The Long Planned Death Of The Great British Pub? | Trending Ep331

 Pubs in the United Kingdom continue to shut down at an alarming rate as rising taxes, energy costs and financial hardship among the population are killing the industry. Are we witnessing the end of this centuries old British tradition? Tony Blair is looking to revamp the British pension system by using your health data to determine how much pension money you are entitled to receive, and modern slavery is on the rise across the Globe, with numbers set to skyrocket as AI takes over even more of the workforce.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Wednesday's episode of Trending. Are we witnessing the manufactured death of the great British pub? Tony Blair, the butcher of Baghdad, wants to adapt your pension using your health data. I'm sure that'll be for your benefit. And modern slavery is at record levels. It's another day in paradise, folks. British pubs closing at a rate of two per day in 2026. Can't have the peasants meeting up, can we? Can't have people comparing notes, getting together and having a conversation about the fact that we're all being screwed. Can't have that, can we? We can't have people uniting, coming together, having a pint, socializing, getting on, having a laugh. On your knees, filth. Approximately two British pubs closed a day in the first quarter of 2026, according to figures produced by the industry. The British Beer and Pub Association says 161 pubs closed in the first three months of this year across England, Scotland, and Wales, equating to the loss of around 2,400 jobs. Now, of course, it's not just the losses of jobs, although that is a major problem. Because, you know, more unemployment, more people slipping into poverty, if this as if there's not enough at the moment, more people becoming desperate, dependent on the state. Of course, that's horrendous. And, you know, anyone that's that's lost a job and and faced that fear of how on earth am I going to pay the bills will know exactly how that feels. Um, but it's also the loss of a community hub. Not so much in the cities, although, you know, I I lived in a city for many years and I still had a local boozer and I still knew the people there. When I lived on the Isle of Wight, I had a own pint glass behind the bar. Um the village that I live in now, there's two pubs, and they are community hubs. They're where people come together and talk, they're where builders and tradies come and get work for a start. Um and, you know, whether you're a drinker or not, or whether you think, well, sod it drinking's bad for you, it's it's an institution in this country, you know, whether you like that or not, it is, and it has been for centuries. Um, you know, the church and the pub, they were they were where the people interacted, and they want rid of that. They want rid of that. And, you know, there's there's a a part of it, which is of course to do with creating more dependence because it's more people unemployed. There's also part of it which there's no fun. Kind of the kind of the plebs having fun. I want them demoralized and broken. But also I want them at home. Because if they're at home, drinking themselves stupid at home, if they can afford it, then they're not having conversations with other people. They're not, like I say, they're not comparing notes, they're not discussing the world, they're not starting to question things, they're not looking at things from other people's perspectives. I never thought of it like that. That's not happening. They're sat in their house with God in the corner, and by God I mean the television, and the state controls what's on the television. So you have the eyes and ears of the entire country listening to your propaganda, your version of reality, your truth, your ministry of truth. They're not out there conversing. Earlier this year, the government announced business rate support for the pubs after warnings from the sector that further tax changes could lead to more closures. The 15% tax relief for pubs and music venues came into effect last year. Basically, chucking a deck chair off the Titanic and expecting it to right itself. Because the taxation on alcohol, the taxation on pubs, and the hospitality sector in general is off the charts. It's mental and it's done on purpose because it's meant to destroy. People feel like they're being fleeced. They ain't being fleeced, mate. They're being skinned. The BBPA said that the latest closure figures highlighted a need for longer-term changes, including a rider, a wider, excuse me, uh overhaul of taxes on the hospitality sector. It comes after 336 British pubs reported closures in 2025. And that's just the beginning. That's just the beginning looking at where the world's going, the trajectory of the world in terms of energy costs, of course. That's another way of destroying the sector because they use a lot of energy, all those fridges and and and then the heating in the winter, and obviously all the electricity for the lights and you know, live music and everything else. Um, but also, you know, people are more and more skint because of the way the world's going and their rising energy bills. You know, if you're