English Pubs. Beyond Tory Scotch Eggs Culture Wars is the Shape of the Table
The requirement that pubs subject to England’s Tier 2 restrictions from 2nd December can only sell alcohol with a substantial meal has taken the Tory Culture War form familiar of recent times about whether a Scotch Egg qualifies or not.
The answer is of course that no one knows and what a Government Minister says is just their opinion not guidance or law despite what some reports might suggest.
The law on what constitutes pub food (as opposed to a snack) is also fairly vague except about one matter. That’s not what is eaten but how. You must be sitting down at a table.
What ‘the law’ says about substantial pub meals (not much)
David Edgar’s 1990 play The Shape of the Table comes to mind. Performed after the demise of ‘Communist’ Governments in Eastern Europe in 1990 it referred to an argument about the precise shape and layout of the table for 1968 peace negotiations in the Vietnam War (in which the British Government had a considerable role)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shape_of_the_Table
Edgar’s point was that the most contentious thing about the talks was not the war or what to do about it but the symbolism of the shape of the negotiating table- who sat where and why.
Likewise as Pete Brown points out in his blog (extract and link below) the aim of English Tier 2 restrictions is to turn pubs into restaurants. At a restaurant you will usually sit at a table to eat and not the TV dinner table that Trump used for a recent rant either but a proper table.
As Pete Brown notes the likely thinking behind this is not only the reasonable one that sitting down and not moving round is safer but also that it sounds like an impressive restriction particularly to those who don’t use pubs. It fulfils the requirement that COVID-19 infections are a very serious issue (they are)and the Government must be seen to be doing something. Obviously it would be better if what was done was effective but its long since become clear that this is too much for this Government.
The government has to be seen to do something. And we’ll just about accept pub closures because, despite my protestations to the contrary, it does make logical sense to some people that we might behave more irresponsibly after a drink (but not if we buy it from Tesco of course.)
The substantial meal rule came in simply because it sounds like a tough restriction, one that seems to make sense, even though the logic we all might assume actually has nothing to do with the decision. It’s the lazy-arsed thinking behind such a cynical move that also led to them not thinking it through properly, and not being bothered to come up with a coherent set of answers to questions people were obviously going to ask.
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