PAHallelujah! From the ongoing sh*t-storm of UK current affairs, some good news has emerged: Wetherspoon will invest £200 million in pubs and hotels, opening up 10,000 new jobs.
Everyone has their happy place. For me, there’s not much better than sitting in your local Wetherspoon with a burger, pint and a cheap-as-chips cocktail pitcher.
So, join me in rejoicing at the British pub chain’s plans for expansion, with new pubs opening and current ones expanding across the UK and Republic of Ireland.
The investment will be divvied out over the next four years, looking at development in small- and medium-sized towns, but also larger cities.
This will include new pubs in: Bourne in Lincolnshire; Waterford in Ireland; Hamilton in Scotland; Ely in Cambridgeshire; Diss in Norfolk; Felixstowe in Suffolk; Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire; and Prestatyn in North Wales.
Major investment will also be dedicated to key cities, including London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Leeds and Galway.
PAWetherspoon founder and chairman Tim Martin told The Daily Star:
We are looking forward to opening many more new pubs as well as investing in existing pubs over the next four years. We are especially pleased that a large proportion of the investment will be in smaller towns and cities which have seen a decline in investment in recent years.
The fact that we will be creating approximately 10,000 jobs is great news too.
Wetherspoon is an empirical component of UK pub culture, part-and-parcel of many’s nights-out (it’s the best way to kick off an evening).
Currently, the chain operates 875 pubs and 58 hotels across the UK and Republic of Ireland, employing 44,000 staff.
Cameron FrewThe renewed plans for investment come after Martin was embroiled in a corporate row over management of the company. While investors backed him all the way, others doubted his leadership.
Speaking ahead of the General Election on Thursday, December 12, Martin expressed his concerns over a potential Labour government, saying party leader Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t have enough belief in the ‘power of the free market’.
This announcement feels particularly prudent, considering Martin’s pro-Brexit stance – he’s long campaigned for leaving the EU alongside The Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage. Just before political advertising wraps up, could this be a last-ditch effort to get people onside with a Conservative vote? Is a vote for Brexit also a vote for Spoons?
Regardless of the result on Thursday, we’ll all be needing a pint.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.