Westminster Council is moving against “vertical drinking” in pubs, starting with Soho. Pub users should, presumably, sit down, shut up and wait to be served, like decent Westminster people who use wine bars. That is the value of the pub exchange, of vertical drinking. That the pub should go too, at the very moment of become the community’s last defining institution, is a tragedy. As one pub after another closes at the bidding of the property market, these places should be fostered.