It really does perplex me the amount of hoops one is expected to jump through when running a pub. Environmental health, accessibility issues, licensing objectives, advertising, fire safety, accounting and tax, electrical testing and many, many others. Now I'm not saying that these things are not worthy of some form of regulation. Indeed I do not want the death of one of my customers or staff on my conscience, but I do wonder sometimes if we have gone well beyond the point of diminishing returns with many items of legislation.
When licensees get together we often lament some of the pitfalls of the job. It is also the case that we share our high points as well, we're not miserable all the time. However, we often have subjects of joint complaint with which to mutually commiserate about. One such subject for me is legislation. Most publicans I know try to keep up, but are really unable to.
One evening, in a friends pub, I was mentioning the problems of keeping everything above board and legitimate. My friends reply was along the lines of "why bother, you'll never keep up so just ignore legislation".
This was something of a surprise to me. I consider myself to be an honest and law abiding citizen. I like to remain legal. This guy was actually suggesting that it was impossible to run a pub and remain legal so you might as well ignore legislation.
I think this is one of my problems; I try to do things right. Perhaps I should take this guys advice and forget about legislation.
