Maxed Out Pubs, The Sky’s The Limit

Ah the affectionately named, ‘local’. I love my local. A sentiment echoed throughout Lewisham, the area I grew up in. But the local is getting further from my doorstep. Pubs are shutting at the rate of 5 per day in the UK.

Where I grew up, three pubs have closed for business in the space of a few months. One hang-er-on-er remains but the reality is biting home. Their once illustrious lounge now looks more like a big screen graveyard. At £1,200 a month, with the small print stipulating you have to sign up for two years, Sky’s astronomical bills are not getting paid.

Thus, my choices are whittled down to two rather average locals - one with a thriving cocaine racket, a modern day Noah’s Ark, semi-septum clients frequent the toilets in twos and the other a Wetherspoons, which hosts the who’s who of underage drinkers and down and outs - and here’s why:

(1) The smoking ban: Smokers need to smoke. Smokers don’t need frostbite while endeavoring to get their fix. Result: Smoke at home.

(2) Inflation: The breweries push up beer prices at will. In my teens I could buy six cans of beer for a fiver in the local off license, this is still the case 10 years on. In the same amount of time the price of a pint has almost doubled. Result: Drink at home.

(3) Parasite and host effect: The pub trade has lived off itself for a long time. While business was booming and money was being made, everyone got rich - Sky, the fruit machines, the brewers and the landlords. Now pubs are on their way out. Result: The filthy rats are jumping ship.

I’ve worked in pubs, I drink in pubs. Pubs are the epicenter of my social stomping ground, especially my local. Given the chance I’d probably live in one. In fact, one of my closest friends was trying to do just that. Over a pint, she finally admitted forlornly that her and her partner were giving up their ‘save the pub’ dream.

The numbers speak for themselves: The Sky price is based on your business rates, your business rates are based on the square footage of the pub, larger pubs have higher business rates hence higher Sky bills (you cannot cut Sky off when the football season finishes); parent breweries have the same pricelists for all tenants meaning pubs in the city will pay the same for their beer as ones in the suburbs (which is twice what you’d pay in a supermarket) - not fair when your pub is in the suburbs and you make very little margin on anything; not only do you need a TV license, you need two, one for the pub and one for the flat upstairs; you have to buy a public performance license to show live sport or bands; recycling costs £75 a month to be collected. You're looking at £8k a week just to break even on a pub that only takes £4k.

It’s a case of who can hold their head above water to be crowned the last pub standing… and laughing (all the way to the bank).

Save your local. Get drunk there tonight.

From Russia With ... Conspiracy Theories?

I’m not saying the British Government are perfect, far from it. I don’t like politicians much, agreeing with Bill Hicks: “All politicians are lying cocksuckers”. Certainly true of Peter Mandelson, and Jeffrey Archer (in no particular order). Crude perhaps, but my point is this; the current “sleaze” of British politicians and respective peers - using their status to get things they want, and for all the charmless drudgery of Gordon Brown’s chubby fingered grip on power - things are much worse in Russia.

Last week Stanislav Markelov, a Russian, Moscow based Human Rights lawyer, was shot dead. He was shot dead at 3pm, outside a 17th century palace, and the 25 year old reporter who was with him was executed too. There were no witnesses and the hit was performed with “professional” accuracy. Moreover, Markelov was a very well known Human rights lawyer, with a record of taking on difficult cases against the government for crimes committed against Chechens. He 'defended those who were killed or humiliated by the State'. The reporter, Anastasia Baburova, worked for Novaya Gazeta, about the only opposition left to Putin’s government.

Strangely enough there were no words of condemnation from any of Putin’s team. There were no police around at the time of the murders, when there ought to have been, and the whole thing stinks of either a shadowy agency, or possibly the Chechens, operating without the Government's orders but with it’s blessing. Or from the actual Government itself. I find this very, very scary. Really you want your Government only killing people in private (China), abroad (Britain and USA) or not at all*… May have to google that one, but I imagine the Swiss have a fairly good Human Rights record.

