Why are we so miserable and void of nightlife in the UK?
Posted by NotedEccentric@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 72 comments
Just got back from a trip in multiple European countries. All the younger people there seem to be out at restaurants and desert shops happily scoffing what they want. Very few of them overweight and certainly not obese. Sun goes down about 7pm and the high streets are thriving 7 days of the week in Rome, Milan, Athens, Berlin and Paris. Same can be found in the smaller EU cities like Sofia, Düsseldorf, Bucharest,etc.
Meanwhile, we’re failing on all fronts it seems. High Streets failing and shutters down by 6pm, archaic rotting pubs catering to boomers and generational alcoholics with few nightspots for younger people and working adults. Huge amount of people who are far, etc.
We generally have more money, better access to healthcare and benefits in most instances, etc
Why are we doing so badly?
kpop_stan@reddit
Austerity. The answer to "why is [thing] so shit in the UK?" is (almost) always austerity.
GanacheImportant8186@reddit
Public spending as a % of GDP went from 43% to 46% under the Tories.
So if spending went up in absolute and relative terms, how are you defining 'austerity'?
ActionBirbie@reddit
This sub is infested by anti-fact brigaders.
GanacheImportant8186@reddit
Never know why i post here. Regret it everytime. Every time anyone posts anything resembling a fact the mouth breathers come charging out with their downvotes and spood fed narratives.
Unironically makes me despair for the UK's future. The young truly are very poorly educated and have the average person here has near zero independent thought.
ActionBirbie@reddit
And the Mods are in on it, they don't remove obvious comments by bots and circlejerkers either.
Vic_Serotonin@reddit
Maybe the same way the UN does. Have a search and see what they think of the UK’s aggressive austerity under the tories.
ActionBirbie@reddit
The UN, which had Saudi Arabia and it's head of its Human Rights council......
geekroick@reddit
Depends where the money ends up going, surely. Does £4bn of useless PPE or a £40-something bn equally useless computer system count as public spending?
GanacheImportant8186@reddit
Yes. Irrelevant though in the context of the guy saying 'everything is shit because of of austerity' when austerity demonstrably doesn't exist.
We have literally the opposite of austerity, we have (as you suggest) a dogshit state that spends more and more money on less and less.
moundofsound@reddit
in fairness, you could increase it to 50, 60, 110, but if it gets channeled straight to private equitty, cronies or generally piss poor regulated private companies then the impact of said spending is an entirely different metric.
GanacheImportant8186@reddit
That just means the government is shit at spending money, which is true. But that isn't austerity, it's literally the opposite. Profligacy.
Idontunderstandmost@reddit
Wait, I by no means an am economist and the following is purely googled - but it does make me think, statistics can point to many different things:
“Austerity measures in the UK, beginning in 2010, aimed to reduce the budget deficit, primarily through spending cuts that reduced public spending by approximately 5% of GDP by 2019. This led to over half a trillion pounds in reduced public expenditure, affecting services and suppressing GDP growth by an estimated £100 billion annually by 2018/19”
The long-term impact of these cuts has been linked to lower investment, reduced productivity growth, and a continued, depressed level of total hours worked in the economy.
I really do think this had an impact on nightlife now in the UK. Is it the only reason? No. But it’s significant, I think.
What OP is describing is people who drink coffee and have ice cream at 10pm at night, not go out to “get drunk”. I’m British and I drink, but I gotta hand it to the Europeans, they don’t always have to drink to relax and that’s nice.
Suitable-Fun-1087@reddit
Gentrification too
SaucyRagu96@reddit
What city in the UK are you using a comparison. Manchester or Birmingham can be quite busy TBF
Leading_Weather_1177@reddit
Same for many such posts
"I had a good time as a tourist visiting the hotspots in one of the world's most popular tourist destinations. Now I'm back commuting to my dull day job in a business estate on the outskirts of Runcorn and am trying to understand why I'm not having such a good time anymore. It must be because the UK is uniquely and pathetically shit, right?"
Blazured@reddit
Also "Why do (sunny warm countries) have more people out in the evening compared to (colder darker wetter countries)??"
NoCold3997@reddit
This to he fair is a major factor .. I've always said if England had continental weather .businesses would change, leisure, recreation etc would all change.
QuantumWaffle4@reddit
This. OP are you comparing apples to apples? Likely you visited capital cities and/or thriving cities in other European countries. My town only really has some pubs that get very slightly busy on a Friday and Saturday night, whereas if I take the train into London at the weekend it’s booming everywhere.
