Let's blame politicians? This is just ANOTHER pubco sponsored red herring. Who we vote for is totally besides the point - as is the pointless call asking for Brown and Darling to resign - this is NOT a PARTY political issue BAD move.

Pubs and the pub industry ARE A BIG POLITICAL issue but do not believe for one moment there would be any substantial change to the status quo if any other party were, or had been, in charge.

The pub industry is in a pathetically weak position because it has been looked after completely irresponsibly by its biggest owners - the pubcos - pubcos have not invested a genuine penny which hasn't then been charged back to livensees at five times the bank lending rate on the operational side of the pub trade at all. All pubcos have ever invested in is their own growth and in tightening their financial stranglehold and influence over all aspects of the pub trade where they can make even more money - and that means everywhere. They are after profitability at the expense of every other part of the trade.

Pubcos' have systematically worked to remove ALL profits from every level of the trade and transfer it to themselves. Anyone telling you otherwise is either just wrong and deluded or plain lying... Pubcos have kept the situation so that they can get away with profiteering from the trade for so long is by being in control of every channel of communication with the outside, 21st century world.

Pubcos keep brewers quiet by threatening to delist their products. Pubcos keep lessees quiet by forcing them into penury and stress, overworking such long hours they never have time to think, to research, to put together the pieces of why they are doing so badly, to organise, to talk to politicians or anyone else, about what is happening.

When politicians eventually get round to asking questions about pubs ALL the answers come from the pubco side of the trade. When pubcos see that inquiries are going against them they throw out smokescreens and diversions. Example: this is EXACTLY what Axe the Tax is: another of the pubcos' diversions orchestrated through BBPA... Look back at everything BBPA does. BBPA does not represnt licensees - it's ALL about anything other than pubcos. When licensees benefit as a result of anything BBPA has done it's the equivalent of collateral damage in conventional warfare - some people who are not the prime targetare inevitably hit as well. Licensees only benefit vicariously from BBPA actions. Who pays all of the BBPA's income? Pubcos (and brewers). Who do BBPA blame for everything hat's wrong about the pub industry?

BBPA BLAME THE GOVERNMENT. This is highly disingenuous. Politicians CANNOT be blamed for the parlous state of an industry dominated by huge companies that EVERYONE acknowledges are fantastically financially successful.

Considering pubcos are so wealthy and successful, considering there is so much profit in the industry as a whole, why are so many of their pubs shut, struggling or barely surviving? It's not because of tax or legislation, it's because the pubs are not making a profit while the pubcos ARE. HOW is it, when there is so much money in the industry that it makes pubcos and their shareholders RICH beyond most licensees' dreams, HOW is it that even the licensees seem to blame everyone apart from their RICH money grabbing freeholders for their being hard up?

Divided and a last gasp away from being conquered we are.

Very few politicians, even those involved with bringing in the beer orders, know anything at all about the pub industry. This is because everything they ever hear about the pub industry comes from the rich comfortable people at the top - not the people at the pumps who pull the beer and talk to the punters.

What Fair Pint can claim legitimately to have hanged with the status quo of the pub industry is to talk straight and openly with politicians about the truth of what is happening to pubs and to back all of it up with 'facts' which don't subsequently have to be retracted as some of the pubco evidence to the BEC inquiry had to be apologised for as being the result of misinformation.