Since I am spending a lot of time answering questions I thought it was a good time for a somewhat technical post. The subject of today’s post is therefore ‘crazy flu’ or, more accurately ‘the crazy roadmap from the lunatic lockdowns’.
So, here in the UK, the government released their ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown. It seems that in the modern world we address questions like this by pressuring our politicians to make announcements before they have the requisite information. Since we are pressuring them for answers that they do not have the knowledge to provide we ‘guide’ them through leaks and rumours.
Once the government have formed our suggestions into a vague and woolly plan they make an announcement. When the information they needed comes in the government amend their plans and are immediately set upon for ‘U turning’ on the plan that they didn’t want to release in the first place.
Anyway we now have a plan out of lockdown. During the announcement of said plan BoJo was at pains to repeatedly state that the dates presented for the various stages were in fact the earliest possible and would likely move to the right. Needless to say that the reporters and people of the country ignored all of this and the dates are now cast in stone with any change being a ‘U turn’.
For us in hospitality there are three key stages. In stage one we can open outside, then at stage two we move inside and finally at stage three lots of other stuff happens. Since the release was a bare bones document it is lacking in detail, some would say this reflects the approach in general.
One key detail is important enough to make it into this early release though and that is the fact that we cannot possibly hold an alcoholic beverage whilst standing. The scourge of ‘vertical’ drinking is outlawed with compulsory table service and ordering and drinking only being permitted when seated. This issue is important enough to be detailed in the first two stages and yet is missing in the (no earlier) than June last hurrah. This leads myself and many industry commentators to believe that there is no plan to remove the mandatory requirement for table service.
Along with some of the trade press I have pressured our MP and other parties to gain some clarity on the matter. I successfully had a written question submitted to the relevant department to tell us what the plan was. The response was telling in that it did not address a clearly detailed question, in short there is no plan for how we return to the wonder that its the bar.
Throughout the reams of correspondence on this issue I have maintained that there is no justification from banning an Englishman from the bar. I can see only two reasons why the government is so determined to prevent us standing with our beer.
The first is the acknowledged desire to turn us European with the adoption of the so called ‘café culture’. Now far be it from me to accuse a government of not learning from history but this is exactly what brought us 24 hour opening in 2005. The principle was that we were a nation of binge drinkers and removing the deadlines associated with licensed hours would allow us to relax and adopt a more civilised relationship with beer.
In all of the research and debate about creating a Lisbon in London or Madrid in Manchester it would appear that nobody looked at a Brit abroad. When you place you Englishman in Madrid he turns into the same beer pig he does when you call last orders in the UK. Unsurprisingly the change to hours did not create a tsunami of drunk and disorderly cases, as the nays had believed it would. But neither did it cause England fans to enjoy a macaron with a friend to celebrate the football.
Perhaps the government think it is time for another go. Mandated table service and increased pavement space to promote (some would say enforce) a café culture. If this is the case I would, and have, urge our parliamentarians to check out the many benches already being used for this purpose and ensure that they really know what they are trying to generate.
The second reason comes from the fact that the politicians no longer feel the need to manage the scientists instead they ‘follow’ their advice. Now there is a reason why the term ‘mad scientist’ exists, with great knowledge comes, well frankly, a good dose of lunacy. This is why scientists do not run companies, they report into people who have the sanity to balance the madness.
Imagine if Henry Ford had said to his greatest scientist ‘invent the perfect car that is good for all’. We would be on the fourth generation of scientists trying to develop a car built of kelp that ran entirely on soya milk and produced rose water as its exhaust. In the meantime we would still be feeding our transport polo mints and getting to work with a sore ass.
The same is true of anything. We would still be sailing to America for business meetings if we had asked the boffins to create the best aeroplane. They would still be working on balsa wood models of craft fuelled by tangerine skins if someone hadn’t told them to get a bloody move on.
So for the first time in their lives scientists are being listened to and nobody has noticed yet that they are insane. Having destroyed our economy to fight the crazy flu they have set a terrifying precedent. Since we are now not allowed to die I expect that they are currently working on plans to close swimming pools and eradicate verrucas. Apparently if nobody ever goes out then the chances of being hit by a car reduce by 99.5% (interestingly also the survival rate of crazy flu).
So what do the egg head lunatics have against vertical drinking I hear you ask. Well it goes back to the heady days of university. In order to grow ones grey matter to such an enormous size as to be able to single-handedly calculate that washing your hands is a good thing you have to study. I should clarify there that I actually mean study not what students call study.
So when your egg head goes to university it is all about studying hard into the early hours. The rest of the students are spending their student loan smashing shots and preparing for their gap year. This is egg heads introduction to the concept of bars, its as close as hew will ever get to seeing a bar as there is far too much learning to do. He see’s the student union as he heads off to the store to collect pencils and hand sanitiser, the noise and the mass of drunken humanity is not for him.
When he heads off early to lectures he has to step over drunken room mates in various states of stupor. Even in those early years he can see that they return from the bar with higher viral loads and spread them liberally around the campus. His only exposure to the world of social drinking leads him to believe that it is an awful environment.
Normally these early formed opinions are no concern to us but, as I said earlier, suddenly egg heads are in charge. The economists demand that hospitality is opened back up and all the egg head can see is vomit stains on his student carpet. Surely if he makes them sit down they will be better behaved? And when the compulsory background opera and ‘text book to eat out’ comes in it will only get better.
So where does all this leave us, here at the Plough. Well we are, and always will be, a wet led pub that is to say we are a drinkers pub. People that come to a wet pub do so to enjoy a drink in good company, it is the social experience that we miss not the alcohol.
We won’t be opening outside because we are a town pub and, well, it is England and April. We did consider opening the outside area for a limited number of days to avoid the dead spots but this then means a limited range and higher waste. The biggest problem that we have is table service, one server cannot cope with table service when busy (trust me I have done it) yet when we are quiet additional servers will be bored. You could actually be full on a Wednesday and empty on a Saturday because you are so weather dependent.
I can assure you all that I am keeping a very close eye on how things develop. I have more calls and discussions booked next week to try and push the debate over table service and I am seeing some traction. If I can get an idea when we can step away from table service that will form the cornerstone of reopening plans. Table service is, frankly, soul destroying in a wet led venue. We don’t want to tell people off and they don’t want to be told off. In short table service is the government saying you can open but only f you promise to slowly destroy your own trade.
Watch this space guys, hopefully the egg heads are in retreat.
Gav Young 