HAVE YOU BEEN BANNED from the Publican's Morning Advertiser?

HAVE YOU BEEN BANNED FROM PMA? NEED TO KNOW> The Publican's Morning Advertiser

Steve Corbett and I have been banned from PMA by Rob Willock. In my case, as I posted here, for 'implying that the PMA is in the pocket of the pubco's via a blog post headed 'This is not journalism, it's Advertorialism' and for writing a 'frankly unpleasant' response to an article on PMA about the 'anti tie brigade' on PMA by Pete Brown which I titled on my blog: 'More Bollocks from a Beer Blogger'.

PMA is Britain's ONLY remaining pub sector dedicated publication and so is a vitally important source of industry news and comment at all levels. It is the only publicly accessible place where pundits, politicians and interested people can go to get up to date reports, insight and feedback about many aspects of the pub trade.

I'm confident I have never written a libellous or legally contentious post on PMA or anywhere else about the publication. I may hate the way the pubco's have knowingly abused their position of power over publicans and have wilfully gone about dismantling an essential part of Britain's unique tradition, heritage and culture for their own short term interests and financial gain; but I take care not to land myself legally difficult position. Challenging PMA to do quality reporting and responsible journalism is not contentious, it's demanding what thousands of publicans and their millions of customers deserve from a national trade publication as a matter of course.

In a sense I don't care a hoot about not being able to post on PMA - not being able to saves me from having spend time sifting through whatever verbatim stuff they pour out about pub products and pubco propaganda that drops into their inbox.

But objectively there is a very sticky issue about Rob's decision to remove us because there can be little doubt that this is out and out censorship designed to stifle debate about pubco's at a very sensitive time for the future of the tie and how that is going to impact some of the biggest players in the British pub sector.

Steve and I are two of six founders of the Fair Pint Campaign who, since 2008 have been pressing government hard to introduce legislation to curb the abuse of the tie by pubco's. And together we have been the most public face of Fair Pint in as much as we are the two who do the blog posting for the group.

I'm keen to make sure that our forced absence from the PMA is known about in broader circles on the principle that basically it's wrong. Anyone else here been banned?

Hippy Gav?

Campaign for a Fair Pint | Home

www.fairpint.org.uk

About half the pubs in the UK are tied. Tied publicans are obliged to buy beer and other products from the companies who own their pubs. Over recent years pub owning companies have used the tie to increase the price of beer to tied tenants.