Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie’s local, The Punchbowl in Mayfair, is to be investigated following allegations of price hiking for tourists. The showbiz pair famously liked the gaff so much they bought (into) it.
Now ripping off tourists is clearly wrong: bad for the pub and bad for London. The price of a pint is so high now that inflating it further is only adding insult to injury. But the naughty, nasty mini-us inside Londonist is smirking everso slightly. We’ve spent our lives being ripped off as tourists in every other country in the world: coffee in France, deckchairs in Italy, car hire in Greece. Jeez, we were once even charged double the price that the locals were charged by a Welsh vicar ‘collecting’ after a service. And the practice is no more cynical than supermarkets and their regional variation of price.
So let’s not hop on our moral high horses over this. They’ve been caught out (allegedly), so as long as the practice stops that should be an end to the matter. Our friends at Fancy a Pint rate the place, and they’re usually spot on.
Picture from Ewan-M's flickr stream under the Creative Commons Licence.
