Ken you talk a lot of sense a lot of the time but when you're getting reasonable about PubCo's you seem to miss a lot of what really goes on.

Their (in my experience of three of them) behaviour is seamlessly identical - one BDM = one OSM = one BDO or whatever title they have been given that suits the momentary PubCo zeitgeist, whichever PubCo they work for. Their lease conditions are the same as are their discounts, their product ranges, the way they take no interest in investing in property unless it's their way. They are carbon copies of each other. One innovates by screwing their tenants even further; the others follow. It's all legal, it's all just business. Corporations have no conscience Ken and you misunderstand a lot of what goes on with a lot of the protesting people here. They aren't saying lessee good PubCo bad - they're saying they want a better deal - a chance to make their hard earned investments and sweated labour become a return for them as well as for the PubCo.

Just because it's the way it is and the PubCos have all the power doesn't in any way make their use of that power right - or even make it right to say 'well that's the way it is so get used to it'. You did say it's immoral - I can't get where that squares with all your unemotional balance and objectivity - which leads to you letting them off the hook.

Like I said before, Immoral is immoral - whether legal or not - it's still patently WRONG.

Press ganging and slavery used to be legal but there was never anything right about the practices. Some people always understood this and worked to make the practices illegal. We have only enjoyed universal suffrage in the UK for 80 years. Before 1928 women under the age of thirty had no vote. That was set in law. Didn't make it right. People saying 'that's the way it is, so get on with it' luckily were not paid heed to by women who did not have the vote and eventually it changed, gradually.