Events of the 1950's caused the current decline in pubs (Not the smoking ban)

Apparently 68 pubs have closed in Lancashire in the past six weeks.

Tony Halstead from the Morning Advertiser thinks he has the answer:

Northern correspondent for Publican Magazine’s Morning Advertiser, Tony Halstead, from Burnley, said the decline reflected a change in society.

He said: “The areas worst hit are those that historically had a lot of heavy industry. “Places like Lancashire, where there were lots of cotton mills, had a pub on every corner, and men would come out of the mills and factories and into the pubs.

I've heard many of excuses to ignore the smoking ban so far, but the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry has to be the most far fetched yet.

Society certainly has changed a lot since those days, many times. The pub scene has changed a lot too, but it wasn't until 2007 that the licenced trade began to take a nose dive. Some people just refuse to see the blindingly obvious. Maybe because the trade totally collaborated with the government on the smoking ban and now they are beginning to see the error of that choice.

Brewery prices also get a mention, and one landlord blames the weather, not because smokers don't want to stand outside in the rain but because apparently, nobody wants to leave their house in the wet weather.

At least the ban gets one fleeting mention in the article and some of the commenters do pick up on it.

It,s a crying shame that Landlords were not given the option of being a "smoking " pub.
That's where the most damage has come from and at a huge cost to everyone.

 Not everyone is buying it though:

If pubs were closing because of the smoking ban how come more coffee shops have been opening since the smoking ban came in?

Maybe because coffee shops are not pubs and don't cater for the same people? And if more coffee shops are opening, regardless of the easy availability of cheap supermarket coffee, maybe it isn't the supermarkets who are killing pubs either?