Crisis in the pub trade

This weekend I stepped in my local as you do for a few pints after a long tiring week to find the prices had gone up by 15p on all drinks. I knew a price rise was coming but 15p on drinks that already mostly cost over 3 quid. To me this is getting silly and is driving pubs into closure. You may ask why I care. I’m socialist and we oppose capitalist form of industry. Well for many having a drink with your mates at the weekend is still a working class past time and always has been walking out of the factory or pit gates in the 19th century and beyond and having ad rink with your work pals was a good way to end the day before going home to your family . To see this great industry be on its ass in many aspects is sad it will force more and more to come to the pubs less and spend less having a knock on affect. Breweries are often run for capitalist ends these days its big business I would propose bringing the breweries into democratic public control and removing the boss’s so that good quality cheap beer is available to working class people as and when they want it. I don’t buy this argument we must tax the hell out of people for drinking. There is a minority who do drink a lot regularly the media call it binge drinking but we have to look at the deeper social factors as to why some people revert to this more and more. Is there a lack of opportunities in their lives? Low pay? No jobs? Lack of a decent education? Could be many reasons caused by society and the pressures it bears on people especially young people. The great British pub is famous around the world it is something we should be proud of and look to protect. Our beers are some of the best in the world and the workers who work hard to produce this would be ideal to own and control production using the profits to reinvest in better technologies and to pay the workers who work for the pubs and breweries a decent living wage and once that blind drive for-profit is eliminated the price of good beer can come down dramatically to be once again affordable to the many not just the few. In a socialist society peoples past times will be affordable and open to all not use as a profit making exersise by the boss’s like we have now.