I’d love to urinate over thug who wees in pub sinks but I’m too busy trying to save my boozer from Govt’s tax hammering

THERE’S a man on social media whom I hate.

If he feels he’s been overcharged for a pint at a pub, he goes into the lavatory and films himself urinating all over the floor and in the sink.

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He probably thinks he’s a class warrior, fighting the good fight on behalf of the little man.

But he isn’t. He’s just being annoying and if I find out who he is, I shall go round to his house and urinate on him.

The pub trade has been on its knees for years.

There are now 2,000 fewer than there were 25 years ago, and in this year alone, we’ve lost 54 a month.

I’m beginning to understand why, because I now have a pub.

It’s permanently packed. We are serving five or six hundred people a day with lunch and dinner.

And on a sunny day, there are hundreds more in the garden, having a pint and a burger.

But despite this, I am losing money.

Lumps of it.

And now, thanks to the strange and terrible government that some of you elected, things are about to get worse.

Because on top of the stratospheric costs of energy, we now have stupid eco taxes on the beer we sell.

The brewery — which is mine as well — must now pay 7p to recycle every bottle it sells.

That’s a tax of 84p for every case of 12 bottles, which is paid to the council to do what it’s supposed to be doing anyway. But doesn’t.

You only have to look at the litter in any hedgerow to see that.

Then you’ve got the rise in the minimum wage, a rise in business rates and worst of all, a rise in National Insurance. Which means publicans are basically being fined for taking someone off the dole and giving them a job.

One landlady in Suffolk explained this week that the business rate rise alone will take her annual bill from £33,000 a year to £80,000.

Meanwhile, the changes to the minimum wage and National Insurance will see the wage bill at my pub rise by £4,800 a month.

The awful Rachel Reeves is hitting farmers and business people over the head with a hammer.

But she’s using a machine gun on publicans.

The only solution is to increase prices, which is why the average price of a pint across the country is now perilously close to £5.

Back in August, I offered a Sunday carvery for £20 but that’s simply not doable any more.

Because not one single person in the Government has ever set up or run a business, we had to take that up to £24.

And soon, it will have to go up again.

And when that happens, we will doubtless get a visit from our TikTok friend who will signal his displeasure by urinating all over the floor.

Highs and lows of Peter the great

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IF you are as old as me, you will have been saddened this week to hear that the soundtrack of our childhood – Blue Peter – is being condemned to the internet.

And will no longer be broadcast live on television.

Many successful shows leave us with one or maybe two truly memorable moments but over the last 67 years, Blue Peter was a fountain of golden moments. And showers. Who can forget the urinating elephant?

Then there was the irrepressible John Noakes, who constantly amazed us with his helmetless stunts. He climbed Nelson’s Column, set a record for the longest-ever freefall parachute jump and in an act of madness, strapped a camera to his head and did the fearsome Cresta Run in Switzerland.

But for me, the most memorable moment came in 1983 when some youths broke into the grounds of Television Centre and vandalised the Blue Peter garden.

Lovingly created over many years, this was a much-cherished national institution, and the presenters were crestfallen as they reported on the Fairy Liquid in the fish pond, and the broken urn and all the upended carrots.

It wasn’t funny. Of course it wasn’t. Vandalism never is. And yet it was.

LEWIS TRACK PUZZLE

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IT’S important to everyone in Formula One that Ferrari does well because all the other teams are businesses, and Ferrari is more than that. It’s the heart and it’s the soul.

It was crucial then that the team’s new boy, Lewis Hamilton, came out of the traps like he’d been fired from a gun. And how good would that be if it happened in China, in front of a crowd that thinks he’s a god.

And blow me down, it did. For the sprint race in Shanghai last weekend, the elder statesman took pole position and then cruised away from the pack to win the race as well.

What’s interesting, and troubling, is that a few hours later, having created headlines around the world, Lewis could only qualify for the main event in fifth.

And in the race itself, he was so slow he let his team mate overtake.

And then he was disqualified.

How is that possible? I can understand that a car might be quick at one track and the following weekend, at a different track, be useless.
But to go from hero to zero at the same track? On the same day? It makes no sense.