More Cardiff Pub closures

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So its farewell then to the Mitre in Riverside, a Brains pub on the corner of Heath Street/Machen Place in Cardiff. Not that I ever went there or was indeed even aware of its existence until this week. Well not entirely, having seen the photograph on Google Maps I now think that I may have visited there some 10/15 years ago but in those days Riverside had plenty of pubs and now there are hardly any in that area. The street-corner local seems to becoming a thin of the past.
The Cardiffian has more on this, together with some figures on Cardiff pub closures collated by me a couple of years ago. Of course the one thing no one wants to mention as the reason for pub closures is the introduction of the smoking ban. When countries such as Germany, Greece and the Netherlands have reformed the law banning smoking to support their bar industries surely it is time for our law-makers to do something to stimulate the pub industry. The French, as usual, have chosen not to amend the law, but just to ignore it, as they do with most of their laws.
Meanwhile, on another planet, Cooking Lager has revealed what can happen to old pubs. A future use for this Riverside pub perhaps?