Case study: 'I did a survey, 95% of my punters smoked'

Published on Wednesday 8 September 2010 18:22

David Edes ran the Rigger Bar in Alness, Ross-shire, for 20 years before shutting it down, saying the smoking ban was the "final nail in the coffin".

"My place was a bar, it wasn't a hotel or anything foody; it was a pub, end of story.

"The customers were mainly male and they came in to drink.

"Before the smoking ban came in I did a survey and 95 per cent of my punters smoked.

"When it first came in it was okay as we had a courtyard and it happened to be a quite a nice summer but then the winter came with a vengeance.

"My 5pm trade disappeared. The guys who worked at places like the local quarry used to get dropped off at my door to have a couple of beers and a smoke on the way home. But on a wet night they would just carry on home."

Mr Edes said his customers would no longer stop at the pub, instead phoning their wives and asking them to get a six-pack of beer because they would go straight home.

"My pub just died a death," he added. He describes a 'steady decline' after the ban and when his accountant gave him the figures, he decided 'enough's enough'.

"I have other businesses and when the accountant said this part of it was losing so much money I said it was time to shut the door. But the whole drinking culture has changed. When I started drinking you couldn't get drink in supermarkets. There was the occasional off-licence but most carry outs came out of pubs.

"Also, nowadays by the time people pay for their house, car and foreign holiday they have no money left to go to pubs."

He said the closure meant one full-time and eight part-time staff lost their jobs.

He added: "The licensed trade in Scotland is finished. The pub used to the heart of the community but you cannot afford to be a social service any more.

"There is now legislation where staff get five weeks paid holiday a year, the minimum wage, maternity leave, paternity leave. The people who bring in this legislation don't think of the poor guy at the bottom of the tree.

"If the government was serious about health in Scotland it should have said 'tobacco stops at the border, no tobacco in Scotland', end of story. But they couldn't afford to do that."