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367 points24 daysismypubfucked.com
philo2323 days ago

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...

alexfoo23 days ago

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.

marcus_holmes23 days ago

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.

9JollyOtter23 days ago

The post office will attempt to deliver if you put an address on it.

There is guy living off grid in I believe Dorset on YouTube called "Maximus Ironthumper". The post office told him to try sending himself letters, eventually they started turning up. Then that became the address.

He has a whole series of videos about how he kinda managed to setup his off grid living situation, there is everything from how to avoid planning permission, to how he setup his solar power.

+1
JBlue4222 days ago
GJim23 days ago

I believe similar has happened, whereby a seller of the Big Issue (a magazine sold by the homeless to raise money) had a postcode issued to a bench where they could pick up deliveries of the magazine.

sjw98723 days ago

That's a nice way to give the postie a pleasant walk on a lovely summer day.

decimalenough23 days ago

This is Britain we're talking about, it'll be pissing down rain/sleet on the other 364 days.

gerdesj23 days ago

"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.

NickPollard23 days ago

There is apparently a suite to rent in the Rosewood Hotel in London (near Holborn) which has it's own postcode (WC1V 7EN).

To be fair it's a 6-bedroom wing, but still a fun fact.

shermantanktop23 days ago

My postcode in Surrey had about 7 houses according to the postie.

comprev23 days ago

The concept of a postcode was originally due to the sack weight a postie could deliver before returning to the van.

Each postcode would then have an optimum delivery route often devised by the postie's themselves.

terinjokes23 days ago

> 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 US Zip+4 usually identifies a specific delivery point. In some places this can mean it can even identify specific units within a building.

neves23 days ago

Mail from a guy that wants to preserve pubs wouldn't be junk.

gambiting23 days ago

How is that different from a mail from a local church asking me to donate, or a local bingo club opening a new location - it's all junk. If I didn't ask for it to be sent to my address, it's all junk.

alexfoo23 days ago

One person's junk is another person's fuel for heating.

Throughout the year a friend of mine would collect any junk mail, but mostly many copies of the free daily newspapers (Metro, Evening Standard, etc) that litter the trains/underground in the evenings, soak them with water than use a briquette maker to press the paper into blocks. Once dried they provide an ample supply of fuel to heat his home for the 6-10 months of the year (depending on how poorly your home is insulated) that heating is required in the UK.

He definitely didn't have a "No junk mail" sticker on his letterbox.

+1
conorcleary23 days ago
ljm23 days ago

Any communication received without explicit consent, after providing details, is junk, and would fall under GDPR as using that info for a different purpose than what was described.

philo2323 days ago

Yep, locally where I am there’s one postcode for all the houses on one side of the street (all the even numbered houses) and another for the opposite side (all the odd numbers.)

Presumably it helps a lot with validating the address is correct, kinda like a checksum, and also probably helps with how deliveries are organised by the local office before the postie is sent out with them all.

theBobBob23 days ago

In Ireland we were very late to the postcode game and when we introduced them a few years back they actually uniquely identifies a single address. We also continued our "interesting" habit of renaming everything to make them sound more Irish so they are called Eircodes. In theory you could just put the single 7 character Eircode on a letter and it would be enough although our postal service has said we can't do that.

lblume23 days ago

Why not?

Macha23 days ago

By being late to computerized sorting, the postal service (An Post) never actually needed postcodes the way others did, as by the time they got computerized, fuzzy address lookups in the full address database was something that was available. It's mostly the third party couriers and marketing people pushed for post codes so they could apply techniques from other countries here.

Now asking An Post to overhaul their system to work on postcodes only is a bit like asking a postal service which requires postcodes to make them optional. It's technically possible, sure, but they're not going to want to spend the money.

_That said_, An Post's last resort routing department is pretty famous for getting the right address from pretty fragmentary information like "Mary down by the church, formerly of Kilnowhere", so I'm sure if a letter with just a eircode arrived there they'd sort it, but I imagine that An Post don't want to encourage people doing things that increases load on the labour intensive sorting.

flashpoint3141523 days ago

This is delightfully referenced as the Blind Letter Office in Terry Pratchett's book "Making Money":

<Moist ran downstairs and Lord Vetinari was indeed sitting in the Blind Letter Office with his boots on a desk, a sheaf of letters in his hand and a smile on his face.

