There is a populist idea that the smoking ban swooped in during 2007, stubbed out a cigarette, and took the entire British pub industry down with it. It is a neat, simple explanation. It also has the slight inconvenience of being complete bollocks. The decline had already been well underway, but blaming one visible policy is much easier than acknowledging years of slow, unglamorous economic reality.
The truth, as ever, is less dramatic and a ...
Ah yes, the good old days. You’d pop into the pub for a quiet pint and leave smelling like you’d spent the evening slow-roasting over a bonfire of Marlboro Lights. Clothes ruined, eyes stinging, lungs doing their best impression of a chimney.
You didn’t even have to smoke. Simply existing in the same room was enough. Then along came the smoking ban. And, rather inconveniently for nostalgia merchants, it worked.
Cleaner Air, Fewer ...
I’ve reached a slightly worrying point as a football fan. I now find managers more intriguing than the games themselves. The touchline, the interviews, the small details of behaviour and language have started to hold more interest than the actual ninety minutes.
Not all managers are the same, of course. Some can spark a short-term bounce that lifts a struggling side almost overnight. Some build something lasting with a clear identity that ...
A Free Holiday Is a Free Holiday
I’ve always said that if someone offered me a free holiday to Dubai with spending money, I’d take it. Of course I would. I’m not an idiot. It’s free, it’s hot, and there’s a certain anthropological curiosity in observing the natural habitat of people who think tax is a form of persecution.
I’d happily wander around for a week or two, staring at gold-plated everything and wondering how many ...
Back When Iran Looked “Normal”
Seventy years ago, Iran did not look like the villain in a Western action film. It had short skirts. Rock and roll. Universities full of women. Cafes. Newspapers. Arguments about politics that did not involve morality police vans.
It looked, inconveniently, like a country trying to modernise on its own terms. Then oil entered the chat. And oil never enters quietly.
The Man Who Touched the Wrong ...
