Wow a fantastic independent pub near where I used to live in London is seeing its rateable value go up 480%! This website really puts the headlines in to a nice local perspective.
It seems like the taxes only go up while the services get worse in the UK, although I’ve been away for 5 years now so maybe things improved.
Kinda meta, but this is the first time in a long time where I've put only the first half of my postcode in expecting it not to work and been surprised. Most of these "find your nearest XYZ" site require the full postcode which is just unnecessary unless you're looking for a fairly precise location. A full postcode can narrow your location down to an individual street, so its nice not to give too much away if you can.
For anyone not in the know, UK postcodes are made up of two parts: a general area (the outward code) and then a more specific one (the inward code.) Generally speaking a postcode + house number will be good enough to get a letter delivered to the right place, though the sorting office might not be too happy with you...
The format [0] is roughly: AB12 3CD, though the number of letters/numbers on the left side can vary a bit. As far as I know the second set of numbers is always 1 digit though, so that's how you can easily split the two sides of it to format it nicely. There's a couple of special ones that break the rules though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdo...
I agree with the bit about the having to enter a full postcode on some sites, I often use one nearby or, if they make me select a specific address for no valid reason I make sure I use a random address nearby. Apologies to some of my neighbours who might be bombarded with junk mail for services I’ve once been half interested in.
A full postcode is often much less than a single street.
Picking something at random stick “SW15 6DZ” into Google maps and you’ll see it only covers 6 buildings (most are individual houses but some are split into flats). According to the Royal Mail address finder site there are only 12 unique delivery addresses that share that postcode. The Western half of that road has 12 or so full postcodes for only 100 houses.
A full postcode and one other bit of information can often be enough to uniquely identify someone.
If a US 5 digit zipcode is roughly equivalent to the “general area” part of a UK postcode (94107 <=> SW15) then the full UK postcode is like the 9 digit US Zip+4 format where the extra 4 digits narrow location down to a block, part of a block or even a specific building.
A friend of mine who lived in a tent in a park got his own postcode. True story.
Details: election time. He went to the election folks and asked for his election papers. They said "sure, where do you live?" he said "the Bender, Eastville Park, Bristol", they said "that's not a valid address", he said "that's where I live, so that's where I'd like my registration to be, please". There was some back and forth. They caved, and duly entered his address on the electoral roll as such. Then he went to the Post Office and said "this is my address, as entered on the electoral roll, can I have my postcode please?". The Post Office kinda had no option, since this was now his official address. So they gave him a postcode and the postie had to walk through the park to drop off his mail.
"A full postcode is often much less than a single street."
My business has its own unique postcode and so does next door! Between us we cover roughly three acres. Our place is one building with parking and a fair bit of greenery.
My postcode in Surrey had about 7 houses according to the postie.
> A full postcode can narrow your location down to an individual street,
Often a single block of flats. Rurally perhaps even just a single residence?
I lived in SW1 many years ago and was surprised to learn, from this website, that SW goes all the way out to SW19!
Fun fact: apart from the main office SW1 they're alphabetised by area, from SW2 Brixton to SW19 Wimbledon. All of the London postcode areas are like this.
And a bit further to SW20 in Raynes Park (a.k.a. “West Wimbledon” in Estate Agent vernacular).
I’ve lived somewhere in SW18/SW15/SW19 for the last 30 years. Having not grown up in London I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Apparently many other bits of London (North, East, central, etc) are good too but I’m not ready for change.
Disclaimer - I don't drink at all. Still, when visiting London, I found going to Pubs (for the food mostly) a magical experience. When you enter such place, see that it's so so old, almost like a relic, like a monument, you really appreciate the place. My business trips led me to London centre so I saw the oldest ones.
One striking feature in the UK is the number of pubs that 'went on fire'.
The business is no longer viable, planning constraints (and often listed building constraints, which is protection for historical buildings, many pubs are very old) won't let them do anything else with the building so they sit empty until they spontaneously combust. Soon after they get demolished and regrow as a supermarket or apartments.
Worth noting the circle of "pubs that light on fire" and "flat roofed 1970s slum pub" almost entirely overlap. Nobodies setting fire to their thatched-roof pub from 1650 because of pub rates. They just change hands through the breweries every 3-4 years now.
https://news.sky.com/story/police-now-treating-fire-at-histo...
More profitable to convert the pub into a house and sell it that to actually run a pub.
Great idea!
https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/personal-finance/finance-expe... shows how little pubs make per pint, very sad.
If anyone's curious about cask beer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ud_eTwY4nc&list=PLyDTS7ZG3z... is a very interesting youtube video series by The Craft Beer Channel.
My grandparents were publicans 70+ years ago. Even they they made very little on beer. All the profit was spirits and software drinks. Probably food as well now.
> software drinks
I knew java was good for something
Must have been muscle memory.
> All the profit was spirits and software drinks.
What are the margins on a Codeacola?
15 quid for a 25ml of whisky is ridiculous however.
Interest in context on "government pub rates". New tax scheme?
