Camberwell Swimming Pool Reopens

A Blast From the Past.

http://www.camberwellonline.co.uk/2011/03/camberwell-swimming-pool-reopens/#comment-484714

Not sure, I may have posted this here last year, it's from Camberwell Online.co.uk where someone was asking what is the difference between a pubco and a pubco:

@David. Antic IS a company that owns and operates pubs and therefore is a pubco. Pubco describes a wide range of different entities who are involved with pubs.

The term has come to be used perjoratively because the pubcos who dominate the UK pub market;
Punch; Enterprise; Greene King; Marstons; Scottish & Newcastle; Admiral — there are many smaller others who slavishly imitate these ‘big six’ — have taken the legal gift of beer tie and used the advantage it gives them over their tenants to shift all legal and fiscal responsiibility for the running, operation and upkeep of their estates over to thousands of individual lessees who supposedly are well funded, dynamic, visionary and entrepreneurial business people who take on all risks of the estates as employers, insurers and repairers of the pub industry. The number of pubs that operate this way far exceeds the numbers that are genuinely free of tie and operated differently with the best interests of the customer at heart.

These pubcos have discovered that they can aggressively extract the maximum possible profit from every single one of their pubs, making the pubcos’ perform brilliantly year in year out, without leaving any profit to be put back into the businesses by their lessees. They promulgate the myth that their lessees, because they are running their own businesses (errr rather than pointing out they are actually paying the pubcos for the privilege of manage their estates) are infinitely robust individuals, crafty and capable of surviving downturns in the economy, inexorable increases in duty, the impact of the health lobby, new licensing red tape and H&S legislation, competition from cheap retail booze in supermarkets while they pay the pubco DOUBLE what they would be spending on their beer if they were free of tie.

I’m not exaggerating. I am buying beer out of tie now for the first time in sixteen years — I am doing this because I CANNOT afford to buy the pubcos beer and to stay open. I am in breach of my lease but still able to sell beer.

An average weekly order of beer through my tie supply with S&N costs me around £1,900. The beer I have delivered to me by an independent wholesaler (who buys it from S&N and then sells it to me, making a living profit on the transaction) costs me £1,200. Tell me that makes sense.

The other myth of the beer / pub industry is that tied pub rents are lower than free of tie. There is no proof of this whatsoever. Believe me, I’ve been campaigning against this for three years and have seen nothing anywhere to support this lie. If anything my own anecdotal evidence suggests that free of tie rents are actually lower than tied. If anyone is interested I can supply information to support this.

The majority of pubs in the UK are owned by such pubcos who operate them under the supposed auspices of the beer tie. This, essentially, is why most of the pubs in the UK look run down, dilapidated and unattractive to customers. They have not had any money spent on them for decades because all thr profit has been trousered by greedy shortighted pubco property dealers.

Customers in reality have abandoned pubs because they are not nice places to relax in.

The landscape being littered with closed pubs is little to do with all the reasons cited by the pubcos and their industry lackey pundits for their closure, as touched on above. No, customers have abandoned the pub in droves in favour of Starbucks because pubs are stinky falling apart crapholes — JUST because all the profit’s been taken away from the bar and tucked into the board room.

Antic is a different form of pubco. Antic cares about its profitability, for sure, but Antic ensures its profit by taking a different sort of responsibility for the way its pubs are run. Antic has a long term vision for its pubs. All the staff are employed by Antic and all the buildings are looked after and cared for by Antic. Antic cares about its customers, Antic cares about its products, Antic cares about its staff.

The pubcos we love to hate are the ones who take no responsibility for anything other than praise for taking all the profit out of their estates and to deny that their activities are directly the cause of pubs closures all over the country and the destruction of a fundamental part of British heritage and tradition.