Tied pubs 'not less likely to close'

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/ViewArticle?R=91056

What impresses about Greg Mulholland is his holistic overview of the pub sector, his insightful understanding of pubco practices and his ability to see through all the pub industry's deceits, red herrings, smoke screens, cheats, lies, misinformation and manipulation of statistics to its own ends. In other words he can sniff a porky pie a mile off.

Then he takes the detail, breaks it down, unravels the nonsense and turns it round to produce figures that actually make sense. And in so doing he exposes all the above for what it is. Greg does all of this - and he's not even a publican! Well done that man.

If you look at the lie of pub sales across the land objectively it's like this:

A pub freehold on the market for sale with 'potential for alternative use' is, BY DEFAULT, a free of tie pub. Ergo ALL pubs on the market are from the free of tie sector.

The BBPA has long used these invented stats to suggest that the tie actually keeps pubs open, when we all know that the truth is exactly the opposite. The tie kills pubs.

TO be cynical you could go along with the BBPA and agree that ALL freehold pubs on the market have come from the free of tie sector EXCEPT those where the pubco forgot to take the old "pub to let" signs down and leave those plastic banners outside: "This pub, or one like it, could be yours".