What would free-of-tie pub life look like?

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/ViewArticle?R=84304

WHAT? It's good the question is being asked and clear evidence that Fair Pint Campaign has fundamentally changed the climate in the trade. Only a year ago 'TIE' was a taboo word that could not be uttered, no matter how discretely, in a sentence that included the word 'END' when talking about the pub trade.

No one with any imagination really needs the M&C report to figure out the fututre. Just think of ANY other retail environment that sources goods from a wide range of suppliers and sells on to customers and you have the future of tied pubs without the tie. Take the spiv out of the middle and you have a lot of successful pubs instead of boarded up or trading on TAWs.

Given a decade for individual pubs to creak back into health, post the all encompassing strangling influence of the Tie on the pub trade. The free-of-tie pub landscape, as far it concerned pubs will look very like it does now except it will have been invested in for the first time in twenty years. The pubs will be in much better condition, brighter, better maintained and groomed with a better range of beers available across the whole.

And, in time, everyone will forget about Punch, Enterprise and the others, the beer orders, and paternalistic rosy tainted stories of the good old days when the brewers were king will die out too, and there will be an industry fit for purpose carrying on the best of the traditions of the British pub.

Just as George Baker points out above - what is the point of pubcos anyway? All THEY do is take all thr profit out of thousands of individual businesses to pay off interest on debt. Anything left over is pumped into shareholders' pockets and directors' pay packets.