Existing tax. Proposed new calculation for the "value" of business property, disproportionately affecting pubs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e57dexly1o
> In her November Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves scaled back business rate discounts that have been in force since the pandemic from 75% to 40% - and announced that there would be no discount at all from April. That, combined with big upward adjustments to rateable values of pub premises, left landlords with the prospect of much higher rates bills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_rates_in_England
> Properties are assessed in a rating list with a rateable value, a valuation of their annual rental value on a fixed valuation date using assumptions fixed by statute. Rating lists are created and maintained by the Valuation Office Agency, a UK government executive agency.
Ah, interesting. So it sounds like the tax roughly scales with property value (or size). And pubs are probably a "poor use of land" because the revenue per square foot is not particularly high?
Yes. It scales with a government agency's estimate of the property's annual rent (even if you own it), based on market rates in the area over the past two years, which they then scale up/down based on floorspace and how dilapidated the building is.
You pay a percentage of the hypothetical rent as tax. There is a lower rate if you're a small business, and there are also tax reliefs for various reasons (charity, partial building occupation, etc.)
But pubs have been in trouble for quite some time: https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Article/2025/05/27/numbe...
Pubs have high costs, small margins and customers are extremely price-sensitive. What pubs are generally asking for is more types of relief, because what we tend to see is pubs close, people in the area become more isolated, and the building remains empty for years thereafter. [] Pubs appreciated the post-COVID relief, but tax rates are about to shoot up.
[] fun fact: if the building is vacant, its landlord must pay rates as if it's 100% occupied. Hence this brazen scheme where a man puts a snail farm in every room so you can pay the rates of an agricultural enterprise: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/04/...
... was that a real guardian article, or just an elaborate prank built around the phrase "shell company"?
Pubs are dying. Have been for years.
Many deaths were postponed because their taxes were reduced due to Covid. Those taxes are now returning to normal levels. This will result in a glut of deaths, as pubs that were just hanging on go under.
The policy question is, basically, do we want to subsidize pubs because they're part of our national culture, even though we don't use them nearly as much as we used to?
"Does Britain really need?" has been responsible for the gutting of so much of what used to make Britain a nice place to live over the last 20 years. You can say she same about public libraries, local bus routes, civic architecture, arts funding, youth services, maintenance budgets. The damage has been incalculable.
You won't find any argument from me on all those other things.
But pubs are a weird place to draw the line.
Every one of them individually seems like a weird place to draw the line. Social fabric and the ties that bond matter.
The government has decided that they know what’s good for you better for you than you do. So they tax alcohol at incredibly high rates.
Without this more pubs could exist. So I don’t think it’s a case of subsidising as much as removing the disincentive.
I’m not familiar with the UK, but is the tax on alcohol at pubs higher than at a store? My general understanding was that people have just shopped visiting pubs for other reasons - like diluted drinks, crappy food, loud music, etc.
People stop visiting crappy pubs if they have diluted drinks (quite rare, UK is very strict about being served exact alcohol measures, there is very little free pouring in the UK and many people would spot other drinks being diluted), crappy food (sadly all too common), loud music (age related), etc.
But not many pubs are crappy in these respects.
The main reasons why fewer people are visiting average or good pubs are: * cost of living is going up so many people have less disposable income * the younger generations are much less interested in alcohol than previous generations
The latter point is an interesting one. There are two wildly different drivers for this that I’ve witnessed.
Many of the under 25s now either don’t drink alcohol at all, or only drink a fraction of what their elders did. Many prefer to just go to the gym instead (which is the millenials third space).
On the flip side, some of the children of my friends and family say that alcohol in pubs is just too expensive, so they get their kicks from recreational drugs like weed or ket.
The number of people who have the disposable income to go to the pub regularly is falling in the UK, and the mainstay of the pub was often the working class and they are being priced out by everything getting more expensive.
There aren’t enough people with enough disposable income to weather the storms and keep going to the pub regardless, and therefore pubs (in general) are in deep trouble.
> is the tax on alcohol at pubs higher than at a store?
No, but the tax on food - which is where a lot of money lies, for most pubs in this day and age - is. Also, business rates end up being significantly higher per unit of alcohol sold. This means stores can keep alcohol prices very low (even under cost, as a promotional item).
Add to that that alcohol consumption rates are decreasing overall, sugar tax affecting non-alcoholic drinks, energy prices skyrocketing, etc.
Weatherspoons charge under £3 for a pint in town. That's 15 minutes at minimum wage.
Beer was far more expensive 25 years ago - £1.60 in 2000 in the student pub when I first started buying my own beer, that was about half an hour at minimum wage.
On the cost side: Wages are higher, energy costs more, rent is higher (because if the pub can't operate the owner can get planning permission to convert it to a private dwelling and sell it for £600k rather than making £12k a year in rent)
On the demand side: People are healthier and drink less. It's nowhere near as acceptable to go out for a few pints at lunch time. People can't drive to a rural pub.
It's hardly a subsidy if it's the removal of a tax that will go away entirely if the business is shuttered. This is frankly an awful framing. A well designed tax taxes a small portion of the business' margin. If the business has small margins, the tax is proportionately small. The tax in question is one that applies regardless of whether the business is making any money, and hence seems to have the express purpose of killing businesses.
