Much debate over JD Wetherspoon’s decision to sell pints of Greene King IPA at 99p. Now JDW is not perfect as a pub group by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a perfectly reasonable company to deal with, and you can’t argue with the amount of real ale they shift during a year. On the basis that ‘any publicity is good publicity’, the high profile the company gives to real ale is not to be knocked. Because they are all locally managed, some branches are much better than others, both in terms of beer quality and customer service, but find a good one, with a good range at a decent temperature, and there are worse places to settle for a couple of pints and watch the world go by.

But … I cannot be doing with 99p pints of Greene King IPA. Okay, the beer has its critics and probably wouldn’t be top of most people’s list on a pub visit, but the beer itself is not the issue here, it’s the pricing policy. This will be the final nail in the coffin for many pubs who cannot hope to compete with 99p, let alone make any money on such a pint.

I’ve been in favour of minimum pricing for alcohol for some time now, not to create a level playing field between JDW and other pubs, but to end the scourge of cheap supermarket and off-licence alcohol, which is the single biggest factor affecting the viability of our pubs in the UK. Yes, I know there’s the smoking ban, too, but this has been ridden through to a degree by most pubs, and anecdotal evidence from hosts tells me the supermarket pricing is a bigger concern.

Minimum pricing isn’t going to affect the average, responsible, social drinker, unless the limit is raised ridiculously high by a government eager to claw back tax wherever it can; it will help to end the practice of youngsters with no respect for alcohol binge drinking and giving us decent drinkers a bad name.