ON Facebook Over A Barrel

http://www.facebook.com/groups/231136453643177/278057055617783/?notif_t=group_activity

But Steve Wilson and Sandra Anne Craven!

Hang on GUYS! - That's not what the pubco's say ... They say, through their mouthpiece, Brigid Simmonds, I mean Ted Tuppen: "the Tie provides a low cost entry into running your own business which is unique".

Surely you shouldn't be spending that amount of money on your business when clearly it's supposed to be making you better off? I mean how many hours a week do you work? AND you get free accommodation don't you.

Eh?

Moving on; Have a read through this statement from Brigid Simmonds marking the end of the tsunami of whitewash that was how the last Select Committee hearings turned out. It's hilarious, considering what a bunch of charlatans she represents and how much they all deceive themselves in order to deceive government so they can keep the cash rolling into their coffers through the Tie:

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmbis/1690/1690iw08.htm

Note the signatures at the bottom and remember them. Do not forget that these are the people who are directly responsible for the death of the British pub industry.

Their various actions and in-actions are destroying the livelihoods and lives of thousands of pub licensees, tearing down the fabric of communities all over the UK, killing countless pubs and drastically damaging Britain's cultural heritage, tradition, our national Sense of Place and our very way of life.

They signed, they know what they are doing. They are GUILTY as charged.

The pubco model is, in private equity terms, all about 'sweating the assets'. It's designed to make pubs and publicans flog themselves to constantly generate unsustainable returns. Happens in all bad business situations and it always leads to business failure. We're very good at letting corporations get away with it in the UK - because the paradigm of the capitalist business ethos here is that the more profit it makes, the more successful it is. And the pubcos are all still turning stonking profits even though their estates are falling apart. This is ONLY because tenants work harder and harder to save their own businesses from financial oblivion and eventually have to cut corners, typically on maintenance and improvements of the property, which in time always impacts on trade - and business slows gradually which puts more pressure on the tenants to work harder - you all see this in your daily experience - while the pubco keeps putting up the rent and increasing the supply prices. When times get really tough while all your other suppliers extend your credit the pubco puts you on cash with order and adds even more pressure to your negative cashflow. Spiral. Debt. Doom, gloom disaster.

However. The pubco's still making all that profit and parping on to government that it's ONLY the Tie which allows this to happen - without the Tie; IF the Tie goes it will get a lot worse and many, many more pubs will close than are already and Britain's landscape truly will be scarred and blighted with dead pubs everywhere. And what would we do then? Because THEN it would ALL be the government's fault.

The pubco's the BBPA tell the government: It's ALREADY government's fault that pubs are closing everywhere - taxes, taxes, legislation, licensing regimes, Business Rates, Beer Duty, Minimum Wage, allowing Supermarkets to sell bargain booze and get away with it. ON and on and on.

The brewers, the family brewers, the pubco's, all of them, are in it together.  Remember their names and pour shame on them.

The thing about making tenants work so hard is that they never have the time, energy or cash to organise themselves. No time to think straight, no energy to put into organising other people who are knackered and haven't any time, no cash to afford to be able to pay to get to or to hold meetings. It's a done deal.

It's bonded labour. It's slavery.