One in the eye for Sky and the Premier League?

Today's formal opinion by the European Advocate General Julianne Kokott, in favour of Karen Murphy, the Hampshire licensee who has been battling the Premier League and Sky is a boost to struggling pubs.

Although not binding on the judges hearing Karen's case in the European Court of Justice, I certainly hope they follow the lead of the EU's foremost lawyer.

For too long Sky and Premier have ridden rough-shod over the UK pub industry whilst squeezing ever exorbitant fess from cash-strapped publicans.

I, for one, ditched Sky and bought a foreign system some 18 months ago and the savings were some £15,000 p.a. - with the added benefit that the matches we chose to show were unencumbered by the inane ramblings of "experts" and pundits.

Congratulations on this significant step toward clearing your name Karen, your fortitude and courage are an example to us all on not taking it up the a**e from big business anymore!

Thrive on 5

So, further to my last post, it would seem that along with other commentators we all feel the burden of duty and taxation visited on the pub industry is too big.

Accordingly, it is great to see the launch of the Morning Advertiser's campaign to get VAT reduced to 5% for the hospitality industry.

I, for one, will be writing to my MP to enlist his support for this campaign as our industry is surely one of the few that can help lead our economy out of the doldrums. You should do the same.

Nice one MA !

"There is no such thing as a good tax" - Winston Churchill

Fair enough - there will always be some who view tax, per se, as an evil, I for one realise that taxation (with representation) pays for all the social good a developed society offers (health, policing, education, care for the elderly etc) and as such is a "necessary evil". I partake of the benefits so should contribute my fair share for the costs thereof.


However, what Churchill also went on to say was “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”  Had he been around today his words would have fallen on deaf ears.


What the Coalitionistas (HMG) and their predecessors have done is to target alcohol, more specifically beer, as the cash-cow that will sustain their other policies. The great democratic drink, beer, that has been a part of this country's heritage and culture  (drunk when the water was too foul to consume and now as part of a developed social structure) and its brewers and drinkers have been continually abused by rapacious chancellors.


We now pay more than nine times the amount of duty than France and Germany for the "privilege" of supping our national tipple and contribute an estimated 40% of all duty collected within the EU - a staggering £3.1 billion.


When will this Tory led administration take heed of one of its greatest figures and realise that the common man and woman in this country who enjoy a few beers are fed up with being the ones to pay for their other priorities, such as protecting their political allies and financial backers from paying their fair share of tax ( to wit, off shore status and the ridiculous minimum pricing they propose for alcohol) or benefitting from the largesse of the tax purse with bail-outs to corrupt banking institutions?


"My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them ..." it would appear that this was good enough for Winnie but not the proletariat ... nuff said!

BII Business Magazine

Just got my January 2011 edition ... as promised full of great stuff for the pub trade ... until you look at it in detail.


I shan't go into all the detail of the BII's work on codes of practice for pubcos, training etc.


What irks me is that for a professional body, the BII (or its copywriters/editor) gives some pretty rum advice ... or in the case of Phil Dixon, opinion. His 20 ways to improve trade are generally sound advice until you get to point 18.


Here he recommends that a drinks offer at the end of a match (25-50p off a pint) be run for 15 minutes after the final whistle, after a particular team loses ... the BBPA guidance on running responsible drinks promotions specifically indicates that one shouldn't run a promotion that is linked to unpredictable events - e.g. ‘Free drinks for five minutes after every England goal’ or are an incentive to speed drinking"


I would venture that the advice Mr Dixon is giving in his article is in direct conflict with this guidance. This is just symptomatic of the mixed message industry bodies give out and they really should get their act together.


My advice ... don't run this promotion (save your profit to reward customers in a more meaningful way, say, on some extra channel blocks for the urinals when all those footie fans take their half/full - time pees!)


And as for the article on The Martin's Arms in Colston Basset - what on earth is representative about that? 2 hunts meet for their stirrup cups, the Prince of Wales occasionally pops in for a pint and it has a Michelin Star - not exactly run of the mill is it? 