'Ah, Lipwig,' he said, waving the grubby envelopes. 'Wonderful stuff! Better than the crossword! I like this one: "Duzbuns Hopsit pfarmerrsc". I've put the correct address underneath.' He passed the letter over to Moist.

He had written: K. Whistler, Baker, 3 Pigsty Hill.

'There are three bakeries in the city that could be said to be opposite a pharmacy,' said Vetinari, 'but Whistler does those rather good curly buns that regrettably look as though a dog has just done his business on your plate and somehow managed to add a blob of icing.'>

pjc5023 days ago

There used to be a site "postcodeine" which would overlay the prefixes onto a map as you typed, so you could enter "SW" or "KY" etc and watch it narrow down the area by keystroke.

OJFord23 days ago

> 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?

justincormack23 days ago

No, still usually a few residences rurally but probably more variable

alexpotato23 days ago

I lived in SW1 many years ago and was surprised to learn, from this website, that SW goes all the way out to SW19!

walthamstow23 days ago

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.

alexfoo23 days ago

Hadn't noticed that before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW_postcode_area

SW2 to SW9 are in alphabetical order: Brixton, Chelsea, Clapham, Earls Court, Fulham, South Ken, South Lambeth, Stockwell.

But then it starts again and you have to squint a bit for SW10-SW20: Brompton, Battersea, Balham, Barnes, Mortlake, Putney, Streatham, Tooting, Wandsworth, Wimbledon, West Wimbledon.

Looking at a few others (SE, etc) I see that the first chunk of them are in alphabetical order, but then they've added some extra ones later that break the ordering (e.g. SE19 onwards) but they have tried to add the extra ones in mostly alphabetical order too.

walthamstow23 days ago

Yeah, they've become a bit muddled over the years but generally alphabetical in the batches they're added. E was nice and clean before the Olympics, then they added E20 for Stratford after E18 Woodford.

Most people assume it's relative to how far out the area is from the centre

alexfoo23 days ago

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.

sefrost24 days ago

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.

tialaramex23 days ago

> 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.

sefrost23 days ago

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?

ehnto23 days ago

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.

+3
econ23 days ago
+2
ipsento60623 days ago
stevefan199923 days ago

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

+1
trgn23 days ago
lotsofpulp23 days ago

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.

cortesoft23 days ago

Collateral you can borrow against?

brightbeige23 days ago

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

turbonaut23 days ago

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

ahazred8ta23 days ago

> On the way to an Inklings meeting, Lewis gave some money to a street beggar, and I made the usual objection: "Won't he just spend it on drink?" He answered, "Yes, but if I kept it, so would I."

iNerdier24 days ago

Amateurs. One close to me is at an +821% increase in its tax bill and rateable value at 613%.

huijzer23 days ago

> It seems like the taxes only go up while the services get worse in the UK,

Same in the Netherlands

fleroviumna23 days ago

[dead]

moop_moop24 days ago

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.

VBprogrammer23 days ago

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.

dgroshev23 days ago

The biggest problem is that the tax on a median taxpayer is not just "middling", it's a bit over a third of what a median German taxpayer is paying. The rest of the fiscal problems (convoluted tax rules, cliff edges to try to claw something back, abrupt tax increases like the one on pubs) are downstream from that.

+1
pjc5023 days ago
fakedang23 days ago

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.

vixen9923 days ago

I'd be interested to know your view on how you think Britain should be governed and the extent to which you think others would agree. Serious question: can you offer a link to some such description?

+2
fakedang23 days ago
GrowingSideways23 days ago

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

fakedang23 days ago

The more Corbyn performs, the more the Labour vote will get divided. The same balkanization happened with the Tories and Reform/UKIP.

alexfoo23 days ago

Don’t. Just don’t.

There’s time for some party to sort themselves out before the next election is due (Aug 2029).

LightBug123 days ago

"This" ...?

You jest.

HPsquared23 days ago

Meet the new government, same as the old government.

Quarrelsome23 days ago

old government left them a £20bn funding hole to fix as they broke the rules on spending.

