Economist on British Pub Culture

The Economist has a write-up on British pub culture, which laments its decline over a three day pub crawl:

A common fantasy of oppressed British office workers is to give it all up and run a pub somewhere, but a few minutes chatting to a landlord will discourage all but the most incorrigible optimists. They paint a gloomy picture of their industry.

Trade has fallen since the ban, they say, which is just another in a long line of iniquitous changes that are slowly driving pubs to the wall. Statistics back them up. The British Beer and Pub Association reckons 27 close every week, a figure that has risen sharply over the past few years.

The picture is of The Sherlock Holmes, a pub in London that I have walked past, but looked sufficiently cheesy that I shunned it.