Government fight for 48-hour working week MA 7.2.09

Bravo George. My position on people HAVING to work huge hours is along the lines you touch in the advanced society bit. There's nothing advanced about the way pubcos operate in relation to tied pubs.

Pubcos force people to work under slave conditions BECAUSE that clearly is THE ONLY way a pub can work in their eyes because, simply, if a pub covers a rota responsibly and doesn't expect / force anyone to work more than 40 hours a week AND is profligate enough (or plain stupid enough in the pubcos's eyes) to pay minimum wage - there's no profit left for their risible, sorry, divisible balance to convert into their exorbitant rent demands.

ON the ridiculous yar boo sucks public schoolboy tantrum comment "shouldn't have signed the lease if they didn't like the terms" 'THEY' all come out with when all their stupid rhetorical arguments about why pubs are doing well when clearly they aren't, and all their sidestepping has run out about why they should not be listening to tenants who are dissatisfied with their lot. WELL show me a lease that says: "at rent review we will come up with a purely invented figure of future profit which bears NO RELATION to reality but does relate to how much we know we can get away with (oh and by the way there will be no point arguing about whatever rent we want because we always win reviews and IF you're stupid enough to go as far as arbitration the arbitrator will certainly find in our favour - because they all use the same surreal RICS rules that we use and you'll have to pay ALL their costs and ALL our costs as well as all your costs and you'll be made bankrupt and we'll get your pub back for nothing and sell it on to some other little sucker like you). NO lease says that. Leases say something about comparables with like premises in like surroundings.

The last time I made people redundant (after the last rent review) some were devastated (like I wasn't) I pointed out to them that although it was tough and unfair and wrong, they were at least walking away from a nightmare and in a few months this would all be behind them whereas for those of us left to pick up the pieces of paying a massive back rent bill and to move business forward at the same time, had no option but to stay and work harder and longer than ever before with no certainty that we would have a job in a year, by which time the next rent review would be coming round to potentially put us out of business once again.