silver2 wrote:
I think this is the key. We appear to be less social as a society these days. When I started work in the 1970s we had numerous works outings but in the last 10-20 years this concept had all but disappeared. The same also applied at the local pub and social club. Could the fault lie with computers and the internet?
It's all manner of factors. Pubs and clubs are closing because they're becoming less relevant as a centre of the community, and the concept of "community" is, itself, less relevant. It's not just a pub and club thing - many aspects of "community life" have the same issues for slightly varied reasons - the church being an obvious one.
Twenty years ago, pubs were the only place you watch sport on a big screen. Today, more of us have big screen HD TVs and Sky Sports subscriptons at home. Younger generations are also generally drinking less.
And our lives have changed. We're more transient as a population - we move around for work and study and we change jobs more often - we're no longer in an era of "jobs for life" where people leave school at 16 and buy a house near to the factory where they'll work until they're in their 60s. We also commute longer. Those things all eat into the time that was traditionally spent in the pub.
It's easy to characterise these problems as "kids on their computer games", but it's actually just a reflection of how life has changed. One of the problems that RL the clubs at both amateur and professional level clubs haven't responded to those changes.