LAC-Tech23 days ago

[flagged]

+1
vixen9923 days ago
anfractuosity24 days ago

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.

hermitcrab24 days ago

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.

RobotToaster23 days ago

> software drinks

I knew java was good for something

hermitcrab23 days ago

Must have been muscle memory.

9rx24 days ago

> All the profit was spirits and software drinks.

What are the margins on a Codeacola?

cyberpunk24 days ago

15 quid for a 25ml of whisky is ridiculous however.

amiga38623 days ago

Depends on the whisky.

You could buy a bottle of Teachers and serve yourself 25ml for 70p. You could buy a bottle of 30-year aged Macallan matured in sherry oak, and serve yourself 25ml for £160.

In a pub, you should be able to get a shot of blended whisky for about £4-6, and mass-market single malts (the kind you also find in supermarkets) for about £5-£10.

If you don't ask for a specific whisky, they should ask you which one you want, and/or say "is name alright?" and give you one of the cheap ones.

the_other23 days ago

Depends how old the whisky/whiskey is.

hayd23 days ago

> This is great for HMRC because it collects 10 times more than what the publican does

WTF.

jimnotgym23 days ago

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.

Aromasin23 days ago

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat-roofed_pub

hdgvhicv23 days ago

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.

jimnotgym23 days ago

Not quite that old, but plenty of historic pubs have gone on fire

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq87x44ey9po

pjc5023 days ago

This is the hidden tragedy of the "listed building" process. It's actually a sizeable burden on a property, because suddenly there's all these compliance requirements on how you do repairs and upkeep.

_Not_ doing repairs and upkeep is free.

Arson is very difficult to prove.

So the listing process preserves a building exactly as it is, sometimes for decades past its usefulness, until it collapses or burns down.

p0w3n3d23 days ago

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.

wat1000024 days ago

People really struggle when given a link to a web site that isn't for them, huh.

quitit23 days ago

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.

addandsubtract23 days ago

The fuck is that insta video have to do with this topic?!

wat1000023 days ago

It's about exactly this phenomenon of people seeing things that aren't for them and complaining about it instead of moving on.

quitit23 days ago

It’s for you sunshine.

addandsubtract22 days ago

Touché

crazygringo23 days ago

No. It's when the web site doesn't say who it's for at all, that's when everybody struggles. And understandably so.

wat1000023 days ago

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).

crazygringo23 days ago

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.

+1
prmoustache23 days ago
+1
wat1000023 days ago
retsibsi23 days ago

> Maybe someone who isn't the target audience still wants to learn about the thing

This is fair enough, but they don't make it too hard -- there's an About page, where the first line mentions England and Wales and the rest of the page makes it clear that the issue is about rate increases. Googling something like "england pub rate increases" will get you the rest of the way if you're interested.

(I think us non-Americans sometimes go a bit far with the whole "finally you're tasting some of your own medicine, Yanks!" thing, and I'm sorry some people are being aggressive. But I don't think this site is as opaque as you're suggesting, nor that it makes any more assumptions about its audience than lots of US-based sites do. They're targeting locals, and I think it's fine for a home page to start talking to its intended audience immediately rather than wasting space on an introduction for outsiders.)

OJFord23 days ago

Remember that every time you read 'national' today and it means 'US'.

ikr67823 days ago

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.

crazygringo23 days ago

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.

+2
prmoustache23 days ago
Natfan22 days ago

.com means .company.

USAmerican have .us, i don't need a reason why you would need to claim that .com is USAmerican, unless you live in a very small bubble

demarq23 days ago

This is fascinating. How does "pub" not immediately scream British?

When I read stories I feel I can pick out US and UK instantly:

> Everyone is freaking out about ... - American

> ... has been Sacked from - British

> They negotiated a total sum of ... - British

> The ... is totally insane - American

retsibsi23 days ago

> How does "pub" not immediately scream British?

Maybe it screams "not American", but the rest of the Commonwealth does exist, you know. Some of us are standing right here.

dorian-graph23 days ago

> .. that's when everybody struggles.

That's not true though, is it?

GJim23 days ago

Classic American exceptionalism.

rconti24 days ago

Interest in context on "government pub rates". New tax scheme?

amiga38624 days ago

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.

rconti23 days ago

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?

amiga38623 days ago

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/...