This is not the first time an outspoken critic of Putin has turned up dead, or close to it. Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London with Polonium and Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in her apartment elevator. No one has come to any punishment for each of these crimes. The owner of Novaya Gazeta now claims most of his reporters carry guns they are so scared. With the efficiency of these hits there seems little point.

*I'm partial to this one

Hail Gran Torino. Hail Eastwood.

Gran Torino. Sounds like a racing game when in fact it's Clint Eastwood’s latest export - to our isolated shores anyway - naturally, the seps have already seen it. I like to write about films the public haven’t seen or those that aren’t even in production, usually. But this one is special. Firstly, it is by all accounts is an excellent film and the trailer seems to back this up.

(Yeah I hear you, David 'kettle' Yates. But this is the king of the 'pots' blogging and I'm blacker than Arthur Scargill's favourite canary, Dirty Harry. Unlike your pasty Potter friend.)



Secondly, it is Clint’s last as an actor. He can’t really be denied a rest, the man turns 79 in May, but his films as a actor and/or director have been brilliant. Unfortunately, director and actor career paths all too often resemble those of boxers: some retire too early, some way too late and some insist on doing an embarrassing comeback when we've all suffered far too much at their hands already. I’m looking at you, Evander Holyfield and Woody Allen.

Besides, none of the aforementioned earned my utmost respect by telling the gobby Spike Lee where to shove it. Yes. Eastwood, my exception to the rule, will continue to dodge his dotage by directing a biopic of Nelson Mandella next. I hope it won’t be his last. I hate seeing people I admire reach the end of their career. It took me about three years to get over Ian Wright retiring.

Even Shit Can Hold Court for Three Minutes...

I entered the loo. Dropped my trousers. Laid a turd. Nothing special there. I caught a glimpse of that turd between my legs, and it was a good turd. I say good, it was interesting; it bobbed one end up in the water. My glistening, light reflecting, shiny turd. I decided to study it further and I examined every minutia of its compact muscular body, its textures, colours. How it held together. The waste in the bowl in front, and just below of me, was good looking. My turd held my interest for a full three minutes.

“It was the scene of murder, drug dealing and hostage-taking but now Brookside Close is due to be sold to the highest bidder."

"The Liverpool cul-de-sac used in gritty Channel 4 soap opera Brookside is being auctioned, with a £650,000 guide price.” So says the BBC.

Brookside was gritty? No. Brookside was the biggest piece of fictional claptrap since Britney claimed to be a virgin. It was as gritty as she was covered in baby oil the first night Justin got his nuts in.

The show was pulp, crap and awful at once. I am not sorry to see the houses sold and I am a bit annoyed they are newsworthy. In fact, didn’t The Sun report this a few weeks ago? Poor form Aunty Beeb. Headline stuff for the currant* though, 'cos it's good old British news innit. Everything’s fine in Africa by the way, my mate Robert just text me to say the Cholera problem has definitely gone away.

* Currant. Rhyming slang for The Sun* *
* * The Sun. Trashy tabloid newspaper

Left £30 Worse Off

How do you kill a zombie? Shoot it in the head, right? Even the makers of the worst living dead films get that one correct. Not it appears, the makers of Left 4 Dead, a new computer game, where you play either online or on your own as a survivor in a team of four, fending off the invitations to become dinner for thousands of hungry zombies.

The game plays like an arcade game, with less story. The zombies also run, presumably to make them scarier, but as Simon Pegg brilliantly put it- zombies don’t run. The final straw - the ones in this game can be dropped with a pistol shot to the foot or arm. Oh come on, spray and pray tactics with zombies! Maybe I’m a purist, maybe I need to take a step back, but when I pay £30 for a game which claims to have zombies in, I want it to be better than something I could write myself. Make the creatures slower, slow even, throw in some variation of gameplay and location settings and have the fuckers keep coming at you until grey matter erupts from their head like a George Romero wet dream. That game I’ll play.

Fuck it; while I’m here, avoid food places with numbers in the title (e.g. “Pizza Chicken Hot 4 U”). Same rule applies to PC games.