atoz wrote:[ Yes local pubs and cafes will pay poorly, and that's not great, but at least you are supporting a local business.
Well the staff are the same, ie local. The supplies at spoons are as British as most I assume, maybe more so due to Mr martin's position. As to where the profits go, have you asked the bosses of these local businesses how they arrange their taxes?
Lots of supposedly local pubs are of course part of chains.
Or controlled by breweries with ownership residing gawd knows where.
I reckon objections to spoons on these grounds are often (not saying you) very much a smokescreen for other attitudes, including one expressed in another place by one of the "contributors" that spoons customers micturate on the seats.
As has been said upthread it has always been a poorly paid sector.
And I very much doubt that some of the declared fans of these mediterranean (local?) or provencale caffs or whatever sidle up to the bosses and ask in perfect French or Italian how the staff are paid. Try that with some of the Italians I know and they would be answered with some choice expletives centred on their Brooks contact points.
In short I think the objections are often based on little more than snobbery or ignorance of who goes in them.
Rather "upscale" from spoons I have frequented many five star hotels in my time, from both sides. I well remember in my student days going for a summer job at the Ritz - they were interested as I had experience, such as it was. They asked how much I had been paid the summer before in a hotel and when I perhaps naively told them offered me a fiver less, I politely declined. A few years later I often went there to events, and in my non working escapades in town was want to wander through its hallowed lobby grazing on their nice nibbles before wandering out the other door.
In short, although I wish the spoons strikers and activists well, I find it hard to believe that they are worse than many many other places in the sector. Which would not attract the same righteous ire.
On the main topic, with the current mildish weather am planning another night ride soon so may be able to report on another one, if I can get my timing right.
Then next year may eventually be able to get over to mjr's patch to sample some interesting sounding ones that way.
As explained in the other place, it was referring to the spilt drinks that used to make finding a non-sticky table (or carpet) there so difficult - but you've been there more recently than me, so you'd know if it's gone downhill! 