+1
bloak23 days ago
rconti22 days ago

Interesting how punitive the tax structure is on vacant buildings. On the one hand, harsh for the landlord. On the other hand, encourages lower rent to get the space occupied and reduce blight.

eichin23 days ago

... was that a real guardian article, or just an elaborate prank built around the phrase "shell company"?

flir24 days ago

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?

kristianc24 days ago

"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.

flir23 days ago

You won't find any argument from me on all those other things.

But pubs are a weird place to draw the line.

kristianc23 days ago

Every one of them individually seems like a weird place to draw the line. Social fabric and the ties that bond matter.

ljm23 days ago

Probably because the line keeps getting moved. There's a lot of pressure to build housing with little to no consideration of community, either existing or new.

Just get rid of all the third spaces in an area and turn it into a lifeless residential suburb or something. Once pubs are gone it'll be something else.

jaccola24 days ago

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.

vixen9923 days ago

While agreeing totally with your sentiment it's a fact that alcohol (the raison d'etre for pubs existing at present unless their business model changes) is classed as a Group 1 carcinogen. 'Consuming alcohol increases the risk of developing at least 7 types of cancer;, https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/... etc., We've all got to die but some ways are nastier than others.

yunohn24 days ago

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.

+1
alexfoo23 days ago
toyg23 days ago

> 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.

+1
t-324 days ago
carlosjobim23 days ago

> ...do we want to subsidize pubs...

Reducing taxes are not subsidizes. Subsidizes are when the government gives tax money to a business, not when they take a little less from a business.

People might think it's the same equation, but the difference in reality is enormous for the economy.

nofriend23 days ago

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.

christkv24 days ago

Lower taxes is not subsidising a business.

hermanzegerman23 days ago

It is, when it gets a favourable treatment over other businesses

RobinL24 days ago

> 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.

cjs_ac24 days ago

Changes to property taxes on business premises.

iso163124 days ago

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.

j4523 days ago

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.

alexfoo23 days ago

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.

j4523 days ago

Appreciate the clarification. My awareness was around soccer games.

alexfoo23 days ago

The UK is just weird about that.

Decades of hooliganism (mostly a thing of the past thankfully) has meant that you can't be in possession of alcohol within view of the pitch in the top 5 tiers in the UK. (And by the 5th tier you're looking at matches that have attendances anywhere down to 400 or so, although some clubs in the 5th tier still manage to attract 10000 fans to home games).

This spills out into the local community around stadiums too. Many pubs really close to the ground will have extra restrictions on matchdays, that's probably what you've experienced. But that's not just the UK, I remember going to a River Plate game in Buenos Aires 20 years ago and being amazed that on match days there was no alcohol served within a mile of the stadium or some such rule.

I've been to Champions League games in the UK sponsored by a variety of alcoholic drink companies and they weren't serving alcohol anywhere in the stadium (well, I guess they still do in the hospitality sections).

Even when the stadiums do serve alcohol they do strange things like stopping serving as the second half kicks off. As someone who wants to watch all of the football I've paid to go see it's a very odd thing getting a pint at half time and drinking it in under 10 minutes in order to be back to the stands in time for the second half to kick off. Us Brits just accept it and deal with it.

Compare that to watching rugby or cricket in the UK where you have no fan segregation and alcohol allowed at the seats.

It's also much more relaxed at the lower tiers of UK football. I've watched a few Dulwich Hamlet games with a friend and they allow to bring your own beers in (may have changed, haven't been for a few years), and sometimes have a "pay what you want" admission price.

Wherever I go in the UK I try and keep a look out for a local game, even if the football is terrible the people watching is often amazing and worth the admission price alone.

+1
j4523 days ago
antonymoose23 days ago

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?

alexfoo23 days ago

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.

j4523 days ago

Stopping serving at one hour didn’t have to mean closing at the same time.

s1mplicissimus23 days ago

How do you imagine this playing out? People don't get the alcohol they want anymore -> no more orders -> No more business -> Not worth it for the owner

j4523 days ago

Oh, nothing to imagine..

It’s already a reality in many places.

Last call at 2, people filter out by 3, instead of being pushed outside instantly.

