Our affiliate group, Freedom to Choose, has brought to our attention fatal news about yet another British pub.
The Royal Oak in Cauldwell, UK, has closed its doors. The owner, Sue Grewcock, informs us that this closure is the direct result of the smoking ban and of just how much money (up to £1,000 weekly) she has lost due to this removal of choice:
"The smoking ban has been the death knell. People are just buying their cigarettes and beer at supermarkets — at prices we can’t compete with — and drinking and smoking legally at home. … People don’t want to come to a pub and stand out in the freezing cold. … I think it’s disgusting … we’re told what to do by a dictatorship."
Sue sounds pretty clear to me. Bar owners around the world have made virtually identical statements about smoking bans as FORCES readers well know. Nevertheless, and typically, the politically correct media source linked with below offers second-guessing of the pub owner’s explanation.
The paper cites market calamities of several years past (which the pub surmounted, to the extent of investing in improvements, just two years ago) and the opinion of a spokesman for an ale connoisseur’s club (now there’s business expertise!) who believes pubs should go broke because of the ban but not until next year. He also notes with obvious personal relief that this is the first local pub to close its doors since the ban.
Well, if Sue Grewcock’s financial death is a local first, we kindly suggest that the local newspaper and its ale-quaffing expert also note that it is part of a British plague, come by way of California, New York, Ireland, here and there, and also coming soon everywhere that the cause of it infects. Sue, who ran the business for twelve years, knows what killed her and she tells us: the smoking ban, the dictatorship, the damned things we must defy and destroy.
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