Spend more time on highlighting extraordinary pubs that real people frequent (not the "well heeled residents" featured in this Horse and Hound piece) ... the only good things about the article are the sound advice to spend some money on flowers (although who can afford £90 a week and £25 a week for a flower arranger?) and the advice on only putting prices up once (at budget time if you can afford to absorb the VAT and suppliers' price increases in the interim).


Oh, OK then .... they have been there 21 years and have undoubtedly worked their collective arses off to make the place a success and the industry needs to champion its best and brightest ... just feel this was a missed opportunity for the BII and the owners of the Martin's Arms to pass on some really useful hints, tips and advice to the less well placed.  


Rant over ... and as it's less than 15 miles from Nottingham might just have to save my pennies and pay it a visit and see if it's all it's cracked up to be ... good job I don't like Peroni (at £4.30 a pint before the VAT and budget!)

Alcohol Education and Research Council’s symposium on home drinking

It would appear that some discussion not motivated by political dogma of the issue of home drinking has been going on ... there are some great statistics from the symposium from a research report in Addiction journal, based on interviews with ‘ill drinkers’ in Edinburgh. As reported in the Morning Advertiser.

"The report’s aim is to support the case for minimum pricing by trying to demonstrate that it will have a significant effect among heavy drinkers in reducing their consumption. I’m not sure it succeeds — and neither, for that matter, are its authors — but some fascinating stuff is thrown up in the process.

The interviewees, patients at two hospitals in the city, were very heavy drinkers indeed, sinking an average of nearly 200 units a week, equivalent to 100 pints of cooking bitter or, more realistically but no less frighteningly, a bottle of vodka a day.

Quite a number exceeded 300 units. One managed 800 units. That’s what I call a drink problem. They were paying an average of 43p a unit, comfortably below the 50p a unit touted as a minimum – and that’s only the average. Cheapest unit price paid was 9p – for two-litre bottles of white cider in the supermarket.

Compared with the general Scottish population the patients were paying 29p less per unit and there was a clear inverse correlation between the amount consumed and the price paid for it, right down the line.

If it’s just the ethanol you’re after that’s rational behaviour, of course. And if the report demonstrates anything, it is that drinking at these undoubtedly dangerous levels is largely an off-trade issue.

Only a quarter of respondents bought any drink at all in the pub or club, and on-trade purchases account for a mere 7.4% of total units consumed.

“Our clinical experience,” say the researchers, “acquired unsystematically from drinkers’ self-reports, suggests that it is sometimes preferable for a dependent drinker to drink in a pub or club where there are external controls on the amount consumed and the level of intoxication and also possible mental health benefits of social interaction.”

Intuitively, this has to be correct, but you crave something more scientific to back it up and, as yet, it doesn’t seem to exist. Which is what makes the AERC symposium interesting, and I look forward to reading the briefing paper that comes out of it, to see what I missed.

As for whether minimum pricing, or any other price constraint, can reduce consumption, the report is honest enough to say that we can’t know until we try it. Charging 9p a unit can’t be right. But price is only one factor in a "multiplicity of determinants that cause people to drink like this."

How can HMG ignore such findings and refuse to do something about the reckless behaviour of supermarkets? Still an administration that keeps putting off scrapping Trident (cost estimated to be £25 billion) whilst imposing the biggest cuts in living history to other public services (if you can call Trident a public service) is hardly surprising!

And so this is Christmas ...

... and what have you done?

A question that many of us will be asking our "political masters" or the Coalitionistas as I like to call them.

So what has this unholy union of Liberals and Tories done for the much-beleaguered UK pub trade in their first six months in office?

Cast your mind back to the "bonfire of the quangoes" - in their unrelenting pursuit of deficit reduction (at all costs save those of their respective vested interests) - the axe was wielded on a couple of hospitality industry bodies - the Alcohol Education Research Council (AERC) and the Security Industry Authority (SIA).

