Martin Kay has it spot on in his post above: "the FP proposals would in total substantially improve the lessees' position, but provoke a pretty dire effect on some FTSE companies"
PubCos are powerful but this in no way says they can't be brought to account. Fairness, simply, is all that Fair Pint is about and is the campaign's real strength that can't be argued against. We are not demanding or expecting anything that isn't well within the bounds of achievability. The only thing standing against Fair Pint's proposals is inertia; individual lessees who have lived with the conditions of the tie for most of their working lives, people who don;t like it, who think it's unfair and wrong, cannot imagine a world without PubCos and are in fear of what PubCos will do with rent when they lose the tie and the massive extra income it represents to their property portfolios. The fact is that PubCos are PROPERTY COMPANIES with a legally sanctioned tithe attached to their bricks and mortar that gives PubCos advantage over other commercial property owners... This is a completely anachronistic condition that doesn't apply to any other and should, from a simple point of fairness, be made illegal.
When the tie is removed PubCos cannot simply increase rent to take into account the loss of wet income. The rent reviews will have to be conducted properly, openly and fairly for the first time without the wet rent the tenant pays through the tie conveniently being ignored during the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment