The capital’s pubs are fighting perennial last orders. Figures earlier this year from the Night Time Industries Association revealed that more than 3,000 nightclubs, bars and pubs have been forced to shut in and around London since the start of the pandemic. Other research finds that the capital lost 40 pubs and bars last year.
So the news that the Government is reportedly considering banning smoking in some outdoor areas will spark alarm in the hospitality sector, already managing rising costs in everything from energy to staffing. Were it to be implemented, such a policy would be of a piece with the contradiction at the heart of this new administration. On the one hand, its mission is to boost economic growth. Sir Keir Starmer has set his sights not lower than securing “the highest sustained growth in the G7”. Yet the Government appears to recoil in horror at any move to achieve this.
From practical steps towards a closer relationship with the EU to threatening to cut capital spending and raise capital gains tax, there is already plenty on offer that will hobble the sustainable economic growth this country needs to support better paying jobs.
Waste of energy
The question is not whether climate change is real. From droughts and forest fires to floods and rising sea levels, the planet is warming at an alarming rate. Rather, it is whether climate activism directed at museums and cultural institutions is an effective use of energy.
The new director of the National Portrait Gallery has called for an end to fossil fuel sponsorships in the arts. Victoria Siddall, a former global director of Frieze, also established the Gallery Climate Coalition amid arguments surrounding fossil fuel firms giving money to exhibitions.
Should the gallery spurn fossil fuel investment, it will need to explain where the money will come from. Certainly not from a central government promising to cut spending and raise taxes. Other potential sponsors are likely to be dissuaded by the bar set. The battle against climate change will be won with new technologies, old-fashioned energy efficiency and behavioural change. It is less clear how removing a BP banner from a museum will contribute to this, only shackle London’s world-leading cultural institutions.
Battle of the bosses
This now officially qualifies as a “war of words”. JD Wetherspoon boss Sir Tim Martin has now “hit back” at Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary, who had suggested passengers be limited to how much they can drink before boarding a flight. All this story needs is the involvement of Mike Ashley and Sir Philip Green to complete the set.
