It used to be you could always find a good ale selling Brothel. These old traditions that keep disappearing. Tut! Thankfully my local, like our sub-post office, is still thriving. Good food and quality service both compensate us for the clean air. I guess we'll live.

No real surprise. I can't help but think this is all part of a ploy to decimate the pub industry. The smaller ones go out of business but bigger businesses like Wetherspoons can afford to carry on and in the process, gain more custom and profit.

Remember how your high street looked 25 years ago? Look at it now... now look at such places in other towns and cities. Where are all the smaller family run businesses and don't all these stores look and feel the same, with same layouts, same stock etc? Look also at how village Post Offices are being shut down because the greedy b*stards who operate the mail service are only interested in Profit. Even the public transport system... Stagecoach please stand up - I go to Manchester, Sheffield and other cities and the buses all look the same to the degree one begins to wonder which city or town one is in.

There are many pubs with history and character. Seeing these vanish to be swallowed up by another bland faceless corporate (oh... shall we demolish it and put up another MacDonalds or Tesco?) is deeply depressing. Britain is rapidly losing it's character and identity. Britain used to have a strong sense of Community thanks to pubs, post offices, corner shops etc but now it's every man for himself, CCTV every flipping where watching everything we do, Police abusing the system and creating serious distrust and fear, everywhere looks the same - faceless and corporate... and then some wonder why the entire fabric of society is falling apart...

It's never just one thing, the smoking ban isn't helping but there's also:

- The price of drinks compared to Supermarket prices. This is a huge one that is overlooked time & time again. When you can by 20 bottles of Stella for

The price of alcohol free drinks in a pub is absolutely appalling and that is if any are available except coke or orange juice, the price of crap supermarket beer continues to fall.
80p for four cans of lager,

Don't forget the property developers who like to carve up the larger pubs into tiny little flats - or demolish them altogether - that's happened to a few in the South over the years.

I must admit I do like the smoke free atmosphere in pubs, but the main issue now is that they have become more 'family orientated' as a result and you get screaming kids running around - pubs should be for grown ups in my opinion - but if it keeps the money coming in to my local I will grin and bear it.

The other issue is the huge amounts of CO2 now being pumped into the atmos by those outdoor heaters used in the outside smoking areas.

Indeed Foz, most of my favourite old habitats are now blocks of flats.

Wetherspoons see profits DROP by 13% too -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7282768.stm