The View from V2 Radio – Back your local boozer – or lose it – By V2 Radio’s Duncan Barkes

The increase in the amount that employers will have to pay in National Insurance, the hike in the minimum wage and the business rates discount being reduced from 75% to 40% are making some pub owners wonder if it is worth continuing.

I present a radio show on V2 Radio called Vintage Vinyl where we play music from the 1960s to the early 1990s. You can hear it every Sunday afternoon at 4pm and it is unashamedly nostalgic.

Aside from the songs, we also chat about the past, with subjects ranging from television to areas of Sussex that have undergone radical change in the last few decades.

Whenever such topics are discussed, the subject of loved and much missed pubs is never too far away. Listeners can always be relied on to recall their fond memories of watering holes like the Coach and Horses in Chichester and others.

I mention this as I fear in ten years’ time there will be many more conversations about pubs that we all enjoyed but are no longer in existence.

As a regular pubgoer, my imbibing venues of choice include The Eastgate and Park Tavern in Chichester. I would be gutted if they were ever to disappear. They are both fine examples of what a proper pub should be.

So, a plea: please support your local pub wherever you might be reading this. Pop in for a pint or a glass of wine. Maybe enjoy a snack or some live music.

And as a complete nostalgia geek, I would love to read your memories of pubs of the past on the letters’ pages of this paper.

Let’s stick together and support everything glorious about the great British boozer. If we do not, we run the very real risk of losing them forever.

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