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Tuesday, April 24, 2012


Tenants happy with pub deal, says Enterprise Inns

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Tenants-happy-pub-deal-says-Enterprise-Inns/story-15899614-detail/story.html

Response to some pubco apologist calling themselves 'Pertinaxx' who deserves a good kicking. I bet they went to private school.

Oh come on Pertinaxx the 'simple and undeniable fact' is that you're deliberately obfuscating about what goes on with pubcos and their tenants.

Far from your assertion that logic dictates all tied pubs would be closed by now - quite simply reality does not work so conveniently like that. The end of the traditional pub as we know it is going through a slow, inexorable death by a thousand cuts and this is evident across the landscape of Britain. Most of the cuts are imposed by insatiable pubco greed - ever increasing rent and supply prices are levied against pubs to pay off mountains of debt pubcos raised against fantasy asset values and projected ever increasing incomes from supply ties that have all but dried up. Pubcos are killing the geese that laid their eggs.

The reality is that pubs are closing at an alarming rate and most of the failures are from among the 30,000 or so tied pubs remaining. The pubs that last longest hang on to their existence because they are being run by people working in bonded labour, clinging to their livelihoods, their homes and self respect, hoping beyond hope that times will get better. Hoping for miracles. They have no option, these people are trapped in a spiral of decline, feeding pubcos' appetite while starving their businesses of investment. Tenants work ever harder while their income falls and their pubs become more and more dilapidated, they can't afford to invest in new ideas, they can't afford to pay staff, they can't afford to refurbish, they can't afford to redecorate or replace broken furniture and, slowly but surely, their customers abandon them until eventually their pubs fail. Not in a torrent as you imply but one by one, slowly choked by the conditions of tenure imposed by landlords who don't give a damn about pubs, beer, food, people, community, tradition, heritage... or anything of value. And when pubcos' corporate insensitivity and short term greed makes their pubs fail they say things like you do - and ultimately blame their tenants for their own shortcomings.

If you disagree then do illuminate your fond followers with evidence and - since you're so confident about it all - why not find one of those '87%' of tied tenants who are so happy out there to come back you up? You see  Pertinaxx, you won't - because you can't.

Cheers. Trebles all round eh Pertinaxx?

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