Some sporting events don’t sell alcohol the last quarter, period, etc.

rcxdude23 days ago

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.

cjrp23 days ago

It's interesting, I was hoping it would be based on more than just the rates change though. Maybe combined with Google "how busy is this place" data, for example.

roryirvine23 days ago

Agreed. Currently it reckons that the most-fucked pub in my area is the largest pub within walking distance from a major premier league football stadium.

But it's always busy even out of season, and absolutely heaving on match days. I'd be surprised if a single match day's profits weren't sufficient to cover the additional tax for the year.

Personally, I'll continue to offer my enthusiastic support to my much smaller, friendlier local even though it's facing only a tiny tax increase by comparison.

GJim23 days ago

Whilst you make a good point, the true purpose of this site it to draw attention to the new outrageous tax bills faced by pubs; many of which are going under and are a real loss to the communities they serve.

hunglee224 days ago

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.

jihadjihad24 days ago

I like how the status values could be used as labels of economic wellbeing for people, too:

  Somehow Fine
  Feeling It
  Struggling
  Fucked
  Absolutely Fucked
stonegray24 days ago

Stealing this for error logging levels

cyberpunk24 days ago

The bristol stool scale also works well. Although that’s better for sprint planning maybe..

grumblepeet23 days ago

I live in south Bristol where the “Bristol stool scale” and the “pubs that need your help” overlap distressingly.

s1mplicissimus23 days ago

Thanks for pointing out the stool scale. I went from "hahaha I'm sure this some kind of 'how shitty stuff is'" to "let me see how it works" to "oh, it's actually a useful medical chart" lol

dylan60423 days ago

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.

jihadjihad24 days ago

s/Somehow/Possibly/g haha but I like that idea!

NooneAtAll323 days ago

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

zamadatix23 days ago

Seems fixed now. I wonder if it was related to the number of entries with nulls in one of those two fields (but not necessarily both at the same time).

sleepybrett23 days ago

For a dumb american, what is a 'pub rate'?

leapingdog23 days ago
antonymoose23 days ago

I would love to know why it is unrealized gains is such a popular property tax strategy.

hdgvhicv23 days ago

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.

antonymoose23 days ago

In the case of these pubs it sounds like they’re being priced out of the area through no fault of their own while trying to run an honest business so I don’t quite follow your logic here…

tom_23 days ago

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.

SideburnsOfDoom23 days ago

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”"

quitit23 days ago

I didn't expect this website would double as an intelligence test.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn23 days ago

Access to this site has been blocked by the Protective DNS Service of the UK National Cyber Security Centre via CloudFlare

lenerdenator24 days ago

This might be the single most British website on the internet.

I wonder if there's an equivalent use case in the US.

fourside24 days ago

For anyone else who entered a US zip code and was confused by the ‘invalid zip code’ error: this is UK only.

notatoad24 days ago

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".

badc0ffee24 days ago

Australia and NZ have postcodes, too.

If they had made this a .co.uk rather than a .com, there would be no confusion.

fourside24 days ago

The site has since changed the content from when I made the comment. It used to say zip code in the label and error.

jtbaker23 days ago

I think of postal code as a generic, international form of the concept, not tied to a location.

SoftTalker24 days ago

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.

Thews24 days ago

When I lived in the PNW people used the word pub more than bar.

toasterlovin23 days ago

My sense is that it is an affectation meant to indicate an aspiration to something more than a bar (and its coarse patrons).

selectodude24 days ago

That’s because everybody up there thinks that liking soccer makes them English.

tshaddox24 days ago

"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.

+1
tracker124 days ago
dylan60424 days ago

every now and then you'll find a public house or similarly named

9rx24 days ago

"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.

+1
thebruce87m23 days ago
MisterTea24 days ago

I doubt most people would bother to think about that detail.

rcbdev23 days ago

Silly me, I entered an Austrian zip code out of principle. Did not expect it to work, though, of course.

amouat24 days ago

Seems to be England only. No results for Edinburgh.

iso163124 days ago

I see results on both sides of the border here, Wales and England.

eterm24 days ago

Business rates are a devolved matter, Scotland set their own rates.

xrownow24 days ago

Any plans to release the code? Would be nice to allow others to do something similar for their local pubs.

jaffa223 days ago

Seems to be England only.

imzadi24 days ago

Yeah, they could reduce confusion by changing "the government" to "the UK government."

