Nightlife News: A Confusing App & Curfew At 10 P.M.
Going to a pub in England is as big a part of the lifestyle as crumpets and tea and rainy days in London.
But British law makers are making it tough for people to to go pubs in England with two restrictive policies. And not everyone is happy about it, from punters to local officials.
One of those policies is an app that both bars and pubclubbers must download in order to go to a pub. It’s a contact tracing app that has had a myriad of problems, including blocking as many as 70,000 users from logging their test results in a single night.
It also fails to work on many older smartphones.
Customers are denied food and drinks if they do not have the app.
And those who do have a functioning app are having issues due to the other COVID-10 restriction. That one imposes a curfew at 10 p.m., for UK pubs, bars and restaurants.
This, of course, follows the lead of certain states in the USA. Apparently, government officials believe that cutting off alcohol sales early in the evening will stop the spread of the coronavirus.
This policy ignores two principal facts of the nightlife elements: if people have to quit drinking earlier then they will simply start earlier, and after being forced out of a bar they will simply gather in the streets or at house parties.
Plus, sending everyone out on the streets at the same time doesn’t exactly promote social distancing. In London, the tubes are crowded because everyone is leaving at the same time. One local said “it’s the busiest I’ve seen in central London for months.”
Birmingham City Council member Ian Ward seems one of the few officials who gets it, saying bars are safer than house parties “where people are more relaxed and less vigilant.”
So, too, does Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson, who said that people spilling out onto the streets all at once “is simply making things worse, not better.”
There is also the matter of the pubs themselves. Emma McClarkin, Chief Executive of the British Beer and Pubs Association stated this on the organization’s website:
“Make no mistake, a 10 p.m., curfew will devastate our sector during an already challenging environment for pubs. Pubs were struggling to break even before today and these latest restrictions will push some to breaking point. Removing a key trading hour on top of fragile consumer confidence and the reduced capacity pubs already face will put thousands more pubs and jobs at risk.
“During the current circumstances every hour of trading it crucial to the survival of pubs – for many this curfew will render their businesses unviable.”
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