The AERC’s main aims are to: “Generate and disseminate research based evidence to inform and influence policy and practice” and “to develop the capacity of people and organisations to address alcohol issues.”

Both worthy aims and the AERC has, during the last five years, concentrated on family interventions, community action programmes and screening plus brief interventions for alcohol misuse. They are a repository of a vast library of reports and research into the effects of alcohol that both government and industry readily draw upon.

The Coalition’s response to this sterling work? Cut its funding and turn it into a charitable trust – and we know how well charities do during hard times – especially if their not the cuddly / furry types. Good call Mssrs Clegg and Cameron; at least they’ll be able to use dogma and prejudice to determine their alcohol harm reduction policy without the inconvenience of a publicly funded body calling them to account. After all the AERC will just be another bleeding heart charity soon!

This as they do significant U-turns on combating below cost sales of alcohol by the off-trade (most notably the big supermarkets) which are widely accepted to be a major factor in alcohol abuse (from the health lobby to the police); at the same time the government has allowed back-door powers to ban such innocuous promotions such as pub loyalty cards. Could it be that the pub industry doesn’t contribute as much to party coffers as the supermarkets?

Talk about schizophrenic … this as we are all about to suffer an increase in VAT to 20% in the New Year. The supermarkets will undoubtedly swallow up the VAT increase and continue their irresponsible “deep discounting” whilst pubs won’t be in a position to do the same and their prices will inevitably have to rise. I would contend that this will drive more consumers from the safe and supervised environments of pubs into unregulated homes and street corners and the ensuing increase in anti-social behaviour will still be blamed on pubs!

Then there is the SIA – set up to regulate the security industry (including door-supervisors or “bouncers” as they are so charmingly referred to at times) when the industry was unable to “self-regulate” and was rife with thugs and criminals. The SIA has had two main duties: “The compulsory licensing of individuals undertaking certain designated activities” and “To manage the voluntary Approved Contractor Scheme”

These duties have been admirably fulfilled by the SIA since its inception in following the enactment of the Private Security Industry Act 2001. Is this wholly necessary public body to be applauded and receive continued public funding – no of course it’s not! No, the industry is to return to “self-regulation” after the Olympics in 2012 (we’ll need a credible vetting service for the industry for this international event) – shame we didn’t get the World Cup, then it might have survived until 2018! 

I could go on about the Coalitionistas much vaunted review and reform of the licensing regime, their U-turn on live music provision in pubs, the disproportionate burden their pension reforms will have on small businesses such as independent pubs … but I probably lost you way back.

If I didn’t lose you then think on about what sort of society you want to live in, because one without pubs in all their myriad incarnations will be much the poorer for their absence.

Anyway – Bah! Humbug! And All That To You All!

The Onward March Of The Undemocratic Beaurocracy

Isle of Wight Pubwatch has announced a partnership with the NHS in a bid to reduce alcohol-related disorder.

Representatives from the Isle of Wight NHS will attend meetings between the pubwatch, will speak on behalf of the HNS and nominate trouble makers for pub bans.

Whilst I appreciate the concerns of health service workers and the abuse and violence they suffer at the hands of drunks, I can't but help think that this amounts to little more than a kangaroo court. No evidentiary proof, no right of reply and the "court" imposes sentence without recourse.

I for one would not like to be on the end of the inevitable court cases that will flow from this ill-conceived initiative.

Far better for the police to secure prosecution with meaningful punishment and restoration than this vigilantism.

on trade to shrink to 30% of beer sales by 2018 ... SHOCK! HORROR!

So the head of Molson Coors, Mark Huner, predicts ... well no surprise there with all major brewers bending over and taking it like good 'uns for the supermarkets is it?


And whilst I'm on the subject, with news that Tesco is to slash the price of spirits in the run-up to Christmas — despite admitting "it is not necessary and is financially damaging". (Tesco spirits manager Mark Sudbery told the Metro) it's no wonder the British pub is buggered.

I am just amazed at the hypocrisy of these people, just goes to show that the never-ending pursuit of profit goes before all other considerations, including their duty to be responsible retailers.

