WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GEORGE CANNING is typical of thousands of other pubs.

Spot on David. Your observation aside, 6139's post is incoherent, completely off the mark and for all intents and purposes utter nonsense. Like pretty much Someone's been fiddling around with reviews of my place and the George Canning for quite some time because they've got it in for Fair Pint. Pathetic it is.

The point is this pub failed simply because its rent and beer prices were too high. Add in further outside pressures and pubs fail fast. This has been the case across the UK for years as the 'tied model' has bitten deeper and deeper into the body of the national pub stock. It's just unsustainable business practices by the pubcos that has done it.

Where did the Fair Pint Campaign come from? Where did JFL come from? Where did Pub Revolution come from? They came from tied lessees who have not been earning a living; working ludicrous hours for nothing, getting nowt back from their extra hard work, no pension, no savings, no assets, no pay - just to keep their businesses going. Lessees who CAN organise a pissup in a brewery but can't make a living profit out of it because they do not have the strength to stand up to their greedy freeholder.

Enterprise, or for that matter any other pubco, will never acknowledge that this is the case with any of their pubs. ANY failure is the failure of the lessees, recession, smoking ban, supermarkets, demographic change, Alistair Darling, business rates, whatever - ANYTHING, except anything to do with the pubco.

This post replies to David Pott > THE REAL GEORGE CANNING


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J Mark Dodds 24/01/2010 02:19:47

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WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GEORGE CANNING is typical of thousands of other pubs.

The George Canning was doing FAR more business before the splurge of money Enterprise threw at it in its wisdom - before it had a series of paid for reviews in the local press, before it turned into what looks like a sweet shop piled high with snack products and dozens of blackboards plastered with silly quotations from A Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Enterprise set up a situation where any incoming lessee would be crazy to take it on - the pubco has applied a bland, vague, characterless 'neutral' scheme as recommended by interior designers to householders who need to sell their property fast. Neutral doesn't put potential buyers off. Not here though. What Enterprise has done with this pub illustrates their inability to 'do' pubs anywhere. They are utterly dependent on their lessees for everything they've ever achieved and they've taken and taken and not put back in. What has happened to the pub industry is simply the result of pubcos' collective lack of foresight and deeply impaired creativity.

In case I didn't make it clear, 6139 doesn't know what he, or she, is on about.

By the way apparently there's an 'open day' at The George Canning on Thursday 4 February. Enterprise haven't announced the rental expectation but are offering £150 a barrel discount incentive, that should get people queuing up ready to lose their shirt.

edited by: J Mark Dodds at: 24/01/2010 02:22:15