Tom138024 days ago

If Americans did the same it would be great

deelayman24 days ago

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.

pierrec24 days ago

Americans, hm? I see what you did there.

+1
shermantanktop23 days ago
RIMR24 days ago

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."

+1
lazyasciiart23 days ago
shermantanktop23 days ago

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.”

tmp1042328844224 days ago

Broken - getting `ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR` when trying to open it in Chrome

jdlyga24 days ago

UK only

leapingdog23 days ago

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.

a3w23 days ago

What is a pub? A place to drink in UK? What is a pub rate?

dust-jacket23 days ago

nice concept, but my 'nearest' was miles away and not really a pub. Hmm.

wumms23 days ago

Title could use (in Britain)

ioma823 days ago

Doesnt work in Europe.

addandsubtract23 days ago

It's a UK issue / website. Should've been made more clear and used a .co.uk domain, imo.

NicuCalcea23 days ago

Nobody tells US-only websites to use a .us domain.

GJim23 days ago

I'll tell my ISP to use a .net shall I?

tannyo23 days ago

Cool! Would be nice to include all world postal codes and addresses.

edent24 days ago

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.

twic23 days ago

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!

numbers24 days ago

what is a "rateable value" here?

adw24 days ago

Property tax valuation.

largbae23 days ago

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.

hdgvhicv23 days ago

Give tax breaks to tv personalities who buy farms as tax dodges and it has to be paid for by someone else.

SCdF23 days ago

Ironically, the pub it suggested near me that was the most fucked closed down years ago (it's not just them, quite a few databases don't know that), so yeah, good call.

iNerdier23 days ago

Same here, at least three nearby no longer exist and are now flats already.

I guess prepare for an acceleration of the same.

sobiolite24 days ago

The nearest "absolutely fucked" pub to me hasn't existed since 2008. I'd say they have bigger problems than a rates increase.

bspammer24 days ago

They do acknowledge this on the site

> Based on VOA data (Nov 2025) which is often inaccurate. Many pubs have also closed since then.

cellu23 days ago

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.

georgebcrawford23 days ago

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.

dgxyz24 days ago

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.

antihero24 days ago

Ok so because your family were alcoholics nobody should have a space to drink? What an absurd thing to say.

dgxyz24 days ago

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.

cyberpunk24 days ago

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)

dgxyz23 days ago

Fair. That's what they invented planes for :)

bodge500023 days ago

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

ajb24 days ago

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)

fauria24 days ago

Find an English pub that needs you.

graemep24 days ago

Not true, it also covers pubs in Wales

QuercusMax24 days ago

Yeah, I have NO clue what this site is even about.

9JollyOtter24 days ago

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.

prmoustache23 days ago

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.

9JollyOtter23 days ago

> Can't you drink non-alcoholic beverage? If the point is socialising, alcohol is not a requirement.

It kinda is though depending on who you go to the bar with.

I went to the bar to get fucked up, a lot of my career I've worked in toxic workplaces, so have stressful day and work and then hit the bar.

Most of my mates at the time were heavy drinkers. We are talking about people that would have 6 beers and the bar and have a bottle of Rioja when they get home. Some of these dudes have turned out to be scumbags.

Once I stopped drinking, I never spoke to them again. Not once. So these people weren't my real friends.

> I know a lot of bars in my area also are places to play board games nowadays.

TBH, when I see people playing board games other than like Chess or Draughts as adults (and there are not children present), I just find it embarrassing like it is like some child day care. I appreciate it is a "me" problem, but I can't stand it.

BolsunBacset24 days ago

The UK government hates its populace, particularly its natives. Downvote all you want.

crazygringo24 days ago

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.

tazjin23 days ago

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.

anonzzzies23 days ago

.com has meant commercial since the 90s so how about all US only sites use .us?

alexfoo23 days ago

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

crazygringo23 days ago

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.

bodge500023 days ago

There are plenty of US sites that make no mention of being US specific, I feel like this is well deserved

skinnymuch23 days ago

The US is the center of the world though. There are privileges to that like assuming the world revolves around you.

noir_lord23 days ago

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.

bodge500023 days ago

> There are privileges to that like assuming the world revolves around you.