Still time to go to local council licensing committees and report such irresponsible behaviour - if only we had a campaign to report these flagrant breaches of the responsible retailing guidelines (and if only the guidelines had some bite!) After all it is the British taxpayer that picks up the bill for these loss leading strategies and in these times of austerity surely this is irresponsible and reprehensible?

Seems to me that the predictions indicate a vast shrinkage in on-trade volumes and that can only mean one thing ... more pub closures.

I predict that the on-trade will have become polarised to an even greater extent by then with managed (food-led) operators leading the market at one end (with cheap on-sale pricing being a major factor in their alcohol sales) and at the other end highly skilled independent operators (probably mostly in the free of tie sector) succeeding with innovative offerings with unique points of difference.

The real losers will be run of the mill tied operators, who become increasingly cash starved by the rapacious activities of their landlords and the tax collectors who simply give up the ghost.

Remember Keynes said " the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

He also said "The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones." and "The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones" - these statements are a quandary for the pub trade ... how can we evolve when the thing we most cherish lies in the past (the traditional pub) if only he were alive today to add some sage words.

Hobsons' Choice - be green and produce great beer

Shropshire-based Hobsons Brewery, founded by the Davis Family in 1993, scooped the awards for Best Overall Business and Best Green Business at the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) Brewing Business Awards yesterday.

Hobsons was praised by judges for its "exceptional attitude" towards quality and the culture of local brewing; to which can be added praise for employing 14 local people and producing the highest energy efficiency industrial building in Shropshire.

The brewery has reduced its carbon footprint by 17.5 tonnes over the past three years after designing its own solution to recover heat from its cold barrel store to heat its bottle conditioning room as well as installing a wind turbine and a rain harvesting system.

For more details on how Hobsons reduced its carbon footprint, see the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4llYWGcf-w&feature=player_embedded

What a fantastic achievement for both their brewing and their commitment to the environment - small is beautiful after all! Their website is at:  

http://www.hobsons-brewery.co.uk/

Cask Marque - the true sign of success

"Pubs accredited for the quality of their beer, under the Cask Marque scheme, have grown by 13% over the past year.

Cask Marque estimates that 6,900 pubs will have achieved accreditation by the end of the year.

Around 90% of those who achieve Cask Marque accreditation renew their annual membership. A recent survey revealed that 46% of cask ales drinkers are aware of the Cask Marque plaque." - Morning Advertiser 17/11/10

This, along with CAMRA's unceasing efforts to champion the cause of small brewers and cask ale, is great news for an ailing trade. If one thing will help us to differentiate ourselves from the on-trade and justify the price premium we publicans have to charge it is the Cask Marque scheme. 


With such high brand recognition I am surprised that more licensees, who stock and serve quality ales, do not take up membership. Carry on CM - long may you continue.

Times gone by and times remembered ... The Licensed Victualler's Association

Back in the day when publicans were respected members of the community (you went to them for references, to get your passport photo endorsed etc) who had the active approval of magistrates and police (not the tacit approval of elected politicians under the 2003 licensing regime) and who were very much in touch with the communities they served things seemed a little surer and a lot more "civilised".


So news that the Federation Of Licensed Victuallers (even the name is redolent of a more pleasant era) has shown a recent resurgence is very welcome. This writer, at least, looks forward to their increased presence in the pub industry, they have the cultural and political heritage to go where some of the single issue groups purporting to represent this industry cannot venture.


The old associations, based locally with a national federation, did sterling work to represent their members' interests (both tied and free of tie) and their broad remit to see that all sectors of the pub industry worked together has been beyond groups such as Fair Pint, Justice For Licensees, Freedom To Choose. These latter day "campaigning" bodies have only succeeded in further fragmenting an already disjointed trade, who, once the Beer Orders disassembled the age old relationships between brewers and publicans, were left voiceless and leaderless.


