BIS: Davey refutes "sell-out" accusations

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/General-News/BIS-Davey-refutes-sell-out-accusations

Pull the other one Ed.

Thus does Ed Davey prove he knows little more about pubs, the pub sector, the beer tie, the intricacies of FRI leases when under the auspices of a tied landlord or any other aspect of the lay of pub land than does any regular la di dah punter in the high streets of Britain who's no longer going to their local because the price of a pint is too high for them.

Let's be blunt about this ED - Ed Davey; YOU are just plain WRONG. From the outside it looks like you've been bought off. Not a good place for a minister to be.

Ed should be personally satisfied that pubco's share prices leapt at his announcement that UK government supports bad practices in the pub industry and has given the green card for pubcos to continue unacceptable business practices which have caused widespread failure in the British pub sector.

It's glaringly obvious that Davey listened exclusively to BBPA (Staffed ironically by a bunch of advisers and policy wonk people, all employed by pub companies, who don't understand anything much about pubs or the pub sector either; they are paid to sustain the status quo with arguments like: "publicans and lessees don't understand the complexities of the tie, they don't understand the sector, they don't understand how pubs work, they don't understand how to run a business which is why thousands of them are failing". etc "it's all to do with everything else and nothing to do with the tie". etc) while ignoring a mountain of carefully compiled and well researched evidence backed by intellectual rigour and direct, chalk face experience of hundreds of lessees who went out of their way to give evidence to several Select Committees.

Quite simply Davey has completely ignored successive reports by TISC BESC & BISC, each more damning than the last - akin to verbal, then first, second and final written warnings - which threaten to apply legislative REFORM to the sector. Quite simply he has given the bullies the right to go on bullying. He's rewarded Flashman - for being Flashman.

It's VERY CLUMSY of Davey to say the issue is “more complex than the campaigners’ demands suggest”. Well. I'm one of those campaigners and, having spent sixteen years standing up to a pub company intent on stealing every last penny of profit from the economic cycle of my business, I know a hell of a lot more about the pub sector than Ed Davey does. As do my colleagues in Fair Pint, and those representatives of CAMRA; FSB; ALMR; IPC; Anyone I've missed from the list? JFL... and countless bankrupted and ruined former tenants of tied lease pubs over the last twenty five years.

What he really means is "I will not legislate against the interests of investors in the pub sector" who have already taken a panning and cannot afford to take a hair cut - because they say they can't.