Roy Beers: Is it finally time to join forces with the "good" off trade?

That's not my perspective, although I can sympathise with many of the arguments, but the heart-felt message - to anyone who will listen - from an under-pressure Glasgow off trade licensee I met on the city's south side the other week.

It was raining, I was trying to muster material for a "support your local shops" feature in a local newspaper, and things were not going well.

Despite the apparent rising prosperity of the south side, a pleasant enough area which nevertheless always plays the poor country cousin to Glasgow's West End, the credit crunch appears to have dovetailed with the August holiday slump to devastating effect.

There were just as many potential shoppers in the busy area around Shawlands Arcade as usual, but none of them - I was repeatedly told - were spending anything like serious money.

Homing in on what I hoped might be a useful trade perspective I rashly entered a local offie, as we call them, to be met by a man who seemed to me to be on the brink of doing a convincing impersonation of Michael Douglas in the movie"Falling Down".

He ranted and he railed, accusing journalists in general and me in particular (he didn't know me and I'd barely managed a brief introduction) of failing dismally to tell the punters about the deadly rot at the heart of British society.

In the course of a tirade which must have lasted 20 minutes, but which might have been longer, he excoriated the traffic wardens who are costing him £750 a year for fines incurred while he tries to park - very briefly - outside his own business.

He lambasted Scotland's culture of public sector jobsworthism, in which, as he sees it, hardly anybody is doing a real job any more: most people in jobs (he insists) are just rabbits in the ever-expanding warren of local government - which takes plenty and gives nothing (not even bin bags apparently) in return.

I found myself nodding in agreement when he mentioned the Scottish Parliament and its

preposterous over-priced building - the best you can say for it is that, unlike Tony Blair's white elephant London Dome, there was actually a reason for building it - and I couldn't really fault his searing analysis of your average Scottish (ie operating in Scotland) politician. "Morons" would be a polite approximation.

But while his bluster may in parts have been intemperate, not always terribly logical, and a little "Alf Garnett" in general tenor, I could see where his angst was coming from.

He told me of the hoity-toity 16-year-old girl who insisted she "always" bought her alcohol in her shop and who had abused a senior female member of staff when she'd been knocked back. He spoke (shouted, really) at length about the iniquities of council departments which seem to revel in thrusting obfuscation his way on a regular basis, preferably in triplicate, and cursed what he sees as a society which has lost all sense of community and which "just doesn't care".

Possibly unwisely I mentioned the new Licensing Act - cue for more rage and spleen - then he switched to a predictable attack on supermarkets and loss-leading beer prices.

There was a very brief intermission while he refused service, quite amiably, to a local problem drinker who had wandered in, and then it was back on full throttle, this time about the uselessness of the media and why newspapers never tell the "real stories" (ie about off sales being put out of business by unfair competition, uncaring government and a feckless drinking public).

Finally - and here was his main point - things were now so bad that he was on the verge of "handing in the keys" after 25 years in business.

As far as I could see he was a responsible licensee. There were no ultra-cheapie offers flagged up anywhere, nor displays of drinks (eg Buckfast) associated with chronic problem drinking. The shop appeared neat, well-organised and clean.

It seemed obvious to me he was suffering from the same malaise afflicting decent if uninspiring local trad bars, and for that matter almost every other kind of business - for example a home decorating shop owner pointed out to me that his gear was almost literally the last thing anyone would buy when times were tough.

And in fact in his few comments about pubs, when I brought the subject up, he didn't appear to see any basic difference between their problems and his: the supposed war between on and off trades which sometimes appears to be implicitly raging is a phoney concept for this particular licensee - for him the enemies are government and corporate greed (as represented by the supermarkets), abetted by an uncaring, fickle and ultimately stupid general public.

Later the same day I decided a small liquid refreshment was required to take a little of the sting out of an irksome day, and called in at my regular local for a pint.

Barman Ronnie was in fine form, pointing out what he thought were compelling choices on the cask ale blackboard.

He tends to know the sort of beers regulars like and gives a running taste critique (and optional brewery history) of any particular ale on the board that catches your eye - quite frequently handing you a taster sample at the same time.

A happy gang of smokers were responsibly milling at the back door, it wasn't raining, and all seemed more or less right with the world.

It got me to thinking - are we sometimes in danger of seeing pretty much the whole of the off trade as a sinister threat to decent pub business?

The chap in that Glasgow off sales hated supermarket culture and loss-leading on drink as much as any on trade spokesman, and wasn't trying to encourage anyone to buy four cases of beer.

In fact independent off-sales in Scotland still doggedly allow customers to buy single cans, despite years of pressure from drink brands to sell only multipacks, and some of the better ones - let's hear it for The Cave, at Kelvinbridge, Glasgow, fabulous for niche beers and unusual wines - are offering a complementary and not alternative service to that of the pub.

There's no doubt the trade needs to find a more unified and therefore compelling voice on certain issues, and perhaps the time has come for the regular on trade to join forces with the best of the off trade to argue what is essentially the same case.

Supermarket deals and white van trade from Calais (etc) threaten the independent off trade just as the worst elements of the off trade threaten the on trade.

There are plenty of joint initiatives which could make a difference. For example we all know about pubwatch and clubwatch schemes, but I'm not aware (I may be wrong here) of any scheme which links off sales (including supermarkets) with bars and other venues - which seems silly, given the modern trend of "pre-loading" from carry-outs before going to the pub.

Genuine across-the-board ID schemes should also be embedded across the entire trade, over the whole UK - it's incredible there are still a raft of assorted cards in circulation: let's have one card to rule them all, "and in the darkness bind them".

There's no on trade versus off trade war, in other words: much better, surely, to see it as a war between responsible operators and the rest.

Or am I just being sorry for one luckless trader who seemed like a decent guy trying to do a decent job? It's a tough one - something to mull over at leisure while enjoying a quiet pint at the pub of an evening.