The pubs Calderdale has already lost

The Puzzle Hall, A pub close to the hearts of many

A famous Calderdale music venue left a gaping hole in Sowerby Bridge when it locked its doors for the last time earlier this year.

The Puzzle Hall Inn was a tiny pub hidden down a narrow back street but for decades has been famous not only in Halifax but all over the North of England for its gigs, locally brewed beer and fantastic atmosphere.

Dating back to the first half of the 17th Century and originally built as a house the Inn opened for the sale of locally brewed ales 100 years later even having its own brew tower built in 1905 from which the landlords produced their own stout for almost 30 years.

But in the last 50 years the Puzzle has made it’s name locally for showcasing talent from all over the country with fantastic open mic nights and gigs for both new and established artists.

Perhaps the most infamous involvement the Puzzle Hall had with music was the 1970 music festival disaster of the Yorkshire Folk, Blues and Jazz Festival. Acting as a promoter the Pub is now eternally linked to what has become known as the worst organised music festival in history.
To give it some credit for a small Yorkshire town a festival with a line up featuring Pink Floyd, The Who, The Kinks and Elton John is nothing short of a miracle and it would have been amazing had most of the bands actually played!

The festival was a complete washout, with hundreds of fans having to be treated for exposure and most bands not turning up thanks to rumours of financial problems and the risk that they wouldn’t get paid. By the end of the weekend only the stage was left standing after tents and marquees had been literally washed away.

But not a place to deny its heritage one wall of the puzzle was papered with posters and news paper reports from the time as a lasting legacy of the amazing weekend that never was, a weekend which left the organisers £30,000 in debt and declaring bankruptcy.

More recently the Puzzle has featured more than 800 bands in the last four years and been the starting point for many local bands made big. Jonjo Feather a young singer/songwriter from nearby Hebden Bridge had one of his first gigs at the Puzzle and is now an artist to look out for according to NME magazine.

Jenny Bromley another local singer/songwriter and seasoned regular at the Puzzle as a solo performer and open mic artist will be performing at this summers Wychwood festival alongside The Proclaimers and Duffy. She Said "The Puzzle was an amazing training ground for me. The locals were a tough crowd and told the truth about what they heard, you had to sing over the crowds talking and jostling for room but if you impressed them there was no better feeling!"

The night of the closure in January was a tearful one as landlord Nigel Mount, 43 admitted to the regulars that he had simply "run out of money." Punch Taverns, who own the pub have vowed not to sell it and to try and find the best person to carry on the legacy of this unique venue which for many way a home from home.

In the past the Puzzle has had its own cricket team, and run various trips to the races and other sporting events. Regulars at the pub were almost a family, with events every night to entertain all tastes from games night, to blues night and quizzes. Perhaps the most telling event was the Christmas day meal. Every year the owners put on a huge feast for regulars who didn’t have any family other than the one they made in an evening over a pint.

Lets hope that we see it returned to it’s glory days with a landlord who is willing to revive the long standing traditions of the small pub with a big attitude.

The end of the local pub

80% of British landlords want to see the Chancellor banned from our pubs, but is his 4p per pint increase really to blame for the closure of four pubs a day?

Calderdale has not escaped, and on a drive through the area it’s impossible to miss inn after inn boarded up with to let signs hanging outside. The once thriving pub business has taken a hard hit with a rate of closures 14 times faster than in 2005.

Surely there must be more than the latest tax increase to have made such an impact. According to Bob Baldwin the brother of a popular local landlord it goes back to 1989 and the mergers and monopolies commission which limited the number of pubs that could be owned by one brewery in an area. "Back in those days the landlords had a passion for their job and they were respected for that. The pubco’s staff that bought the pubs the breweries had to sell are inexperienced, and just in it for the money."

The website http://www.punchsucks.co.uk/ demonstrates the disgust licensees have for these companies such as Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns. They control everything, from the beer, to the staff and the gambling machines inside, charging high rents and forcing their landlords to charge high prices to meet the bigger cost of alcohol. "They’re being priced out of the market, and if they do manage to make a success of it the pubcos put up their rent! There’s no way they can survive" says Bob.

"We need committed landlords who love their pubs, who’ll stay for the long run not leave after 6 months. Locals like continuity it’s what makes the atmosphere good, which is what people come back for."