-adult-swim-@reddit
Meanwhile I live in Vienna and its completely dead compared to Liverpool or Manchester.
Nym_Nightingale@reddit
Agreed, the few times I'm in Brum during the year it's super busy in the evenings/night.
Trequartista7777@reddit
Even the "smaller" cities OP mentions are pretty big, Dusseldorf has around 600,000 people living there, cities in general will have a lot going on. I can vouch for Preston, it's much smaller than any of the cities OP has named but it's bumping on a Friday/Saturday, plenty of bars , pubs etc
wdwhereicome2015@reddit
So I’m in Benidorm at moment and was wondering this. Price of a bucket of 5 beers is about €12.
Price is a lot to do with taxes, cost of the rent and also cost of employment. All of which is more expensive in uk.
CaptainVXR@reddit
Also partly the weather. When I was in Cadiz and Seville last October, it was still hot and sunny, tons of people at every bar and restaurant, mixture of locals and visitors. There's just something really nice about a city still being bustling with regular people at 10pm.
Same goes for when I did 9 days in Valencia, Benidorm and Alicante in February, had 5 mins of rain on the whole trip. Can't beat a €1 pint of Estrella de Levante in Uncle Ron's, and I'm normally a craft beer snob!
West-Ad-1532@reddit
😂😂😂 Benidorm is like the UK on roids.. it's not Rome.
London is the nearest to continental Europe as far as cosmopolitan feel goes.
Everywhere else is like Benidorm..... Unfortunately the UK loves a bit of Butlins style sophistication. 😂😂😂
wdwhereicome2015@reddit
It’s fine if you know what to expect when you get here. Otherwise you will feel like waking up in hell 😂 just warm, sunny hell
georgisaurusrekt@reddit
The median salary is quite a bit lower in Spain compared to the uk though
CunningOctopus@reddit
"..... I'm wondering this. Price of a bucket of 5 beers is €12" - you're wondering?
Brave_Assumption6@reddit
Either you're from a very small boring town or are delibaretely trying to stir up discontent and make us all depressed. Cause this is not true at all. Go to any city or even medium sized town here in Britain today and you will see lots of revellers and chaos on a night out.
UnderHisEye1411@reddit
Because our culture is becoming more and more about individualism and less about community.
Poor countries still have a nightlife culture, so it isn't just our rubbish economy that has killed our club and pub scene.
Brave_Assumption6@reddit
But it was always like that to begin with. At least with England there is a big classism culture that has existed in generations. Classism is not really a thing in a lot of the neighbours.
rumnbacchnal87@reddit
Here are some of the reasons I can think of in the UK
Weather - it really is true that it has a massive effect on how you feel. In winter the UK is dark, grey and cold.
Faster moving culture - when I’m in the Caribbean and South America, things generally move slower. It’s a nice vibe. You can just chill in a bar, restaurant or cafe. In the UK it feels as though you’re encouraged to eat up, drink up and get out. Activities are very structured here.
Attitudes to alcohol - alcohol has always been more tightly regulated and controlled than in some other countries. Historically alcohol has always been seen as a major driver of disorder and violent crime. Binge drinking has always been a major focus for policy. As a result when you go out the relaxed vibe isn’t there and you definitely feel there’s more of an emphasis on control, rules and boundaries.
British people are too reserved - British People don’t really communicate directly and if you’re from another country or from a culture which values directness this can be very frustrating. British people really only open up after having a lot of alcohol. We are a nation that fears interacting with each other and opening up. Convos never really go below surface level.
Nandor1262@reddit
Because we left the EU and became one of the poorest countries in Europe in one fell swoop thanks to the combo of racist idiots and lying twats
rumnbacchnal87@reddit
Europe is full of racist idiots too.
Logical_fallacy10@reddit
Well at least England is one of the big spenders when it’s comes to ozempic and that type of stuff :)
ukbot-nicolabot@reddit
A top level comment (one that is not a reply) should be a good faith and genuine attempt to answer the question
whatmichaelsays@reddit
A lot of provincial night clubs have closed, and I think the changes in the licencing laws in the early 00s had a lot to do with that.
Before the change, you'd have bars closing at 11pm-Midnight and then the local club would be the destination at the end of the night until around 3-4am.