Sometimes you need moments like this to remind you that your assumption is wrong

messe23 days ago

> The US is the center of the world though

Give it a few months.

crazygringo23 days ago

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.

SecondHandTofu23 days ago

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.

austinjp23 days ago

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.

sva_24 days ago

Like the big red letters in the title that say "IN BRITAIN"?

wumms23 days ago

I see them on the leaderboard, but not on the main page.

https://www.ismypubfucked.com/leaderboard

crazygringo24 days ago

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".

zxcvasd23 days ago

[dead]

DiabloD323 days ago

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.

danielfoster23 days ago

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.

vintermann23 days ago

The social benefits do not come from alcohol. At the very best, they come from what we have learned to believe about alcohol.

Alcohol consumption follows a nasty curve. The average adult in the UK drinks about 11 liters of pure alcohol per year on average. Which is obviously a lot. But what's worse is, almost no one drinks 11 liters. The median is much lower, exactly how low is hard to find numbers on but as much as 1 in 5 Brits don't drink at all.

That means most of the alcohol is consumed by people who drink way too much by any sane definition.

If you own a pub, or an "off license", or arrange a music festival or pretty much any cultural venue, you know that in your bones. Staying afloat without selling alcohol, in particular without selling alcohol to people who drink far more than they should, is hopeless. You can't change things on your own. And even suggesting we should maybe work together to change will alienate your most profitable customers, who are understandably defensive about their drinking.

No, it's not a criminal enterprise, by definition. But you'll do better if you have a criminal's attitude - pick one: denial (consuming a lot yourself may help), rationalization ("if I didn't do it someone else would") or callousness. That's one reason pub chains do better.

DiabloD323 days ago

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.

9rx23 days ago

> 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.

danielfoster23 days ago

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.

volkl4823 days ago

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.

--------

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.

--------

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.

-----

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.

vintermann23 days ago

Alcohol doesn't create social cohesion chemically. This is a learned effect - there are societies where they had different beliefs about alcohol, and there it doesn't have this effect. This is a really old finding of anthropology. (Of course, in today's global world, beliefs about alcohol get homogenized, so there are ever fewer of societies where they have diverging beliefs about alcohol effects.)

Moreover, it seems likely to me that just like the "relaxing" effect of nicotine, this advantage is "stolen" from daily sober life. If we as a society agree to judge each other less harshly when we're drink, I think we will just naturally judge each other more harshly when we're sober.

However, unlike with nicotine, where the effect is physical and individual (you relax when you get nicotine because you get stressed by physical addiction when you don't), for alcohol it's social and collective. You suffer the negative effect (social pressure to basically be more uptight in everyday sober life) whether you participate or not.

xhevahir23 days ago

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.

DiabloD323 days ago

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.

OJFord23 days ago

> 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'?

jansper3923 days ago

As a Brit (an actual one, not because my great great grandfather was one) I'd have to say that pub culture in the UK is not strictly about drinking alcohol at all. It's a social place to meet friends, play games, watch sport and hide from the weather.

Pubs won't question you if you ask for a lime and soda and they may even stop serving you if they think you've drunk enough.

ivvve23 days ago

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.

[1] https://youtu.be/_GCcoaSq3x4?si=QunsiKqk4D4IRV0M

sleepybrett23 days ago

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.

mh226623 days ago

> 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...

+1
alexfoo23 days ago
hdgvhicv23 days ago

You’re American?

You thus aren’t “half Irish or “half German”. Stop with your cultural appropriation.

sleepybrett23 days ago

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.

lacoolj23 days ago

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.

lacoolj22 days ago

lol for so many negative points this question has, there sure is seemingly a lot of support too. I guess I found the divide in our community

crazygringo23 days ago

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.

alexfoo23 days ago

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.

crazygringo23 days ago

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.

messe23 days ago

Or how about the US starts using ".us"?

+1
alexfoo23 days ago
rzzzt23 days ago

A form of property tax it looks like, charged on businesses: https://www.gov.uk/introduction-to-business-rates

tracker124 days ago

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.

pavo-etc23 days ago

I'll do this on my projects when US sites start doing this on theirs

ikr67823 days ago

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.