Roy Beers: Your Local needs you - for heaven's sake go and have a drink!

"What are you annoyed about this week?" I asked, hoping for a suitable cue for an interesting subject to write about.

The new (Scottish) Licensing Act was his reply, delivered with visceral feeling. You'd think that on the eve of the effective launch of the new system any vagueness surrounding "grandfather rights" - which I take to mean long-established precedent for a particular business operating model - would been cleared up, ironed out, and sorted by now. It hasn't been.

Alistair still doesn't have a definitive answer to nagging and fairly fundamental questions about whether he can expect the same extended hours and other long-accepted conditions under the new regime.

From where he is standing it is at least technically possible that he could have to apply for a new licence as if his bar hadn't been doing business in its quietly classy area of Glasgow's West End since 1961.

This would cause considerable difficulties, because his premises - like so many traditional Glasgow pubs, sited immediately beneath tenement homes - can't possibly meet the new spec likely to be demanded.

When push comes to shove in February I'd be very surprised if his licence , operating plan and all, isn't nodded through with minimum fuss - but the fact that he's in any doubt at all after nearly half a century of successful trading is iniquitous. I suppose many other licensees must be in exactly the same fix.

Alistair's pub, The Doublet Bar, is very often called upon to act as a stage prop for TV news items about pubs. It seemed to be never off the telly in the run-up to Scotland's smoking ban last year, where it was held up by the Scottish Licensed Trade Association, of which he's a past president, as typical of the sort of places which could suffer.

Apart from a small area of pavement in front of the pub where there's room for a few tables and chairs (cue complex negotiations for pavement licence permission) there was nowhere to send the 90 per cent of the customers who are smokers. He was genuinely worried he would lose a substantial proportion of his regular custom.

Now, after a great deal of hassle, he has his tables with their giant umbrellas, and a strong regular clientele which - luckily for him - doesn't swear loudly, make a racket or otherwise annoy the neighbours. His staff work extra hard to keep an eye on things, and the street outside the pub is kept scrupulously clean.

Against the odds the pub has kept its smokers, or at least the overwhelming majority of them, since in this case customer loyalty has proved to be the most powerful factor. Just as well, too, given there's a massive superpub with a 60-seater dedicated smoking shelter immediately across the road.

Alistair, while still awaiting the all clear on grandfather rights, still thinks of himself as one of the lucky ones. A little farther up the road is another local bar of comparable vintage to The Doublet, a long-time favourite with students, actors, musicians and writers in this arts-friendly district: "You don't have to wear corduroy trousers to work here, but it helps".

It's a leased pub, and it's shut. A local press account published some months ago said it could reopen soon, but it hasn't happened. With no sign of life and no hint of it being back in money-earning mode before Christmas, it's one of several dead ducks in and around west and central Glasgow which should not only be open but "coining it".

Alistair agrees. "When you see a particular kind of pub shut which you know should be doing well something is very badly wrong," he says.

One classic city centre bar which used to be a favourite rendezvous for journalists has shut altogether - a crying shame - and some other once flourishing pubs open only late week.

It isn't just the smoking ban, which everyone in the trade concedes has done most venues some damage, but an endless series of administrative and cost-related difficulties which have salami-sliced their way all the way through viability to drive some formerly viable enterprises into redundancy.

A pub like The Doublet, by contrast, operates without beer tie or heavy historic debts. Given loyal custom and committed management it can hope to continue exercising the same sort of appeal to regulars as it always did, year in year out.

But there remains the strong conviction in the established trade that our best pubs are managing to survive in spite of "the system" and not because of it.

There's been the smoking ban, and a full-on attempt, partially foiled, to force Glasgow pubs to go non-glass (this still applies after midnight).

There was even a brief spat with over-zealous local authority jobsworths over whether you need planning permission for a completely harmless and inconspicuous (and useful) wall-mounted ashtray outside your pub.

Happily this ended in defeat for the jobsworths as the machinery needed to badger hundreds of ashtray-flaunting licensees across Scotland doesn't exist, and anyway everybody knows the technical planning point is completely stupid.

Now it's the legal trauma of surviving the transition to the new Act which is concentrating minds - next year, who knows, a ban on pork pies?

Some in the trade consider there's actually a concerted government-inspired drive to close down pubs altogether, but that's taking it too far because it would imply a coherent strategy.

When you see a pub lying shut which should be merrily trading away you're simply witnessing another little victim of the law of unintended consequences.

We're fortunate The Doublet, and others like it, are robust enough to soldier on regardless.

But in token of our appreciation we all must do our bit and (responsibly) enjoy our embattled traditional bars as often as possible.