Lower taxes is not subsidising a business.
It is, when it gets a favourable treatment over other businesses
> In her November Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves scaled back business rate discounts that have been in force since the pandemic from 75% to 40% - and announced that there would be no discount at all from April.
That, combined with big upward adjustments to rateable values of pub premises, left landlords with the prospect of much higher rates bills.
Changes to property taxes on business premises.
Kinda wish there was some way to quickly scroll through the pages... Also data seems to be different when ordered by different values?
When ordered by RV£ there are 43703 entries with data. Most negative RV£ change is -£137,500 for 33 Main Road
When ordered by RV% there are 43303 entries with data. Most negative RV% change is -87.0% for PAVILLION HOTEL
I didn't expect this website would double as an intelligence test.
I like how the status values could be used as labels of economic wellbeing for people, too:
Somehow Fine
Feeling It
Struggling
Fucked
Absolutely FuckedStealing this for error logging levels
The bristol stool scale also works well. Although that’s better for sprint planning maybe..
I live in south Bristol where the “Bristol stool scale” and the “pubs that need your help” overlap distressingly.
so...you got me. thinking it might have something to do with out worn the stools in your pub are. nope it's just, you know, stool.
s/Somehow/Possibly/g haha but I like that idea!
brilliant website which manages to convey classic British humour on a classically British topic. Also shines much needed light on the very serious challenges independent British Pubs are undergoing - these are essential social institutions, social coherence is damaged every time one of these shut down.
People really struggle when given a link to a web site that isn't for them, huh.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBRtbdVquWF/
Neither American nor from the UK, but I knew what this was about because it's possible to go online and seek out information. Neat.
What I didn't do was become some entitled see you next tuesday and complain that a .com should be reserved for the american audience and the site should use a .co.uk – As if american businesses don't utilise foreign TLDs to create cutesy URLs. Maybe now is a good time to note that the fashionable .AI TLD belongs to Anguilla, a British territory.
Classic American exceptionalism.
No. It's when the web site doesn't say who it's for at all, that's when everybody struggles. And understandably so.
Remember that every time you read 'national' today and it means 'US'.
Except that as a english speaking non american, this happens literally all the time with ecommerce?
It's not until I get to checkout I realise they do not ship to my country or want to deal with me.
International shipping is an entirely different subject. You can assume that .com is American unless otherwise indicated, and that you'll need to check shipping policies. Just like as an American, when I go to a .co.uk ecommerce site, I have to check whether they ship to the US.
American exceptionalism.
Because the internet was invented in America so it's the only country where a country suffix was never used from the start of its popularity.
I'm not saying this is good or bad or justified or not, just saying what the conventions are.
People only struggle because of a self-centered view that everything is supposed to be for them, and things that aren't for them are a weird exception. A reasonable person will realize that the fact that they don't understand any of what it's talking about means they're not the target audience, and move on (or poke around out of curiosity).
It's self-centered to want to communicate well?
It's just basic communications skills, and honestly decency, to describe what a thing is and who it's for.
Maybe someone who isn't the target audience still wants to learn about the thing? Which this site provides no way of doing. That's the problem. Why choose to be inaccessible like that, when it's so easy to add a couple of works and links?
> or poke around out of curiosity
You mean like by following links that are supplied? Because that's my complaint: there are no links.
> What is the main country where dying pubs is such a big subject?
How should I know? That's the point. It might as easily be Ireland for all I know. Or maybe pubs are dying in Boston or something?
> For f*ks sake I am not from UK yet it is easy to understand what it is all about from context and language.
I'm happy you're so smart. Not all of us are so lucky, I guess.
> Pure US arrogance.
Who said anything about the US? You know there are people from a lot of other countries who speak English too? If your concern is arrogance, it seems like it's your own that perhaps needs to be dialed back a little.
Suggesting that communication can be clearer isn't a form of arrogance. To the contrary, it's something that comes out of empathy, identifying how communication could help more readers/listeners.
It's not for you.
It's self-centered to want others to communicate well to you when they aren't attempting to communicate with you in the first place.
You want to learn about the thing? You have the entire internet at your fingertips. Click search bar, type "pub rates," boom, thousands of news stories.
If you want to know what's going on, put in the bare minimum effort to find out. If you don't care then ignore it and move on.
It shows three pubs very near me. Two of those actually closed several years ago.
The third is listed under an old name, it changed hands and changed names years ago.
it is rated: "The (FPI) score of 22 means this pub is classified as “Feeling It”"
While this is cool to see, would be nice to see some indication of the nation specific context for those outside that nation... especially since it's the more generic .com tld instead of say .uk ...
Maybe even a Union Jack in the corner as a background image, or something.
I'll do this on my projects when US sites start doing this on theirs
Given the arguments I have had with people on here about swearing and formal language and all the self censoring they seem to do, I thought it was immediately obvious from the URL that this was not american.
