I'm surprised at some of the comments here. Steve particularly - because Steve so clearly doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Steve you are surmising and getting it wrong.

Hamish.

Where are the lessees you know who are making a pretty good fist of it?

Where are the lessees you know who have a good relationship with Punch, Enterprise, and all their followers like S&NPE, Greene King, Admiral, Marston's??? Where are they.

You;ve spent too much time brushing up with the corporate executives who believe their own rhetoric about the pubco business 'model' as they operate it.

They take far too much and have sold this industry down the Swanee. You surprise me too because you don't get to join the dots of your own statements - according to Steve, your admirer, which are supposedly objective and therefore worth paying heed to.

To casually point out that the pubcos have massive financial obligations in interest payments and loan repayments but they are safe as long as their cash flow comes in the way it is - is missing a bloody glaring difficulty with their position. They have forced all the obligation onto their estates and their lessees - this is where the income comes from to service their irresponsible activities. This is why they do not invest in their pubs or in their lessees - they have to use all the money to line coffers elsewhere.

It is a doomed situation one way or another - it's either the survival of the pubcos or the survival of the pubs. You can't have both making a living because the overall debt is preposterously huge.

I forgot to mention the SHINE AWARDS 2008. I took it on myself to call ALL the winners. I got through about half of them - after all I do have a tiny life, a family, a business, a local community business forum and an anti pubco campaign to run, and found without exception they were not very enamoured of their freeholders.

These are some of the best performing operators in the whole Punch estate and don't have a good word for their freeholders.

Ditto Enterprise and the others.

I find it rather offensive that people like Steve pontificate about lessees' gripes and criticisms of their freehoders while clearly not having exposure to what really goes on. Steve. Hamish. If you could be bothered to go to the trouble to find out what really goes on you would be ashamed of your general stance and shocked that many of the pubco activities are actually legal in the 21st century.