if you're the if your cost of living is going up, unless you're an alkie, what are you sacrificing? Were you sacrificing the trip to the pub? Well, can't afford that. I'll eat my house first. I meant heat. I'll drop my H's. Sorry, mum. You will heat your house first. You never know if you run out of food, you might eat your house. Um so that's another part of it. People are skinned, and the first thing they pull is is a treat. And going to the pub or going to a restaurant or going to a music venue, that's seen as a treat. The scale of these closures is avoidable. Of course it is. They don't want it to be avoided because pubs are doing a brisk trade, but their profits are wiped out by disproportionate tax burdens, intentional, and huge costs, said Emma McClarkin. McClarkin, great name. Uh, chief executive of the BBPA. Of course, by design, by design, you could look at the failure, because if you had anything about you, you'd go, okay, well, we're we're we're we're skinning them. We're not fleecing, we're skinning them with these huge taxes. And so all these pubs are closing. And and if you're watching this at home and you're from the UK, you will almost certainly know a landlord or a landlady that that is just scraping by. Just scraping by, making a penny on a pint if you're lucky. It's mad. You would look at that if you had anything about you as a politician and you weren't a corrupt piece of that. You would go, well, hang on a minute. We're we're we're rinsing them here with the taxes, which is closing them down. So that means we're not getting any tax money, right? And also they're making all these people unemployed, so they're gonna go on to benefits, so they're not paying us their taxes from their wages, they're not paying us their national insurance, they're not therefore going out and spending their money and paying the VAT on the money. You'd look at that if you had a brain, and you'd go, well, actually, we're better off pulling that, letting them thrive, therefore having but no. Some of them because they're idiots, and they are idiots, but mostly because it's completely intentional. Her statement went on we want to work with government to establish a permanent long-term plan that will deliver permanently lower bills, a fairer system, and ultimately protect the treasured sector. Good luck with that, Emma, my love. Honestly, I I I love your optimism, mate. I love it. But let me the government has no interest in fairness and justice and what is right. The whole system is set up on the opposite of that. Pubs and hospitality venues across the UK have been under increased pressure in recent years, which has been attributed to increased labor costs, raising business rates, um, and shifting commuter habits. Um, consumer even commuter, maybe they commute to the pub. Consumer habits. Now, the habits are key here. And COVID was, in my view, was a test in many ways. In many ways, it was obviously it was horrendous, but there and and and a real you know psychological operation, but it was also partly a test of people's psychology in terms of how controllable people were. What can we get away with? How much can we shift people's way of thinking, people's perceptions, people's behaviors? The whole thing was run by psychologists, by the nudge unit, the behavioral insights team. And that was for a reason. Now, they know that they can't lock people down, for instance, or ban people from the pub, as they did obviously through lockdowns. They know they can't do that permanently because people will rebel against that. You you lock someone in a in a cell and tell them they're there forever, they're gonna do their best to try and get the hell out of Dodge. You tell them it's only a week or two, oh grin and bear it then. So they knew that they couldn't do it permanently. So what you need to do is change people's behaviors and and habits so that essentially they will do it to themselves. Now, of course, there's an element of it which we're seeing at the moment in terms of rising energy costs, where, well, I can't rebel and say I'm going to the pub because the pub's not open or I can't afford it, or I can't put petrol in the car to go to here, to there, whatever. So there's an element of that, but another part, and I think a major part, I think, is changing people's behaviour choices, they're they're their own choices. So they feel like it's their free will. I don't want to go to the pub. Oh, I don't bother using cash anymore. Stay at home, prefer it. Do you prefer it though? Or have you been conditioned to believe you prefer it? Now this was this was part of the reason I knew COVID was a scam early doors. One reason being that I was being told what was what was true by a liar and many, many liars, and the worst among us. So, you know, that was a clue. But another part of it was how long the lockdowns were. Now I know they said three weeks to flatten the curve, or I think in America they said two weeks to flatten the curve. But each lockdown, major lockdown, was three months. So you had three months in 2020, and then you had the lockdown coming out of the end of 2020 into the beginning of 2021. Three months again. And they did all their tear nonsense and