How has education changed in the last 20 years?

How has English , London or British "pub life" changed in past 15-20 years?

• how especially in bigger cities such as London? how was before 15 years ago? and is loud music usually played now? how about other changes? could one go in most pubs in 1994 and start talking philosophically with a stranger while having a pint and a meal? how has changed since then and why? what about sports bars or females in pubs? has increased more? why and since when? how has smoking ban changed things too and SOCIAL LIFE IN BRITAIN ON A WHOLE? and why? please explain what you can thanks for your answers!

• Answer:

  Alcohol abuse is a centuries old British habit of all classes. Most pubs were created during the Victorian & Edwardian period based on the traditional tavern. Drinking in public houses was a majority pastime mainly for working classes and was associated with games such as skittles (primitive bowling), darts, cards, hardcore gambling and noisy singing. The music hall tradition grew from pubs' free-and-easy entertainment evenings. Drinking was regulated by licence but was badly policed before the 1870s and Hush-shops abounded. New regulations made it illegal to compel workers to be paid wages in pubs. Greater regulation was introduced during WW1 when munitions production was affected by workers' drinking habits. Especially in Cumberland where problems at the huge munitions factory on the Solway coast led to the local brewery and pubs being nationalised. Opening and closing hours were now rigorously policed. Between the wars and after WW2 the brewers consolidated, absorbing smaller local breweries into large , powerful conglomerates which owned many pubs and homogenised the beer and promoted easy to brew lager. From the 1960s alternative entertainments eroded the attraction of the public house, Many were closed or rationalised by the big brewers. Pubs began to serve better food and traditional British food is found more in the pub environment than in restaurants. As a result pubs began to gentrify and appeal additionally to a middle class clientele. The pub was a social centre for meeting friends, playing simple indoor games and many specialised in offering increasingly sophisticated menus in a bourgeois atmosphere, a far cry from the public bar. The British are a reserved people but the pub was always an acceptable place to strike up a conversation with a stranger, for men at least. Often a miscreant accused of possessing stolen goods would claim in court, " I got it off a bloke in a pub" an entirely credible story. Stringent and ferociously applied drink-driving laws reduced the attraction of a night out in the pub and trade fell. The enormous over-proliferation of pubs in 19th & early 20th century spread business too thinly and many began to close, a very current trend in 2011. Relaxation of trading hours under Blair has led to regular, large scale drunken disorder in the streets of nearly every town and village, mainly confined to 18-30s which has further reduced the attractiveness of the pub for older patrons. Smoking ban is blamed for lowered pub custom, and this may be the case but pub drinking as a large scale activity is much reduced. Staying in is the new going out. Brits' love affair with booze is undimmed but now takes place mainly behind closed doors. TV, fast food home delivery & cheaper carry-out drinks from the supermarket have further reduced pub-going. Alcohol abuse is a widespread and growing, reaching further down the age-range, but most happens away from pubs. There are still many delightful old pubs both in towns and in the country where the traditional games are still played by a roaring fire over a foaming pint of real ale, or sharp modern pubs with good service and WiFi, but there remain many drinking barracks more dead than alive, where clumps of tatooed cutomers stand outside and shiver, surrounded by fag packets and ciggy butts and the wild night clubs with deafening music and multiple drink promotions into the early hours.