The People's Pub Partnership Facebook information profile; 15 December 2011

SOON YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE HISTORY AND INVEST IN YOUR PUBS TO SECURE THEIR FUTURE FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.

The People's Pub Partnership will change the way pubs are run all over Britain. This is urgently needed. You know why already but just to spell it out. THIS is why:

Our pubs have been closing at alarming rates for the last five years. You cannot possibly have missed this fact: Boarded up pubs litter our landscape. This is called 'market shift' by most of the pundits and we are told the country is 'over pubbed' by important people who understand the pub industry. This, colloquially, is known as BOLLOCKS.

Pundits (such as the pub companies who own most of our pub freeholds) say this catastrophe is unavoidable and is due to: Changing consumer habits; Competition from supermarkets selling 'under cost alcohol'; Ever increasing beer duty; Business rates; Government red tape; Other taxes - the Smoking Ban; increased VAT and, finally, when they've run out of all things else to blame they say that pubs are badly run by the people they lease them to, that they need to get 'with it' and learn to be more entrepreneurial and commercially aware of all the above and should diversify their businesses (typically they mean that publicans should start serving full meals, learn how to become chefs, hire more staff and invest in catering kitchens in their already loss making pubs)... These are the OFFICIAL reasons for this catastrophic failure of Britain's essential heritage and tradition.

The REAL REASON for this Cultural Crime is simply that people don't go to pubs as much as they did because they are run down, dilapidated, don't serve the products taht people want AND the beer is expensive.

And THIS is because MOST of our pubs are owned by Pub Companies who charge lessees far too much rent and DOUBLE what they should for their beer - for the privilege of having a lease with them. The pubcos take all the profit leaving tenants with nothing to put back in - which leads to the pubs being run down and falling apart.

PPP will do what the pubcos SAY they do on the tin - INVEST in pubs and work in partnership with the people who run them. And run them well. It's not rocket science. It's highly profitable common sense.