As I have said here and elsewhere the trade needs a unified and cogent voice to lead us through these most difficult of times and the FLVA (although only 16 years old) and the local organisations it represents (going much longer) has the potential to fill that gaps.


visit their website for more information:  http://www.flva.co.uk/

Who says snoozing is a waste of time and what pubs truly have to compete with ...

According to the Press Association "lazy Britons waste 91 hours per year by hitting the snooze button" - and with all the air-borne bomb scares and such - was it really that slow a news day?

I would like to say a couple of things about that:

a) isn't it time we all "wasted" a little time in our rush, rush, hurry, hurry lives?

b) isn't it just the most delicious thing, that warm, comfy half-asleep, half awake feeling?

... and talking of delicious things ... it finally dawned on me what pubs really have to do to be successful and lure us and our ever-decreasing discretionary income into their environs.

Last night (a blustery, autumn Friday) 5 friends convened in a domestic kitchen and this was what was on offer:

aperitifs - cointreau, single malt Scotch; Moroccan style chicken, cous-cous with fine green beans, the last of the garden's new potatoes; a selection of Turkish sweets, upside down ginger & pear cake; a fine pale craft brewed ale from the cellar below the kitchen; espresso and frothy milk; great chat, subtle lighting, eclectic mix of music in the background

we worked it out (ex-capital and overheads) cost to 5 of us twenty-five quid-ish

until pubs and other licensed venues can do that for, say, sixty/seventy-five quid (£12 to £15 a head for you Saturday morning readers) then I fear that we will ultimately only be left with the managed chains churning out their bland, homogenised mediocrities ... not exactly firmly in "Cooking Lager's" camp but I begin to understand what he's on about a bit more.

oh and tomorrow, despite having an extra hour in bed, I shall be hitting that snooze button at least once ... happy hallowe'en!

Get with the program peeps!

If you’re not already engaging with your customers via the internet and their smart phones then it really is time you joined commerce in the 21^st century.

Google’s report on the worth of e-commerce to the UK economy makes interesting reading, 7.2% of British GDP (expected to grow to 10% by 2015); 73% of households with an internet connection and 62% of all adults buying goods and services online.

There is not doubt that the internet has transformed the way we communicate with each other, get our entertainment, shop and take in information; what many pubs have yet to do is seize the marketing power of the internet to advertise their goods and services.

I am constantly amazed at how few pubs have websites or use social interaction sites such as Facebook, when their respective licensees must see, on a daily basis, their customers using this technology. After all who hasn’t been in a pub or bar and seen the glow of smart phone screens and the frantic double thumb tapping of the “connected”?

Even when you do find websites for pubs they are often clunky, poorly designed, uninteresting and often full of out of date information.

The days of just opening the doors and waiting for customers to appear are long gone, now more than ever, with people cutting back on their “out of house” entertainment pubs must not only provide value, service and uniqueness but they must interact with their customers both on the premises and off.

Probably preaching to the converted on a blog, but you never know the message might get back to some of the luddites out there in the trade.

Don't put up your prices ... take less profit

Horizons, the hospitality industry analysts report a 5.6% increase in the average cost of pub grub. Even with 3.8% global food inflation this means pubs are charging more for their food beyond margin protection.

Whilst I had to remain competitive against all the managed offers that are available I took the deliberate decision several years ago to reduce my GP on food to 40%.

By doing this I was able to source quality ingredients, many locally sourced (but especially meat and poultry), go with the seasons and serve decent sized portions.

Not only did it mean a consistent food trade, but also is a great PR success - our Sunday Lunches, for instance, were the talk of the area and always over-subscribed.

It may not suit all venues but I would recommend this as a strategy if you think you will be able to make up overall net profit on throughput.
Consumer confidence is still low and many potential customers will be considering reducing their eating out in the face of continuing austerity.

Offering value for money and quality may well be the key to success in the coming years and if operators can manage it they should resist the urge to increase retail prices in the face of increased costs.

Purity, the latest to announce expansion plans ...