Broken - getting `ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR` when trying to open it in Chrome
For anyone else who entered a US zip code and was confused by the ‘invalid zip code’ error: this is UK only.
your first clue might have been that it does not say "zip code" in either the field label or the error message, it says "postcode".
The site has since changed the content from when I made the comment. It used to say zip code in the label and error.
Australia and NZ have postcodes, too.
If they had made this a .co.uk rather than a .com, there would be no confusion.
I think of postal code as a generic, international form of the concept, not tied to a location.
Or the term "pub." In the US it's much more usual to say "bar." Maybe "tavern" but that sounds rather dated to my ear.
When I lived in the PNW people used the word pub more than bar.
My sense is that it is an affectation meant to indicate an aspiration to something more than a bar (and its coarse patrons).
That’s because everybody up there thinks that liking soccer makes them English.
"Bar" is certainly the catch-all term in the U.S., but "pub" is also very widely understood to refer to a specific type of bar, especially (but not limited to) bars deliberately styled as Irish or British pubs.
Come to Virginia, where it's outright illegal for any establishment serving alcohol to not also serve food (and not only must food be served, it must account for at least 45% of revenue).
every now and then you'll find a public house or similarly named
"Pub" is a fairly common term throughout the world. But "pub that needs you" made it pretty obvious that it was about pubs in England.
Yes. Being on the other side of the world, I've only ever heard of efforts to save English pubs. Thus, without more details, one knows that is what is being referred to. Perhaps Scotland has the same kind of movement happening at the local level, but something on a global website implies global context.
I doubt most people would bother to think about that detail.
Silly me, I entered an Austrian zip code out of principle. Did not expect it to work, though, of course.
Seems to be England only. No results for Edinburgh.
Business rates are a devolved matter, Scotland set their own rates.
I see results on both sides of the border here, Wales and England.
Any plans to release the code? Would be nice to allow others to do something similar for their local pubs.
Yeah, they could reduce confusion by changing "the government" to "the UK government."
If Americans did the same it would be great
This is also a problem that exists within countries. My RSS feed is littered with Canadian independent (national) news agencies not defining what municipality article headlines relate to. E.g. "Mayor pushes back against province on xyz issue". Okay, that might be huge news for Timmins Ontario , but maybe BAU for Toronto. Even skimming the lead paragraph doesn't define the city often.
*Editting with a point: Perhaps everyone assumes a local audience.
Americans, hm? I see what you did there.
So just the three of us up here - Mexico/US/Canada?
Good luck. Americans won't even differentiate Washington State and Washington D.C. Even the AP guidelines say that "Washington" is ubiquitous shorthand for "Washington D.C." and recommends against shortening it to "D.C."
The most hilarious thing is that I learned recently that when they applied to be a state, the people from WA requested to be the state of Columbia. But a Kentucky rep said that would be too easily confused with the District of Columbia, and Congress changed it to Washington.
Americans do! If you are west of the Rockies, Washington resolves to the west. If you are east, it’s DC, and you have to say “you know, where Nirvana is from.”
Don’t get me started on east coast dumdums pronouncing Oregon as “Orry-gone.”
It's important to separate the spirit of this from the spirits of it.
Pubs as social gathering places are critical to exist and keep alive.
Drinking neurotoxins that have a lot of destruction and damage, maybe not so much.
In the UK pubs are extremely different as well than the US. This site is for the UK, since it's asking for a postal code, among other signs. The UK also I believe has last call at 11 PM, which helps fuel the binge drinking before 11 PM and the wild public afterwards. In North America, last call for alcohol can be 1-3 AM, and people generally aren't in a rush to fuel up to blast off.
Last call at 11pm stopped being a blanket rule in 2003. The Licensing Act 2003 (England and Wales) abolished strict closing times.
Most pubs now have much longer hours (some even 24/7) although they choose their opening hours based on how busy they are or think they will be. The local councils will take into account local considerations and limit individual pubs as they see fit.
Appreciate the clarification. My awareness was around soccer games.
Funny enough I worked with an old timer back in Charleston, SC which historically had no regulated last call. During his drinking years they passed a law requiring an 0200 closing time which, as he put it, was a terrible idea because it put all the drunks out on the street at the same time causing joint chaos. In his view having no official close meant folks naturally filtered out over time as they were sated. Seems any hard stop causes trouble?
Sometimes you have to try stuff to find out the unintended consequences. Not everything can be analysed/foreseen/predicted.
Hopefully they were able to see the negative effect, realise the mistake and reverse the decision.
Stopping serving at one hour didn’t have to mean closing at the same time.
11PM is pretty standard but it varies quite a lot. Some places can be open much later, it depends on what the local council will license.
For a dumb american, what is a 'pub rate'?
A tax based on property value.
I would love to know why it is unrealized gains is such a popular property tax strategy.
I’d love to know why people are happy with others making a fortune not through hard work, but through buying land and letting others hard work increase its value.
Rates are based (at least in principle) on the rental value of the building, making the gain concept irrelevant. The rent would be the same.
UK only
England & Wales only. The website is a response to new business rates (taxes) arriving this year.
Scotland, Northern Ireland & the rest of the world play by different rules.
Title could use (in Britain)
The Farmer's Dog pub is listed as fucked, maybe this site could get a shout-out on Clarkson's Farm. The difficulty of doing business in the UK is a common theme on his show.
Give tax breaks to tv personalities who buy farms as tax dodges and it has to be paid for by someone else.
I mean alcohol is the worst drug: it’s highly addictive, toxic to the body, one of the few drugs with potentially fatal withdrawal, and a major driver of violence, accidents, and family breakdown. Unlike most drugs, it seriously harms people beyond the user — and because it’s legal, cheap, and socially normalised, its damage happens on a massive scale.
Sooooo yes happy with pubs closures.
I agree until your last sentence. Pubs closing can be devastating.
Pubs are often the centre of a community, especially small ones. Not even small towns. Traditionally they have been centered around drinking, but this is changing. Much like libraries had to adapt to falling reading rates, pubs have had to adapt to falling alcohol consumption.
The hard part of this is that food and wage costs are often covered by alcohol costs, though where I'm from the government has exercised vice taxes to make this less tenable. More customers doesn't necessarily mean that much more profit, for a host of reasons.
I hope pubs find a way forward.
Source for my rambling: worked in and managed pubs for a decade. They're not just for heavy drinkers.
Nearest pub
2023 Rateable Value £13,800
2026 Rateable Value £12,250
Change -£3,300(-23.9%)
I guess "no" would be the answer then.
Nearest town has 3 pubs where rates are going down significantly and 4 where they're going up. I wonder why, is it that the previous setup was unfair to those who are seeing their rates going down?
The pub I do go to each week is seeing rates going up +£3,300. That's not as big an impact from yet another inflation busting minimum wage increase.
However the much bigger concern is that people will be scared to drive there. Currently you can drive there, have a pint, and then go home, and be confident you're not triggering the limit. They're reducing this limit, which means no more trip to the pub.
I'm sure it's fine in big cities where people live in walking distance.
This might be the single most British website on the internet.
I wonder if there's an equivalent use case in the US.
Cool! Would be nice to include all world postal codes and addresses.
The one near me which is absolutely fucked, as far as I'm concerned, deserves it.
Fighty customers, crap beer, odd opening hours, and half their food menu is off ("sorry mate, we've got no cheese"). Oh, and now their credit card terminal prompts customers for a tip!
I love a good pub, but most are crap.
Near me, the (nice but always too busy) Old Dairy is getting a cut, and the (mediocre Arsenal fan packed) Bank of Friendship and Arsenal Tavern are getting obliterated. God exists, and he supports Spurs!
what is a "rateable value" here?
Property tax valuation.
The nearest "absolutely fucked" pub to me hasn't existed since 2008. I'd say they have bigger problems than a rates increase.
They do acknowledge this on the site
> Based on VOA data (Nov 2025) which is often inaccurate. Many pubs have also closed since then.
Find an English pub that needs you.
Not true, it also covers pubs in Wales
Yeah, I have NO clue what this site is even about.
It is a "use it or lose it" style campaign by the looks of it.
Lots of Pubs in the UK are closing down in recent years. Pubs have traditionally been a big part of socialising in the UK. I don't drink anymore so I don't bother unless I am having a pub lunch on a Friday.
Can't you drink non-alcoholic beverage? If the point is socialising, alcohol is not a requirement.
I know a lot of bars in my area also are places to play board games nowadays.
somehow my local, which is pretty dodgy, is doing fine. I need to driving distance to find one thats fucked, and Im not even in a well funded area
Just getting a totally black map with anonymous coloured dots on both chrome and Firefox. The pub may or may not be fucked, but the website is.
(Yes I tried disabling all the dark settings, no difference)
Would be much more helpful if it indicated literally anywhere on the homepage that this was specific to the UK.
Being a .com as opposed to a .co.uk, you can't even tell from the domain.
No. It was obvious from the title that this was about the UK, and also why should they - American sites don't indicate this either, and they have no monopoly on the language.
.com has meant commercial since the 90s so how about all US only sites use .us?
I think it's as simple as the fact that for a throwaway site it's considerably cheaper to get a .com domain than it is a domain that ends in .uk
Sure. So then just add a couple of extra words to the homepage to make it clear? It's not that hard, and saves visitors a lot of time from hunting around trying to figure it out.
There are plenty of US sites that make no mention of being US specific, I feel like this is well deserved
Due to the history of the internet, anything ".com" should be assumed to be US-specific if not obviously global, just like anything ".co.uk" should be assumed to be UK-specific if not obviously global.
If you use a .com for something that is specific to a country/region that is not the US, the onus is on you to clarify. That's the problem here. If you're not going to make it ".uk", then you should be making that obvious on the homepage.
Due to the history of the internet, anything ".com" should be assumed to be a commercial entity.
If you are from the US, the only nation who doesn't frequently use a national TLD, the onus is on you to judge if a site is commercial, US-specific, global, or something else entirely.
I mean... I don't disagree that there is an onus on any website to make it clear who it's audience is. But .com hasn't been exclusively US centric for literally decades. Even during peak 90s domain name territorialism .com meant "commercial".
People outside the USA, i.e. the majority of the world, often experience the opposite to what you've described: the tiresome implicit assumption that everything on the internet is US-related by default. It's not.
The US is the center of the world though. There are privileges to that like assuming the world revolves around you.
For now at least, empires fall, so do superpowers.
There is a reason the prime meridian goes through Greenwich and it isn’t because we asked nicely.
> The US is the center of the world though
Give it a few months.
Like the big red letters in the title that say "IN BRITAIN"?
I see them on the leaderboard, but not on the main page.
I don't see that. Ctrl+F and zero "Britain" anywhere on the page. Or even in the HTML source.
The only big red letters are "THAT NEEDS YOU".
[dead]
Man, it's weird being an American sometimes.
I do not drink. I am half Irish and half German.
Drinking is a _very_ weird cultural artifact from our past. It doesn't improve your life, it has been scientifically proven to not 'help you relax', and there may in fact be no safe amount of alcohol to drink; all the pop-sci headlines that say 'one glass of wine a week may improve your health' are really about studies that put the safe max at one glass per week.
From what I can tell, the UK is no longer subsidizing what is effectively a criminal enterprise that is centuries old.
You’re American?
You thus aren’t “half Irish or “half German”. Stop with your cultural appropriation.
With all due respect this opinion verges on neo prohibitionist alarmism. The social benefits of alcohol have been widely acknowledged and at a time when we are all spending too much time at home on our phones (arguably worse for health than a pint), communities need more social spaces. That place may not necessarily be a bar and it’s perfectly fine if you don’t wish to drink, but it’s a bit much to refer to a cultural product as a criminal enterprise.
Many people have written what you have written, trying to justify their life choices to strangers on the internet.
None of them have ever explained why alcohol, or any drug use, needs to be part of third spaces.
Society is losing third spaces, largely due to unchecked capitalism eroding the society it serves... but 'pubs' are just another form of rent-seeking by landlords. It has been proven without a doubt that third spaces as a commercial venture is ultimately non-functional, yet that is what pubs and bars have always been, and now they are dying out.
The book "Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization" would be a good read for you, should you wish to consider alternative viewpoints.
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Distilling what I remember about an entire book I read a couple years ago into a HN comment is difficult, but one of the more salient notes from it is this: Adult humans are naturally suspicious of others and slow to trust, particularly those they have no existing points of connection to. In contrast - children have much lower inhibitions in this sense and are much better at this.
Alcohol, in moderation, is one of the most effective tools in humanity's arsenal to more easily socialize with and create trust with total strangers.
The "reduction of inhibitions" we are all aware of in terms of being a risk of making negative choices, also serves to greatly reduce inhibition of the average adult to new interactions and experiences.
It is difficult to achieve this result in adults otherwise, especially in terms of a single activity with low investment required in time, money, facilities, and commitment.
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It is likely that as we transitioned from a society where adult encounters with total strangers were rare (tribal/village) to common (urban) that alcohol played a pretty significant role in creating the social cohesion for it.
It is not at all clear that we have found some successful alternative to this, and we may well find that even with all the documented downsides of it, we're worse off as a society for moving away from it.
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Again, this is my recollection of a book I read a couple years back - don't take this word for word. I will also note that it's not all rosy and has some thoughts on the types of consumption we should probably discourage as well and the general risk/reward of alcohol in society.
Again, with all due respect, I’m not seeing how my comment is pushing a “life choice” on anyone, and the movement to restrict alcohol consumption equally qualifies as pushing a life choice on someone.
Commercial pubs have existed for hundreds of year. But drinking doesn’t have to be commercial. In Berlin where I live there’s a non-profit hacker space that has a bar with at-cost drinks. It’s also perfectly legal to buy a beer and sit in the park. And of course, nothing is better than having friends over for a wine tasting.
> None of them have ever explained why alcohol, or any drug use, needs to be part of third spaces.
Third places need to have some kind of draw, else nobody will show up. "If you build it, they will come" is for the movies. In the real world you need to have a compelling reason to have others come in your door. Space alone is not sufficient to establish a third space.
That draw doesn't necessarily have to be alcohol (or another drug), but it was the thing that many people used to want. Threatening use of a third space by fear of the wrath of a mighty deity only buys you one day out of the week, I'm afraid.
You're quite right that people no longer want alcohol like they used to. Why nurse a hangover when you can get the same dopamine rush scrolling through TikTok at home from the comfort of your couch? This means that many third spaces of yesteryear no longer serve a purpose, and as you call out, have closed as a result.
Which is all well and good, I guess, but some segment of the population still wish that there were third spaces for them to exist in. Trouble is that they've never been able to find anything as compelling as alcohol used to be across large swaths of the population, making a different kind of third space of the same scale a complete no-go. Trying to salvage the remaining alcohol-centric third places is the only path they can see to try and relive that glory.
Of course there are plenty of alcohol-free (or at least not alcohol focused) third spaces that revolve around niche interests, but these are generally not seen as a good fit for those who don't have that particular niche interest. Alcohol was historically so successful as the foundation for a third space because, once upon a time, nearly everyone was interested in it, bringing everyone in the door.
