May 2026: Instead of a newsletter… notes on bureaucracy and pubs

There’s a lot more to running a pub than just selling booze, especially if your pub has any employees whatsoever. Because the minute you become an employer the state puts a lot on your shoulders. We retired our Substack newsletter a few months ago in favour of posting on our own blog. This not-a-newsletter has thoughts on bureaucracy in the pub trade, an evocative snippet from a 1980s children’s book, and the usual round-up of our writing from the past month. What got us thinking about bureaucracy was a series of posts on BlueSky from publican Hazel Southwell who found herself legally obliged to act as an enforcer for the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP): my business is an employer, which probably doesn't come as a surprise, so sometimes I frankly get to find out way too much about my employees via tax code changes etc. that's all one thing – I just write a different number in a box and we carry on as before, I do the PAYE, they get paid— Hazel Southwell…