There are a few things I like about Wetherspoons; real ale at around ?2.50 a pint, plenty
of space, and you can always eat for free if you hang around long enough, no one ever
seems to finish their dinner and I?m not really that bothered what I eat when there isn?t
a transaction involved. ---- Their selling point is you know what to expect and can more
or less budget for it before you walk in, and that?s all they?ve got going for them
really, the privileges that come with a large chain, high turnover and the resulting
leverage with suppliers. Chairman Tim Martin was heavily influenced by Wal-Mart?s founder
Sam Walton, to the extent of making his book required reading for pub managers. His policy
was to corner the market by buying up and selling off smaller pubs then open larger ones
nearby. Your local struggling independent hostelry may charge up to a pound a pint more.
Chances are it also puts on live music, participates in a local sports league and is
embedded in the community; you?ll miss it when it?s gone.
The elephant in the room is Wetherspoons? notorious tolerance of the far right; the lure
of cheap beer from breakfast time could have been made for the E.D.L. to organise its
political piss-ups for feckless bigots. I?m not giving much away by saying that
antifascists usually sus out the nearest ?spoons to the railway station as the most likely
locus of any fascist infestation. The police tactic, excused as containment, is to give
the fascists a ?muster pub? to get tanked up in with a blind eye turned to racist chanting
and the kind of drug use that would get anyone else barred if not arrested. On the other
side of the bar are our fellow workers, most of whom will not have chosen pulling pints as
a career path but because they need the money. Antifascists on the other hand are always
contained in street kettles, because the police are set the task of making sure the
fascists can proceed unmolested.
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