Get yourself to a Wetherspoons if you have one near-by Zacs...good Real Ale, at very reasonable prices. Also good food. Curry Night is on a Thursday, where you can get a pint and a curry for £5.99 ! Other pubs may be closing but not Wetherspoons !
Mikey, we have a weatherspoons in the nearest town but the taxi fare home would make it even more expensive (and the clientele aren't exactly my cup o tea).
Maydup, you guessed correctly. Tied to a company which is massively in debt.
We wouldn't touch our local Weatherspoons - full of undesirables all day, most of the time, half of them outside on the smoking tables. One local here charged £2.50, it has a good clientele - but we've lost another six pubs in our small town since Christmas, generally people can no longer afford to go out, and the pubs can't afford to keep going. However - a small micropub has opened up, and it's packed to the gills every night.
You wouldn't like London.... ...
Guinness near me ranges from 4.15-4.75; you can easily pay well over a fiver for some 'premium' cold fizzy lagers.
Even bitter is pushing if not through the £4 mark.
It's no wonder supermarket off-sales are increasing when with a 2-for-1 offer you can get 8 (almost) pint cans for under the price of two pints in a pub.
Big Mac, me & MrsZ are coming to the smoke soon. I expect to pay a premium in a capital city but £3.25 for a pint of bitter in my local is taking the p.