What's especially American about this remark isn't the experience of consuming alcohol in public. What is characteristically American, I think, is the assumption that we can pronounce a thing good or bad merely on the basis of its effect on the individual, with no regard for one's relationships with other people. Drinking in a pub is a social activity, and the alcohol is a lubricant for that activity. Yes, doing too much of it can cause great harm; doing any amount of it could cause some harm; it does not follow that the thing is a net detriment to society, and that it should be banned.
Maybe it is that way for people in the UK, or maybe people of a certain age group.
However, I am, as I said, an American, but also a Millennial. For many Millennials, drinking isn't a social activity, it is a form of quiet shame. We saw our parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents destroy their lives because of alcoholism, we lost friends and family because of being victims of drunk drivers, we saw people die of complications of a lifetime of drinking.
A lot of us simply chose not to repeat those mistakes as those mistakes effect the people around us in grave ways.
If anything, drinking is an anti-social activity, even if you do it entirely socially.
I just don't see the point in keeping it around.
> I just don't see the point in keeping it around.
So 'you do you' and continue not drinking, no need to preach your life choices. I'm also 'millenial' , I enjoy many alcoholic drinks both socially and because they go with my meal or simply are something not hot/dairy/sweet and other than water.
> [Millennials] saw our parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents destroy their lives because of alcoholism, we lost friends and family because of being victims of drunk drivers, we saw people die of complications of a lifetime of drinking.
Why do you think alcoholism - which is certain distinct from drinking - was new with the generation above 'millenials'?
It sounds like you don't understand what a pub is like.
Whilst this is definitely not what's it's like, this quaint video is all about the lineage of the pub in the UK, and explains the third-spaceness of them, which I'd argue still exists[1].
Pubs are so important for our communities in the UK, whether that's watching the game, seeing a friend's band, celebrating a birthday or just catching up after work.
Many of the parts of my life have been lived in a pub. If it's criminal, I'd happily be locked up. Or maybe lock me in, a sadly rarer occurrence these days.
Exactly, designing a 'third place' that isn't alcohol focused seems to be a tough nut to crack. Alcohol greases the wheels for socialization and is a highly profitable item for a place to sell that keeps the lights on (people may have several drinks an hour, drinking leads to more drinking both in the long and shot terms, etc). Meanwhile a typical coffeeshop here in seattle is, aside from the espresso machines, is a near silent library-like space. Many people heads down in a book or a laptop. Instead of having a few drinks per hour you instead may have a single coffee and maybe a pastry or sandwich.
If someone opened a social space with maybe a kitchen that let you pay by the hour to hang out, credit for kitchen orders. All the other bar/pub accoutrements gaming (darts, pool, shuffleboard, pinball, whatnot), sports on the tv, whatever .. I still don't think people will go for it.
I think the only non-boozy option that comes to mind is the small town diner but those are thin on the ground.
> Exactly, designing a 'third place' that isn't alcohol focused seems to be a tough nut to crack.
how so? I go to a climbing gym and it is a pretty social (and, of course, healthy) activity... crossfit is not my thing but apparently it is similar for more traditional workouts. to the extent you can consider a cycling or running club a "space" those are similar. dog parks for dog owners, playgrounds for parents, etc...
Many of those lack spontaneity though. I don’t walk past a climbing gym with a friend of mine and think “fancy popping in there for an hour or so?” You need to plan a visit to many of those places so you have the right clothing/footwear/etc.
The social point of a pub is that you can just decide to go in on a whim. Pubs are increasingly not about alcohol either. I’ve had a few instances in the last couple of years where I couldn’t drink alcohol for extended periods (various reasons, mostly medication related). Hasn’t stopped me going to the pub.
Years ago you would get an odd look if a group walked into a pub and all ordered soft drinks but not so much now (well, you still will get that in some pubs).
Obviously I’m not out looking for another place to buy a lime and soda after midnight but I can quite happily have an evening out without having to drink alcohol whilst others do or don’t around me.
Here is what I will say. Drinking certainly is not a healthy choice. However hanging out with your peers for a few hours a night in public certainly is.
Unfortunately I haven't found any place that cracks that problem in america, especially into the later hours. There isn't really a place for people to hang out and socialize without it being a boozy bar. As someone who doesn't really enjoy drinking I don't even really want to go to boardgame/chess/trivia nights at bars because I feel like I'm freeloading. ( I imagine any given bar patron is having 1-3 drinks per hour and potentially ordering some food if that is an option. I might order some food and have a soda...)
I assume part of the problem being that alcohol has the helpful side effect of greasing the wheels socially. Coffee houses that are open late are generally library like affairs, a lot of people sitting around on laptops or with books, any attempt to start a more social night is, in my experience, refused because of this.
The UK government hates its populace, particularly its natives. Downvote all you want.
Having watched two alcoholic family members die horribly, spurred on by functioning alcoholic friends whos only social interaction is at the pub through habit only, fuck 'em. Let them die.
