Dreadnought – Sink some of the best pints in the city
Dreadnought – Sink some of the best pints in the city
Read to the end for a discussion on smoking in pubs.
I love the Dreadnought. It consistently has some of the best beer in the city. Its selection is always changing and can have up to 20 taps on at any one time. And it served the best pint of Campervan’s Extra Black porter I’ve ever had. (Which makes a change from the one I tasted in last week’s review.)
There have been a few updates on the pub’s ongoing work to save the Pride Bridge, which I mentioned in my original review back in February. The current bridge has been closed for years due to safety reasons.
Dreadnought co-owner Roisin won a PubAid Community Hero Award in March for her work on the Save The Pride Bridge campaign.
After a public consultation, the campaign is now in a detailed design stage. “We’re refining those sketches into something that actually works,” Roisin tells me, “but we still have quite a way to go.” The next few months involve getting planning permission and funding for construction.
They are also gathering ideas for information boards to be displayed on the bridge. One will be about Leith’s industrial past and the old railway lines, and the other will be about the area’s LGBTQ history.
Regular readers will know I am a big fan of any sort of local history, and I’ve been appreciating the campaign’s photos from previous eras – they are always open to more submissions from the public.
My original review of Dreadnought is here if you want to have a read. Scroll down for this week’s chaser.
The chaser – The effects of the indoor smoking ban
The government is looking into banning smoking in pub gardens in England. Scotland would have to pass any proposals for restrictions through its own Parliament. But it’s worth remembering that Scotland banned indoor smoking a year before the rest of the UK. Adult smoking rates are still higher in Scotland than in England.
It’s no surprise that heath professionals welcome this. But the hospitality sector has largely responded with concern, saying the ban could damage an industry which is already struggling. Pro-smoking action groups have said similar things. They also say the last smoking ban killed off a load of pubs. I think they are wrong.
One study done in the months immediately after the ban found a short-term fall in revenues of 10% and and 14% drop in customer footfall. However, another longer-term study, done a year after the ban, found no change in the overall number of people going to pubs. This is probably because for every smoker put off the pub, there was an equal number of people – especially those with kids – who increased their pubgoing frequency.
After all, the main aim of the smoking ban was to reduce passive smoking, which it did.1 Bar workers also reported better health outcomes a year after the ban came in.
The number of pubs has fallen dramatically since the smoking ban came in. But to say, with any certainty, that one caused the other it stupid. Think of it this way: imagine the smoking ban had never come in. Do you really think we would have hundreds more pubs on our streets today?
Do you really think a significant number of pubs would have survived the 2008 financial crash, austerity, rising staff costs, beer tax, business rates, interest rates, energy costs, price inflation, wage stagnation, lockdowns and changing drinking habits?
In 2017, the British Beer and Pub Association told the BBC it was "pretty impossible" to unpick exactly what the individual impact of the ban had been.
For what it’s worth, smokers outside pubs don’t bother me. I wouldn't ban them. I think an outdoor ban is an odd public health measure, and don’t really see how it could encourage smokers to quit. But I also don’t think it would outright kill the hospitality sector. Because there are so many other things which will.
Remember, the number of people smoking has plummeted in recent decades. Only about one in seven adults now smoke in Scotland. New legislation to ban smoking altogether is probably on its way. Pubs can kick up a fuss all they want, but they won’t stop the direction of travel. For a large part of the population, pints and cigarettes just aren’t associated with one another, as they once were.
Some will say an outdoor smoking ban is kicking an industry while it’s down. But to my mind, there are much bigger existential problems for the hospitality sector. It should focus its lobbying efforts elsewhere.
Read more
I love the nanny state, but let’s leave outdoor smokers to puff away in peace (The Observer)
How the pub trade has changed since the 2007 smoking ban (Morning Advertiser, 2017)
The aim of this new proposed ban appears to be to cut down on smokers altogether, rather than to help the health of the people around them.
As a nonsmoker one of the unintended consequences of the smoking ban was, if you were out casually at the pub, not having to strip off when you got home and throw your clothes into the washing machine.