Mayor & Mayoress Barred from Gosport Pubs

Doesn’t matter who you are, if you misbehave in pubs, you will get barred. Even if you have status, officialdom, and a big chain around your chest!

You couldn’t make this up but it is true! A town’s newly elected Mayor and Mayoress have been banned from 36 pubs in their own town, this despite their using that well worn phrase “do you know who I am?”.

Well 36 pubs in a Hampshire town, who have collectively barred the couple for 6 months, took no heed of this subliminal threat and duly told them they are not welcome, well not until they behave themselves and do not appear to be drunk and disorderly, which caused their eviction in the first place!

The “self important” couple have 6 months to reflect and to swot up on the Licensing Act (which they are responsible in some way for enforcing) thereby ensuring their town’s pubs sell alcohol in a responsible way!

Gosport Pubwatch confirmed that the couple have been barred from their 36-pub membership, having been asked to leave one of their member pubs. “Quite rightly so” said the J D Wetherspoon HO spokesperson who supported the local JDW manager who took the original decision to tell them to leave his premises. Pubwatch chairman Phil Cox said, “we didn’t treat them any differently to how we treat anyone else, it doesn’t matter who you are, we want our pubs to be more comfortable, and pleasant places to be in with no abuse towards any member of staff. They should know better!”. Absolutely, so say all of us!

Not possible to know if the two worthies are embarrassed or going to take their case to the Court of Human Rights (like some other thug recently barred from the towns pubs in a Cornish resort) because (perhaps unsurprisingly) neither are available for comment. Plus, the Mayor of Gosport website is currently offline. Wonder why?


Martin Read CMBII
Managing Director of www.inn-dispensable.com Personal Licence Courses

The Landlord's Human Right To Bar Anti-social Behavior

There is a fundamental principle for licencees that they can “refuse service” to anyone they like, as long as their refusal is not on the grounds of Race, Gender or Disability. In effect when you go into a pub you go into the Landlords “house”, and after all each of us has a right to refuse entry to anyone we do not want come into our own homes!

I well remember a dirty, smelly, old tramp coming into our pub many years ago, and we had no hesitation in telling him he was not welcome. We did give him a wrapped sandwich and a bottle of pop to send him on his way though! I also remember a guy, well known in our town, who after three pints would want to take the world on - he wasn’t welcome either!

A Landlord also has a right to “ban” a person from his pub, and often, if that Landlord belongs to a local “Pubwatch” organisation, the same person will (or might) be banned from all pubs within their territory, this without seeking recourse to the law.

Well now; such a banned person (a 24 year old male banned for some 6 months from pubs within a Cornish town) is seeking redress from The European Court of Human Rights because he believes that the local Pubwatch organisation have banned him without him having had a chance to defend himself in a court of law. The local Pubwatch spokesperson said “What about the human rights of other people to enjoy their drink in a pub or the rights of publicans to run their business?”

I have no knowledge whatsoever of why this fellow has been banned, I do know however that Landlords and Pubwatch organisations do not ban people lightly, why would they when they need all of the customers they can get? Surely publicans must have the right to decide who can and who cant be in their pubs, it is very easy for the libertarians to sit at home and make judgements but you try serving and welcoming for example; some thug determined to make everyone’s life a misery, fuelled with god knows what inside him on a Saturday night when your locals are trying to have a quiet pint!

The customers of a pub are the reflection of the Landlord, of his standards and his hospitality; let us hope this fellow is not successful in claiming that his human rights have been infringed! Perhaps he might reflect on the reasons why he was banned in the first place?

Martin Read CMBII
Managing Director of www.inn-dispensable.com Personal Licence Courses