We need better social spaces which do not have the token cost of drinks to use.
Ok so because your family were alcoholics nobody should have a space to drink? What an absurd thing to say.
No I'm saying we have a social problem with alcohol in this country and brush it under the table as a cultural identity thing.
Its extremely hard to cope with how bleak life is in the UK without frequent intoxication (source: abandoned the uk, no longer drink at all)
Fair. That's what they invented planes for :)
Am I the only one that has no idea what this is talking about? Even the "About" section just dumps a ton of jargon about something being a problem for "pubs" - which, very unclear from the homepage, is actually talking about bars/places to drink beer/etc in the UK.
But again, now I know it's talking about that kind of pub, what is the actual issue? Some sort of rate being added to something? What rate? Is this related to a rating system? Taxes? Is it affecting the consumer? The owner?
So confused.
Nope, I have utterly no idea what "rate increases" are being referred to. Doesn't seem to have a single explanation or link anywhere that I can find.
To be fair, I'd say that most people in the UK who would be interested in the contents of this site are aware of the context and know what phrases like "rates increases" actually mean.
It's been in the news quite a bit over the years since the pandemic.
Not every site has to provide an ELI5.
The homepage doesn't even say it's about the UK.
For a generic ".com" domain that isn't American, it's generally a good idea to yes, have a kind of minimal hint that tells you at least which country it's about, and at least a single link you can follow to get the broader context.
I'm following a link to it on HN. When I get there, I have zero context. Visitors to your site can come from anywhere, so it's generally considered a good idea to provide basic context.
Or how about the US starts using ".us"?
"Umm", yes, that's why I referred to the homepage specifically.
It's generally a good idea to make the subject of your site clear on the homepage, without requiring people to start clicking around to hunt for it.
A form of property tax it looks like, charged on businesses: https://www.gov.uk/introduction-to-business-rates
> seeing its rateable value go up 480%!
Rateable value is based on what the market prices would be to rent that space. So, somebody is doing nicely apparently.
But if the landlord owns the pub (rare in the UK I know), but I believe it’s the case in this instance, then what are they getting from unrealised property price gains?
Leverages and confidence from the credit agency (be it banks or private investments), and the higher possiblity of approving the borrowing, and thus getting more shitty debts to be made, and contribute more to the total Gee-Dee-Pee which is the holy grail those economists chase after
What does anyone gain from it really, except money in the bank for a handful of individuals, outsized property prices seem to be a hurdle for functional societies in basically every way.
It doesn't benefit a town if rent is so expensive that their businesses shut down.
You conveniently leave out that you were making minimum(?) youth wage.
In 2026, at 18y minimum wage is €7.36 per hour and at 21y it rockets up to €14.71
Not that youth wage past 18y isn't a stupid concept, but your wage being guaranteed to at least double in ~36 months time is rather relevant.
Nothing, but if market value of the land is going up, then that means the price for government services is going up (e.g. government employees need to be paid more, land acquisition or rent costs more, materials cost more, etc). Hence taxes collected have to go up.
This could all simply be due to a devaluation of the currency, rather than due to increased desirability or productivity.
Collateral you can borrow against?
> It seems like the taxes only go up while the services get worse in the UK,
Same in the Netherlands
Here’s the Lamb and Flag in Oxford
https://www.ismypubfucked.com/pub/11447801200
> the Inklings, a literary group including J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, started meeting at The Lamb and Flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_%26_Flag,_Oxford
The Lamb and Flag has faced previous financial challenges.
It in fact closed temporarily in the pandemic due to UK law preventing their then owner / operator, St John’s College, a charity, subsidising a loss making business, despite having the wherewithal to do so.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-55763746.amp
Amateurs. One close to me is at an +821% increase in its tax bill and rateable value at 613%.
The services have certainly not got better in the last 5 years. This Government is fiscally illiterate and has hit the top of the Laffer curve and is now trying to go down the other side.
This government have been in power for less than 2 years. Despite launching a lot of trial balloons on raising taxes they haven't actually raised the headline tax rates (other than allowing fiscal drag to do so).
Overall the tax burden in the UK is middling for western democracies. It's actually on the low side for low earners - which is probably a problem because the distribution is such that the majority pay very little.
The other problem being cliff edges and complexities which distinctive chasing pay rises and working more for a lot of people.
Unfortunately, if an election were to be held today, the morons at Reform would have the greatest chance of winning, thanks to Starmer's ostrich syndrome, Corbyn dividing the Labour vote and the Tories being absolutely irrelevant after 15 years of continuous rule.
Don’t. Just don’t.
There’s time for some party to sort themselves out before the next election is due (Aug 2029).
I thought Corbyn started his own party? Surely they have time to figure out a way to look more competent than Starmer of all people
The more Corbyn performs, the more the Labour vote will get divided. The same balkanization happened with the Tories and Reform/UKIP.
"This" ...?
You jest.
Meet the new government, same as the old government.
old government left them a £20bn funding hole to fix as they broke the rules on spending.
Agreed. I think Parliamentary Democracy has about run in course - all countries under it face basically the same problems, and the elections are meaningless.