When the licencing laws changed, and bars were allowed to stay open later, the reason to head to the nightclub ended, and they eventually closed.
But then these smaller towns and cities didn't have enough pubs and bars to really make it a "good night", so people then started going to bigger cities, meaning that those smaller towns started losing what little nightlife was left.
Remarkable-Ad155@reddit
This is true, but I'd say this actively improved the nightlife in a lot of places. My provincial hometown is a lovely place and has always had a lively nightlife but 25/30 years ago Friday and Saturday nights were a war zone as everybody got double rounds pre last orders at the pubs and spilled out into queues for cabs, nightclubs or kebabs which inevitably led to problems (all of which repeated when the clubs chucked out at 2).
Now we only have 1 venue you'd still call a nightclub remaining but a ton of pubs and bars that shut when they want. People drink at their own pace and aren't all forced to cram into the same space. Result is it has a fraction of the violence it used to and less obvious crowds at specific times. Generally a much nicer place now but the lack of "kicking out time" phenomena I think makes people think the place is quieter.
The weather is often not great so no you won't see people hanging out in the street Generally though, not a great deal we can do about that.
whatmichaelsays@reddit
Oh I agree that the licencing changes have had upsides, and one of the arguments for them at the time was to try and spread out "chucking out time" and reduce flashpoints such as fights at taxi ranks. The changes overall have been for the better, but there are definite winners and losers from them and I think nightclubs were definitely the biggest losers.
Remarkable-Ad155@reddit
Let's be honest though, there's nightclubs and then there's nightclubs. The slow death of crap, sticky carpeted meat markets pumping out shit music and liver disease is genuinely no loss to society. Nobody should be crying that we slowly phased these out in favour of late night bars.
The impact of gentrification on some nightlife venues is a different story though i guess.
newnortherner21@reddit
I think that contributed. I think also the separation of pubs from breweries changed them and concentration on food and football/sport on tv made a difference.
berkleysquare@reddit
Last night I was charged £7.50 for a pint of Guinness in London.
West-Ad-1532@reddit
Quite simply because we're the scruffy, uncivilised, uncouth, ugly cousins of Europe.
The bars in Milan/Rome or Warsaw, for instance, have a vibe and look that the UK has never imitated.
ActionBirbie@reddit
Another obvious Russian bot, get out of here, we don't want you.
GlomOfNit@reddit
Shat exactly makes it "obvious", to your online-added mind? The man speaks the truth (about the bars, at least)
Remarkable-Ad155@reddit
I generally think this is overhyped. Look beyond the holiday rose tinted glasses and what you will see in a lot of European holiday destinations is a similar phenomenon to the American sweet shops and vape shops that infest some UK cities; a lot of shops open late but mostly selling tat to tourists.
There are 2 things that genuinely make a difference here though, one we can't change, one we easily could.
The one we can't change is the weather. People generally don't want to hang out in the street in the freezing cold. Even on busy nights in the UK you won't see as many people on the street, that's just a function of being a northern European country and not worth getting upset about.
The one we could change is opening times. Retail really needs to break away from the 9 - 5 obsession. Opening later and closing later would make footfall a lot more possible. I live in a really small town but most of the shops are strict 9 to 5 here so pretty much only old people and remote workers get to use them but they still complain about low footfall. Makes no fucking sense.
WIZZZARDOFFREESTYLE@reddit
Come party in my bedroom 🙈
Irrxlevance@reddit
Sucks
londonflare@reddit
Most of the UK is poorer than much than Europe.
nmfin@reddit
I have lived in a total of 6 European countries including Portugal, Spain, and the Czech Republic. The UK absolutely is poorer in many aspects.
P.S. I am not a bot.
ActionBirbie@reddit
^ This is what happens when mods don't crack down on Russian brigaders - Just pure, blatant anti-reality comments like this being spammed.
CrossCityLine@reddit
Feel free to report any comments you think are bots.
Confudled_Contractor@reddit
Depends where you are.
Most bars and Cafes I walk past after work (after 6Pm) in the City of London are packed most nights with people spilling out into the pavements since the start of March.
BarbiePeonies@reddit
Personally I don’t enjoy the nightlife
I love daytime activities way more
NoCold3997@reddit
Lifes what you make it it isn't unique to what country you live in.. my lifes great in the uk and I'm far from miserable indeed I believe that a negative factor in the uk is being bloody negative and moaning about everything but hey it seems to be a national trait ( but the same could be said about a lot of countries) ..no... life here is good and we ( in my local area ) have a banging nightlife.
