Darby: time to take a more positive stance

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/ViewArticle?R=86098

Way to GO! Say it like it is Alistair. What a great elephant in the room impression! Where's the MD? - he's not here. No no not that. That's a sleeping golden retriever.

You are right of course. It IS time to take a more positive stance. It's definitely not the one you're hoping for with all this fairytale skipping through spring meadows though. Finally for once a more positive stance is being taken by licensees and it's working. The pubco myth is crumbling. GMB, Fair Pint, IPC (that's quite a lot of people in one body Alistair), Pub Revolution, JFL. They did not get together because things are OK Alistair but it seems all they amount to is a 'malaise' which has not spread everywhere?

This is the TIED pub sector Alistair. You know, the sector you work in - the sector that's not working. You haven't noticed it's a very different world from the one you're describing up there? Not all those irritating, unrepresentative annoyed tenants and hoi polloi, complaining they aren't earning a living, are wrong you know. No. These people, with nothing left to lose but their dignity, are representative of the majority who fear speaking up for themselves.

Down here in serfdom big bears areshitting in the woods and you lot are incapable of admitting you've got no one to clear up the mess piling up all around you. Watch out - you're close to being that guy.

You have become the front man in a strategic plan to shift focus away from what's really failing the pub industry - your tied pubco model (yes all of you, even if you are tarred with Giles and Ted's sable brushes you're all still guilty of slavishly following a bad, bad business idea) - onto anything and everything else in a last ditch pretense that there is honour, valour, probity and respectable business practice going on in the majority of the tied pub sector.

Be open enough to admit some of it, learn to deal with it, do something about it, and you'd gain some credibility.