On a trip to my own local, The Big Six, a lively but tiny pub hidden away behind a terrace the regulars are more than happy to give their opinions on the pub closures. Mick Foster, 56, thinks it’s a combination of many things from last years smoking ban to the interior design of many modern pubs. "They’re all open plan. If there are teenagers being rowdy you can’t escape. I’d rather be somewhere with a few smaller rooms and areas so I can get away and just be with the people I want to see but that’s getting harder and harder to find these days."

John Baldwin, 45 landlord at the Big Six also has a few suggestions. He feels that with the rise of the Pub Company, and people thinking that they can make a lot of money from owning a pub there’s just too many of them. In a changing society that has seen people visiting their local less frequently the fact that there are even more pubs just isn’t going to work. Gone are the days where men walking home from work would drop in for a pint or three, we’re now in debt up to our eye balls and rush home in our cars to save the little money we make to spend on our sky high mortgages and organic veg.

"Supermarkets haven’t helped" says John. "It started on New Years Eve at the millennium when pubs and clubs charged a fortune to go out and drink. People, especially young people realised that instead of spending their money in town centre pubs they could buy much cheaper alcohol in the supermarket and still have an enjoyable time in their own homes. This has become even more of a problem with the smoking ban, now people can drink cheaply and smoke inside in their own homes it’s not surprising they’d rather stay in than venture out to the pub."

But maybe what we’re seeing is simply evolution, a sort of survival of the fittest. When the less popular maybe even badly run pubs die out won’t we be left with the best of the best offering exactly what we want? Maybe but it’s still not fair and although there’s lots of problems and reasons behind this loss of a British institution maybe landlords have a point in banning Mr Darling. The final nail in the coffin could be that 4 pence.

The Hills goes UK style

Cult American tv show the Hills is going to be re-made London style!
Celebrity Blog site Perez Hilton revealed on April 1st that MTV had held it's auditions for the UK version of the "reality" show.
According to the casting site they're looking for 18-21 year olds with striking looks, an aspirational lifestyle and be a "passionate follower" of fashion, art, music, film, literature or partying/clubbing.
So only the hot and loaded need apply!
suey_xo writing on the live journal community does not seen happy about MTV's plan:
"any Ukers watch(ed) living on the edge, or whatever that UK version of laguna beach (the show to which the Hills is a spin off) was called?...i managed to watch one episode but it was torture..i can already imagine how bad this is going to be."
In The UK the TV show, billed as being a real look at the lives of the rich in LA features a disclaimer telling the audience "some scenes in this show may have been created for entertainment purposes." It has been claimed that the cast's jobs, homes and relationships are in fact given to them by MTV! Do we need kids in the UK to look up to people who have been given their jobs because they've agreed to be filmed for a TV show?!

Ever wanted to walk all over Robbie?

Well here's your chance, if u can afford a flight to China that is!

EMI has announced that it will be sending over 1million copies of Robbie William's latest album Rudebox to China to be crushed and used for road surfacing.

The album which sold only 500,000 copies in the UK was a huge dissapointment when it was released in 2006 so the decision was made to get rid of the leftovers to make some more money for EMI.

The record company is facing huge financial hardship at the moment and has just announced plans to axe 2000 jobs after losing £263 million in 2007.

EMI is of course blaming the Internet and illegal downloads for it's current problems, and plans to cut it's workforce by almost a third. But some people think that this is unfair. Graham Jones thinks it's as simple as the music bosses not knowing what a modern audience want.

It's deffinatly bad news for "Blobbie Williams" though who has completely slipped in to the shadows in the past year and is once again becoming a source of ridicule to the British media.

Baftas, hit or miss?

The morning after the night before and the dresses are being questioned, the acceptance speeches picked through and the rumours are flying about celebrity's dates but it's the BBC that is really being scrutinized after last night's British Academy Awards.

Last nite's ceremony may have proved that British cinema can happily stand alongside Hollywood but the televising of the ceremony was certainly not worthy of LA la land.

Although it had the glamourous frocks and more stars than you could count the Baftas somehow lacked the sparkle of an American awards show, and with the loss of the grammies and the possiblity of the Oscar's being cancelled this is something the BBC should have taken advantage of!

Stephen Brook manages to list 7 "blunders" that the BBC made, not very good for a programme meant to be showcasing our excellence in the arts!

So how did Britain actually do?

All hopes were pinned on Atonement, and it certianly did us proud when it came to the nominations, featuring in almost every catagory but the 14 nominations dissapointingly only gave us 2 wins!

We had high hopes this year, but a bit like the BBC's production we were left with mainly dissapointment.

Ah well there's always next year, and we're British, we're good at waiting!

Full list of winners and nominations