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Saturday, November 14, 2009

Marching

Well Inez, I guess in 1908 regional brewers paid for their landlords to travel. Something like sixty trains were commissioned for the protests.

Now the practical difficulties with getting a lot of people on a march are very basic;

First it begins with having to break down the real fear factor - most tied licensees live in fear of their pubco and what it will do to them if it knows lessees are protesting - even now after all the noise that's being made

Next very practical: very hard up people already tired from working long hours, have to shut up shop for the day when they feel they can't afford to or pay someone else to cover. Then the costs of travel, the problems of getting there and back on the same day, the costs of overnight stay if they can't get back; and so on and so on.

Treating the march day like it's a proper holiday is the best way of going about it - it's a whole day away from the stress of the business, a definite that you're going to meet lots of other people in more or less the same situation as you - can you imagine how good that feels for once - talking to people who actually understand what you're going through? Brilliant. Doesn't change the facts but makes you feel like a new person and, the most important thing: getting the government and the pub punters of the UK to know what is REALLY happening to their pubs - putting the REAL arguments forward.

Solidarity, spreading the message, putting nails into the pubco coffin and making history is what it's about.

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