Hamish. Just because you like Giles because you are privileged enough to know him and be charmed by him doesn't justify your position about rolling his sleeves up.

I like Giles too but this doesn't alter the fact that Giles is not an operator, he's a banker.

Bankers and Accountants by and large are good people for Operators to have around for detailed technical advice about finance and tax matters. They do not know how to run estates of thousands of pubs.

All your comments are exposed as threadbare if you look at the physical state of the bricks and mortar these companies own or manage on behalf of the Tchenguizes and banks they sold them to in order to expand faster.

The pub stock in Britain is in a disgraceful state of disrepair. Pubcos will assert that is due to the fact that lessees are not meeting their fully repairing insuring obligations and breaching contract.

WHY would they do that? Not difficult to answer that one. It's because they can't afford to invest in their own businesses and pubcos do not invest in their estate unless the lessee carries the repayments by way of increased rent - at extortionate, loan shark rates of interest if compared to loan repayments if the lessees could get loans. Which all contributes to the hamster wheel economics the pubcos all employ.

WAKE UP HAMISH CHAMP.

The coffees' bitter and cold with artificial whitener. There's nothing Giles' rolling sleeves up will do to sort this out.

Pubcos are dead. Long live the pubcos.