And yes they serve the same purpose in big cities, including London
We're not quite in the position of all those villages in the Spanish interior- the ones with 2 old crones, 5 goats and a crumbling pile of buildings because anyone who could moved to the coast- but there are lots of villages that need more people to have a future.
There are clever things you can do like running the village shop out of the back of the church, but they only get you so far.
The answer of course is affordable housing for young people in villages. It keeps pubs, schools and sports clubs open. Nimbys are killing their own villages.
Do you mean council houses? It was Thatcher and her Conservatives who sold those off. And then prevented local councils from using the money to build any more to replace them.
Comments
Right, now I have to do my daily exercise. Manana
So-called noble cause corruption or the police framing people they "know" are guilty has a long and inglorious history.
But my ask was ignored so after a long period away I returned. I believe it was the right thing to do.
So in answer to your question, unless you want to try and get me banned, I don't plan to go anywhere, don't you feel lucky!
So you are doing exactly what you accused me of the other day, cherrypicking random examples badly to try and prove a point.
It wasn't very effective.
I do until you are rude to people. Then I call you out.
Just as others call me out when I've been rude, you deserve nothing more and nothing less.
This site would be so much better if you just posted 85% less than you do.
I really don't understand why a governing party that claims to believe in the free market doesn't just leave it to that market to set the rate. But then of course there would be no market for their donors who run Consultancies like mine...
So pipe down.
"NO, NOT THOSE STAFF!"
But anyway, if you have this extension which blocks me, by all means use it! I never personally attack you because I am aware you have had issues, and I don't ever knowingly get into spats with people like that (this is true, btw)
Some rich old geezer like @SouthamObserver can handle it, and he's smart enough to know I'm only joking, anyway
I will take having the unexpected and rare insights and different perspectives every day than someone posting “call an election now” and weedy insecure posts wanting other posters banned and other inane bollocks. So clearly different posters appreciate different things and the variety is good as it is.
I don't much care for your posts either. So we're even
I will go back to ignoring you now but I won't have lies.
ANYWAY this is unedifying. Let us ignore each other, and peace shall prevail, and the sweet lyres of concord shall play upon the ether
Slackers.
Just don't feed the troll.
Trying to fill an employment shortage by adding more people is like trying to solve a traffic jam by adding more cars, without adding any extra roads..
More people creates more demand, which creates more employer demand, which means more jobs need filling.
The only thing that balances employment levels is supply and demand. Increase prices (wages) until supply = demand.
Any undocumented worker or anyone being paid below minimum wage who gives evidence leading to conviction gets -
1) half the fine - half of £50k
2) if undocumented, indefinite leave to remain
3) directors of companies liable, so that the old “company that only own debt” gag doesn’t shields
You can hear the screaming now, from the future.
But those new arrivals inevitably created extra demand, so more jobs needed filling, which meant the shortage was never filled and there was never equilibrium.
Now that the supply of minimum wage isn't infinite, employers need to increase wages to reach equilibrium. Why don't you want people paid a living wage instead of minimum wage?
You then have fewer pubs with more customers per pub in them, whose staff are being paid a living wage.
Its the only sustainable solution, more sustainable than infinite minimum wage.
I think losing our local pub would be really sad for the community and the staff that have kept it going all these years.
It's not as unsentimental as you think it is.
The other issue is that many local pubs are owned by large companies, and either leased on very unfavourable terms or managed by the company themselves. As the cost of housing has continued to rise, it becomes more attractive to simply sell the asset rather than keep it as a going concern. The people making these decisions aren’t the local ‘landlord’, but a someone far away who looks at spreadsheets all day.
If you have 10 pubs each earning enough to pay 92% of a living wage, then 1 goes bust, that 1's customers divided across the surviving 9 now can pay 101% of a living wage.
OK its not as exact as that, but it still the principle is similar.
And if the staff have kept it going all these years, the staff aren't missing. And can be paid a living wage.
EDIT: Or as Sandpit says all 10 can survive if other costs, such as taxes, are cut which means they can afford a living wage instead.
It's tougher for the first kind, because the price of beer etc. is now so much higher than supermarket booze, and those without much money are being priced out. They really can't afford to raise prices further, so it's tricky for them to raise bar staff wages. So the answer has to be: reduce the price of pub ales and lager and narrow the differential with shop booze.
What you don't get, is that it's not just about "go to another pub", it's where you feel comfortable, it's the building, the smell, the pints, the organisation etc it's unique. That is something we really should try and avoid losing.
The problem I have is that you reduce it down to the numbers which is fine as far as it goes (and I don't disrespect you for thinking that way) but it's more than just about the numbers for most people.
Deal with that, and the pubs will be able to afford to pay their staff a living wage. Especially since non-food pubs, the landlord tends to do a not insignificant amount of the labour themselves. So cutting operational costs means more to bottom line than cutting wages anyway.
Restaurant-style pubs obviously need more staff as wait staff, chefs etc. Dealing with the fact that VAT is on restaurant food but no VAT exists on supermarket food would make a big difference for them.
Today the weather was, for once, fine. So we ventured out to a fine pub lunch near Ulverston followed by a piano and violin concert in a beautiful Pugin-designed church in Barrow. The music playing was superb: Beethoven's Dvorak and Faure.
On Friday we had a performance in our village hall from a London-based Klezmer band - Loshn (it means language on Yiddish) and, again, the musicianship was outstanding. A revelation.
Now, the All Bar One on the High St, no-one notices if that closes when there’s a Slug & Lettuce three doors down and a Wetherspoon’s acrosss the street.
Non-London pubs already hire locals as their staff anyway and don't rely on au pairs.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/please-help-chloe-to-survive?utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet&utm_content=SPP_noyellow&utm_medium=copy_link_spp&utm_source=customer
But the sad reality is that there are far fewer drinkers to go round than there once were. What else is there to do but have fewer pubs? The words stick in the craw. But I can't think of another way to do it.
If the staff can't afford a place to live at that wage, why would the jobs be filled?
Alternatively dealing with the housing shortage and building more houses would lower rent and make wages higher relatively.
It's the variety which makes this site worthwhile.
Their livers and stomachs, however, beg to differ.
OTOH, while I recall Cicero, I must have missed the contributions of St Augustine and Baudelaire. Or did Leon dream them ?
One of the saddest sites in the British countryside is coming upon a lovely village which, for some inexplicable reason, does not have a pub. Of course it used to have a pub, and you can always find it, the weirdly big building with grass all around and oddly large windows, now converted into expensive housing, and thereby reducing the appeal of the village, which is why the owners wanted to live there in the first place
I hate it. A village needs a church, a pond, a green, a corner shop, and a pub. And the first and last are the most important. And yes they serve the same purpose in big cities, including London
Today we walked in woods near Shaftesbury, filled with gorgeous bluebells, then ate lunch at a farm shop in East Stour, which had a full on restaurant, coffee shop option and lots of superb food in the shop. @Benpointer may know it.
Are other venues taking over from pubs? Wouldn’t surprise me.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/09/uks-biggest-pubs-group-stonegate-struggles-to-refinance-2bn-debt-pile#:~:text=Stonegate has more than £,interest%20on%20its%20loan%20notes.
I was just saying that pubs are a cherished British thing and for me this is more about losing a building and people in it in a certain configuration and I know a lot of people feel the same. I don't think you really wish to understand what that's like and that's fine.
Losing a pub in the local community is a travesty - and just saying "too bad they should pay more" dehumanises it for me when it's more than just about money.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/man-who-went-never-ending-17753605
New arrivals creating extra demand also leads to more customers per pub. Why was that unsustainable? The number of pubs certainly didn't increase - it's been falling steadily since about 2002.
Stonegate is domiciled in the Cayman Islands and ultimately owned by TDR Capital, a private equity firm that also owns Asda.
It became the UK’s largest pub group with the £1.3bn purchase of Ei Group (formerly Enterprise Inns) in 2019, a deal that included £1.7bn of debt and completed just days before the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a series of nationwide lockdowns that hit the hospitality trade particularly hard.
Is there anything left in this country that hasn't been bought up by PE on a pile of debt?
These companies are now screwed when they need to refinance, and will have to either sell shares or sell assets.
We are all atomised quite enough. This would also stop the hideous Crooked House bollocks of people "accidentally" burning down pubs so they can be demolished and turned into flats
There are clever things you can do like running the village shop out of the back of the church, but they only get you so far.
When my Dad was my age, he'd be out at the pub twice a week. I'm lucky if I get out twice a month. Mind you, I've got three times as many kids as he had. Perhaps that's why there's no time.
See also people moving to 'quaint' Cornish fishing villages then complaining that the fishing boats weren't quite in keeping with what they imagined.
As a favourite Daily Mash headline had it: People disappointed that their local pub closed that they never went to.