In these days of gloom and doom, what a refreshing change to hear the latest news from Purity, the Warwickshire based brewery, that they are undertaking a major expansion, this along with Joules being resurrected, Castle Rock in Nottingham growing and many other micro breweries opening and increasing their output.

Whilst the big boys continue to pump millions of pints of homogenised ales into the market place these smaller craft brewers are fast becoming the saviours of the British brewing industry. Long may it continue.

Now is the time for the coalintionistas to take action to encourage and protect this growth sector of the economy and put in place measures that will reduce the tax burden and over-regulation of the brewing and pub industries.

210 M.P.s have signed an early day motion calling on the government to do just that for "well run community pubs" ... now if they'll do something to relax the smoking ban as well we might see a halt to the decline in beer volumes and pub closures ... not holding my breath for either.

If you want to support the call for the EDM email your MP via the CAMRA website :

http://campaign.publicaffairsbriefing.co.uk/home.aspx?cid=fcc18346-cc74-4b21-9db0-d448c50b884b

Destination pubs … or … just “destination pub!”

Amazing how surveys come up with their results isn’t it? A report in the Morning Advertiser on the 22^nd October, commissioned by the National Skills Academy Hospitality has shown that customer service is rated higher in destination pubs than community pubs.

Hardly surprising in some respects, when carried out by The Mystery Dining Company, when the sample only included some 18% of pubs and bars out of 1122 businesses in the hospitality sector.

I think it’s a shame that community pubs aren’t trumpeted about a little more … they provide friendly, welcoming oases in the desert that is Britain in the age of the Big Society. Places where you can meet your mates feel part of a “pub family” and just hang out for a moderate price, basking in the bonhomie of your host(s) and staff who know you on a continuous basis, rather than the hour or two one might spend in a destination venue.

With all the talk of having to train your staff in “flirting” as an upselling strategy and the Academy’s suggestions on staff knowledge and customer engagement it makes you wonder how “traditional” local’s pubs have survived this long without all this sage advice.

No shame in being a pub and “just a pub” and although only 15% of all pub goers would recommend venues to friends, I’d hazard a guess that a far greater number actually do support and recommend their local than that.

If you want to read more of their drivel see:

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/article/88694

now is the time for all right minded people to come to the defence of beer!

You may or may not have noticed that this week is Alcohol Awareness Week 2010 and the prohibitionistas from Alcohol Concern and other nanny state cronies are imploring us to be aware of the harm alcohol can do.


Whilst I applaud their stance on reduction of harm, prevention of harm to children and young people, what sticks in my craw is the demonisation of ordinary folk who enjoy a couple of drinks with their friends and family.


Their activity is spookily similar to the anti-smoking brigade and we should be worried by that  ... look at how successful that was.


Sharing a beer (buying a round) is so widespread culturally and across the world and has been part of the fabric of societies for millennia, from ale wives to brewsters and brewers as a species we need to gather and have the odd drink.


The prohibition experiment in the USA failed and only brought about the implacable rise of organised crime that has blighted their society for nearly a century now. I for one look lousy in a zoot suit and fedora and tommy guns and sedans with running boards are so difficult to acquire these days!

seriously though lies, damned lies and statistics ... Alcohol Concern are very selective in their information

trends for male mortality 1991-2004, grew from 9.1 to 17.6 deaths per 100,000; for women 5.0 to 8.3; all very alarming I'm sure, but what they forget to mention in their most recent information(2009) is that only NE and NW of England are worse than the earlier figures.

what they should concentrate on is social deprivation for the 1991-2004 figures show shocking death rates amongst the worst off in society - for instance in the NE 40 male deaths per 100,000 and NW 55 male deaths per 100,000; female rates 20.4 and 27.2 respectively

surely they should be campaigning to eradicate poverty and social deprivation as a major cause of alcohol related deaths, something neither Tory or Labour governments have managed to tackle instead of having this blanket ban approach.

I also note that as of writing their "Overexposed" report on alcohol marketing is still not available to view on their site despite their press release.