SnooozeFezt@reddit
London used to be like this.
Now everyone is too broke to care.
dbxp@reddit
Plenty of people out in the evenings here in Manchester. You're likely comparing major cities abroad to small towns in the UK
LostCtrl-Splatt@reddit
Have you seen the prices for a night out? It used to be £40 locally pre COVID. Now I'm at £80-90. Dread to think what a night out in Edinburgh would cost excluding a hotel room
Commercial-Name-1853@reddit
Too expensive. Used to go out a lot, my local bars had Thursday nights student night, half price drinks. Tea pot Tuesday (bring a teapot and have it filled of your favourite drinks for free), karaoke Thursdays for 3 free shots… now there’s nothing like that and it’s all too expensive. Half the bars closed down in the first lockdown and the rest are too pricey, maybe it’s just cause I’m older now too but I can’t justify spending that much on alcohol.
EyeAware3519@reddit
What's even stranger is the UK was nothing like this before COVID. Almost every town had a thriving nightlife industry but almost overnight (no pun intended) it seemed to just not be a thing anymore.
A lot of younger people don't drink, people say it's because it's expensive but going out has never been cheap. I would spend a third of my weekly take-home pay on a Saturday night in the 90s.
I don't know why it happened but it is a bit concerning. Or maybe not, as long as people are happy.
Icy_Service_8336@reddit
True but years ago comparative today, avg prices of everything have gapped wages. My company always matches inflation but when you consider that tax brackets have not increased and certain categories of items have increased more than others we are 15% worser off than in 2020.
EyeAware3519@reddit
People's situations and priorities are different. If you look at minimum wage compared to the price of a pint now and 25 years ago you can buy almost twice as much beer.
Affectionate_You_858@reddit
I live in the NE and know a few bar and restaurant owners. Tehy were still getting good customer but with rent, business rates and energy costs just couldn't still turn profits at busy venues
Icy_Service_8336@reddit
Cost, when I first went clubbing in the late 2000s it was £2.50 for a beer, £2 for a rum and coke, don’t know what the prices are now, but last time I went to a pub that was not a spoons, the cost of a beer was about £6.50!
EyeAware3519@reddit
Minimum wage was £3.60 in 1999, now it's £11.44.
A pint is about £6 now so wages have massively outpaced beerflation.
Cost is not the reason why people don't go out, it's always been expensive
Neat-Suspect-6666@reddit
Nightclubs do indeed seem to be dying off.
Most regular cities seemed to have 3/4 clubs 10 years ago, now you are lucky to find one
ghosthud1@reddit
I’d say city nightlife is still big.
Town nightlife not so much.
I’d say it’s due to the cost of alcohol and town wages not keeping up with city wages 🤷♂️.
Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds are all thriving. Towns used to be the same, now they’re dead.
Khrusway@reddit
Fucking councils in London hate it with a passion and the "Night Czar" might genuinely be the worst government employee in the country
Trash_Panda_Leaves@reddit
brexit, covid, cost of living. Our healthcare is in shambles too. At least in my city tie all of that to none of us can afford a house and the ease of just having a night watching/gaming online quickly becomes people's choice over wasting a ludicrous amount of money to walk on sticky floors and feel awful the next day
Important-Gift-3375@reddit
Weather. Prices. Drinking culture that differs from the continent...
I mean weather is a great deal: nothing beat a drink outside. Most bars on the continent have chairs and table outside.
Having a drink around 2am in Paris or Barcelona "on terrasse" is quite something.
Mind you, it's true that even in winter their nightlife is really cool...
Ambry@reddit
I live in London and did live in Bristol, both are like this in certain areas - busy, people doing things.
The overweight aspect though - we have a lot more ultraprocessed food than most European countries, and a lot of countries have more of a walking/public transport/cycling culture (see Netherlands - people cycling everywhere!).
MJ-Franklin@reddit
Depends where you go I guess, nightlife in my hometown is beyond shite, but I lived in Brighton for a few years and went to raves and gigs at least 3 nights out of the week.
AutoModerator@reddit
Please help keep AskUK welcoming!
When replying to submission/post please make genuine efforts to answer the question given. Please no jokes, judgements, etc. If a post is marked 'Serious Answers Only' you may receive a ban for violating this rule.
Don't be a dick to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
This is a strictly no-politics subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.