all that stuff. But the radical bosh stay in your house is three months and three months. And so I hark back to a time, a previous life, when I was a personal trainer and I used to work for Virgin for Virgin Active. Now I could sell you a pack of four PT sessions or a pack of eight PT sessions, or I think 12 was the maximum. I could sell you those PT sessions, but they were expensive. If you were paying, you couldn't pay individual sessions, but you could pay for a pack of four, a pack of eight, a pack of twelve, whatever. And they weren't, they they was they were very expensive, actually. But if you signed up for direct debit, the price was dramatically reduced, like not even close, talking something like a tenor a session difference. It was massive over a period of time. So everyone went for the direct debit, everyone went for that. So you signed up for the direct debit, but there was a three-month minimum. You had to sign up for three months, and you sign it away. So if you go to the first PT session and you ate it and you think I'm a pain in the ass, too bad, you signed up for three months. You could not turn up if you want, and Virgin will take your money, but no one's gonna do that because you know it's coming out of my account, I may as well use it. So I trained people that after two or three sessions, they found it quite hard, quite difficult, you know. But that's the whole point. But they were flaking, thinking, oh no, sure, this is for me. I might just go on the cross trainer for 20 minutes and then go and stand by the water cooler and have a chat, like I used to. But I've paid for it, so I'll come. And you watch the change in their behavior, and then when it got to the end of three months, they were they could renew monthly at that point, and they 99% of the time they did. And I remember saying to my um manager at the time, what's the deal with the three months? Like, why can't I sell it monthly? To me, I'm thinking someone can afford a month of PT, let them have a month of PT, right? And he said, Oh, they've set it up because they've found various studies have found that three months is how long it takes to make a permanent behavioral change. So after three months of PT, they'll renew overwhelmingly, unless you know the circumstances maybe financial change or maybe they move or whatever. They will almost certainly renew at that point because they in that three months they've made that behavioral change. It's permanent now. Whereas a month in, two months in, they might roll back, they might go back to the pub. So as soon as I saw that it was a three-month lockdown, and then you know, then again later on you see that the next one's a three-month lockdown, you go, okay. So you're making people stay at home, you're making people drink at home, you're making people have their relationships on Zoom, front of the tell, whatever, and you're doing it for three months at a time. That's not a coincidence. That's not a coincidence at all. So now I'm looking at the fact that all these pubs are closing down, these community hubs, these places where people come together and converse, like I say, compare notes of how we're all being screwed. The fact that one of the circumstances, um, you know, one of one of the things being blamed for it is a behavioral change, a habit change, which will have come off of the back of the COVID nonsense, 100%. And and and and I'm going, that's how they've done it. That's that's another way how they're doing it, because they're doing it financially, people can't afford it. They're doing it by raising the taxes so that none of these places can make a profit, and they're doing it by keeping people out the door because their behavioral um attitudes, what they normally do, their habits, oh, that's what I do on a Friday, is now completely different to what it was pre-2020. And there's no coincidence in my mind that those three-month lockdowns and the it takes three months to change a habit permanently is a coincidence at all. And so we need to fight for our pubs, folks. It's it's massively important. Even if you're not a drinker, mate, go down and have a coffee, go down and have a lime and soda. Whatever. Just support these people because once they're gone, they're gone, folks.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Can I get uh two latte, please?

SPEAKER_02 15:38

One decap thank you. I've just seen the most horrendous news on the upstream files. No, I actually wish I could unsee it.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

That's stuff that I've been tagging on about for years now.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Sure what? Look, I've just gonna get a white white spot.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

I'll get one of those please.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

So then, how do I become a conspiracy realist?

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Well, first things first you're gonna unsubscribe from all your mainstream platforms, so ITV, PPC, then you're gonna subscribe to the only platform that's actually safe free.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Great, one expedition. Also, really a man.