PS - source for above HMG, National Office of Statistics

and for Scotland (from the General Register Office of Scotland) :

"Main points

In 2009, there were 1,282 alcohol-related deaths (on the basis of this definition), a decrease of 129 (9%) compared with 1,411 in 2008. Of these 1,282 deaths, 837 were males and 445 were females.

Table 1 shows that the numbers of alcohol-related deaths for both sexes were relatively stable during the 1980s, but there were significant increases, particularly for men, during the 1990s and early 2000s. The largest numbers, and largest increases, were in those aged 45-59.

In recent years the numbers of male deaths have generally been falling and female deaths appear to have stabilised."

and lest we forget ...in 2005 the definition of alcohol related deaths was widened across the UK to include additional causes of death with a clear causal relationship to alcohol consumption ... so how much has this distorted figures in the last five years... bit like crime figures or unemployment figures ... all subjective in the end.

OFT ... no surprise there then ... can't wait for it to be merged with the Competition Commission

Clearly the OFT will not be swayed in this matter at present, despite a pseudo-consumer group such as CAMRA making their super-complaint.

The OFT will not have been blind to the political implications of acceding to this petition and have no doubt observed the players involved and their respective affiliations.

It is now time for tied tenants to galvanise the support of the vast number of loyal customers who are being put at a disadvantage by the tied model in the UK pub market.

It isn’t for CAMRA (good as their intentions were) to organise a super complaint it is those who are directly affected by it i.e. tied tenants and through them, their customers.

I believe that the only way that the OFT will consider this matter and live up to their remit (which I quote from their own website) is if there is a legitimate ground swell from consumers:

“The OFT's mission is to make markets work well for consumers. We achieve this by promoting and protecting consumer interests throughout the UK, while ensuring that businesses are fair and competitive.”

The incessant bickering and internecine squabbling must stop in the licensed trade if we truly believe that the tied model is bad for tenants (as consumers of the pubco/brewers’ goods and services) and our customers need the OFT’s protection.

Only question is how do we go about it? Jaw Jaw or War War? 

for the full story see Morning Advertiser

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/article/88600?PagingData=Po_0~Ps_10~Psd_Asc

Free at last ...

nothing to do with beer, pubs or anything in particular ... just wanted to say Chilean miners rescue has warmed the cockles of an otherwise cynical heart!

Why corporate responsibility must be more than "window-dressing"

If companies are to be taken seriously about their stance on corporate responsibility then they must actually take responsibility.

Many of you will have read of the tragic death of a Liverpool licensee, Paul Lee, when a faulty gas-fire caused him to experience a heart attack, from which he subsequently died.

The owners of the pub that Mr Lee rented, Enterprise Inns, had not properly inspected or maintained the gas fire in Mr Lee's pub and were found guilty of Health and Safety breaches incurring costs and a fine of £300,000.

As an isolated case it would be bad enough, but the Health and Safety Executive also discovered that Enterprise had failed to carry out 474 other inspections on gas appliances it was responsible for.

Calls from campaign groups such as Justice for Licensees have echoed the calls from Mr Lee's family for the CEO of Enterprise to resign and have now been articulated in an Early Day Motion brought by Mr Lee's constituency MP, Bill Esterson.

Mr Tuppen and Enterprise have remained silent on the matter but would do well to look at the words of Jane Simms in the Institute of Directors magazine from August 2009:

Corporate responsibility could be a saviour of British business if larger companies embraced the idea with more enthusiasm. But too many seem to have lost their moral compass .... The financially driven and short-term culture endemic in so many large organisations is at odds with the more inclusive and longer-term approach to a range of different stakeholders that being “responsible” implies.

The result is the kind of moral bankruptcy that we see in corporate attempts to force through “payments for failure”. It is also evident in the big pub companies’ abuse of their tenants—the majority of whom earn less than £15,000 a year—as revealed in a Business and Enterprise Select Committee report"

That or stand as accused by Joel Bakan in The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power - 

"Corporate social responsibility, though sometimes yielding positive results, most often serves to mask the corporation's true character, not to change it."