Melodeonboy: 2. Para-social relationships. Millions of people now spend hours every day contacting "friends" on sites such as Facebook, which they find much easier than having to deal with the ups and downs of meeting people face-to-face, i.e. real social interaction, what most of us, I suspect, actually go to the pub for (as well as decent beer, of course!).

This is wrong, IMO....friends I've made on line (and there are many like me) actually for the hub of my social relationships. In 2 weeks I'll be at a gathering in Yorkshire of people from all over the country that I've met on a climbing website. We'll spend loads in the local pub. Last weekend I was camping in the Wye Valley with 41 other people that again, I "met" via a website. Abut half of them were people I was meeting "In Real Life" for the first time. Again, we spent loads in the local pub. Two weeks ago my military fitness group (BMF) organised a get-together in a pub here in Kent via Facebook, attended by 38 of us, all of whom communicate via Facebook. The music sessions I attend around Kent and Suex are often organised/ advertised through Facebook.

So AFAIC, Facebook and other social sites are only *enhancing* real-life social interaction, emphatically NOT reducing it!

I can accept your point about PubCos and squeezing of landlords and tenants with rents and high drinks prices, but I don't think drinks prices are putting most younger people off...they're just not visiting "trad" pubs. Locally to me, there's a decent "trad" pub with good ale about 300 yards away. Within another 200 yards there are 2 "trendy" pubs. One was converted from a "trad" pub a few years ago. If does no ale, only lager, cocktails and "shots". The one next to it has also gone over to mainly lager, plus lots of exotic "flavoured" beers.

Both these are packed virtually every night, despite having little or no real atmosphere. The trad pub is often 3/4 empty even on a Saturday night. Very quiet. When I've been in the other 2 with my BMF colleagues (the only times I go into them) there's absolutely no consciousness of price...I've seen people happily buying 2-3 rounds of 10 "Jager Bombs" and the like, at £70 a round. And the (mainly 30-somethings) I encounter at BMF, as well as training hard, "play" hard, too...we're usually there until these places close at 0200, and some of the people in the party will have consumed 12-15 drinks at around £5 or more a go. I'm usually the oldest in there, by a fair way, though!

All over this town , it's the trad pubs that are struggling. The "pile 'em in and sling as much as possible down your next" pubs that have "modernised" are making out like bandits. I know the owner of one of the "modern" pubs I mentioned above and since getting rid of most of his "decent" beer, packing the place out with lagers and cocktails, plus extending his opening hours from 11pm to 0200, he's more than quintupld his takings. And not being tied to a PubCo or brewery, he can source his drinks at best available prices, though he sells at similar prices to tied houses! Five years ago he was on the verge of closing. He's just bought a new Ferrari!

Go figure.