Time please gents and ladies.

How often our revelry was deflated by the cry of the publican at closing time of "Time please ladies and gentlemen,time.Ye have to leave.The polis are outside.No ye  can't stay here.Have ye no homes to go to ?"
Those were the days,only a few short years ago.The days when some polis  had little more to do than rack up brownie points by "doing" the publican and  customer after hours and wait in ambush for the drinkers with a few on board to" do them for driving over the limit.
The days when every politician worth his /her salt pleaded with the publican for the use of the pub to hold his clinic.The days when pubs were places where you could have a smoke and a decent drink with your friends and neighbours without  being weighed down by the incessant hectoring of the health Taliban about the political correctness and certitude of their puritan and Cromwellian views .The days before joy was banished and misery,"pain " and subjugation elevated to the pinnacle of human expectation.( I must admit that it defies logic and flabbergasts me how a medical profession ,some of  whose practitioners must rate as the greatest and most cowardly of humankind for the callous murder of countless billion  of helpless  unborn children ,has the temerity to lecture anyone else on proper behaviour.).
The days when you would notice that your neighbour was missing from his usual stool and enquire after him and look him up afterwards.The days before successive governments and clueless politicians and civil servant advisers turned pubs from "Public " houses into deserted excuses for funeral homes where despairing publicans and disillusioned customers share and swap stories of misery.And where each have to face out in all weathers to have a smoke to satisfy the health Taliban fronted by a medical profession of know alls who regard those who oppose them as neaderals beneath contempt.
The scourge of cancer is endemic .Smokers with a terminal prognosis absolutely dread going to hospital  in the knowledge that these Taliban will even in their final days deny them the comfort of a smoke.Many older people,I suspect, commit suicide  in this knowledge,knowing that if MRSA doesn't got them something else will .
Happy those who can finish their days in their own homes free of these interfering busy bodies.And I have heard one such interferon fanatic state that he would have no compunction policing people's homes to see that this evil was suppressed.I suppose that a profession which routinely murders the defenceless unborn has no problem in bullying those that survived gestation and that this is just a natural progression.
The smoking ban heralded the epitome of State bullying so far and heralded the death knell of the pub trade.It is unashamed bullying on a massive scale,nothing more and nothing less.The Seamin na Caices that conceived this ban and implemented it,heralded the destruction of rural society and having got away with it ,introduced successive punitive measures against a populace who are too programmed and fearful to "take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them".In a democratic sense of course.
Anyhow time was when the ownership of a pub,any pub,was a thing to be desired .As was a mid sized farm.
A man of my acquaintance once said"If you have a son you actively hate ,give him a 45 acre farm on condition that he makes a living from it exclusively and generates enough income to support a wife and family.This should break his spirit in a short time."I thought he was nuts.It was me that was nuts.And you could now substitute or add a rural or small town pub instead of a farm.Imagine the poor ludraman who volunteered for both.
Land has held its value.I doubt you could give away a pub at present were it to be run as a pub.And finally,the publicans were way ahead of their time in the cry "Have ye no homes to go to" as a considerable number of people will find out soon.The Government and the Central Bank are demanding more evictions,despite the pre election false promises of the Taoiseach and Tanaiste on the matter.