RE: So much for our pub saviour Healey

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/ViewArticle?R=86580

It's long past High Time for influential pub trade writers like Roger Protz to actually get on the case, get their heads around what's really happening in the industry and help sort out this antiquated ludicrous sham of a retail market from being a total political sitting duck.

Roger: When was the last time that you had a frank and detailed discussion with anyone in government about the pub trade? Where you told them what is going on, why it doesn't work, why pubs are closing and pointed out to them that it's a far more important trade than they believe it to be, that it needs understanding at government level, joined up thinking and a huge practical shake up to make it fit for purpose?

Have you bothered to pick up the phone and try to talk to John Healey, or before him, anyone else in government about the trade you write so eloquently about? The writers I've met are completely disinterested in the politics of it, an area too complicated for quid per column inch, and for fear of losing freebies to Bavaria, to get into, yet without the politics being sorted out this trade is never going to get up to speed.

At least Healey was appointed, it's a damn sight further than any previous political thinking on pubs. Considering the shambles the trade is in, and the shambles and disjointedness there is in the holistic overview governments have perennially had of the trade, it's hardly surprising that one hand giveth while the other taketh away.

edited by: J Mark Dodds at: 08/04/2010 10:08:13