Lady Penelope has it about right, as does Zen.

I don't drink alcohol any more, for health reasons, but when I did I preferred to abstain if driving. When I asked the landlord of a particularly unpleasant pub, which used to be the home of a folk club in Doncaster, what soft drinks he had, his response was to shout at me, "This is a PUB, we sell BEER", turn his back on me and walk away. His pub's been shut for a few years now. And I'll bet he wonders what went wrong. It certainly was nothing to do with smoking bans, it closed way before that came in.

Pubs are exactly the same as any other commodity. Good product = good returns, bad product = doomed to fail. Filthy, stinking, smoky, noisy pubs with ignorant arsehole landlords, and patronised by louts, fall into the latter category.

IMHO.