More Bollocks from a Beer Blogger

and no ... it's NOT tongue in cheek, it's serious

In Praise of Ted Tuppen

Oh come on Martyn. Evidently you haven't been bothered to do sny substantial research whatsoever to underpin the off the cuff opinions you publish and promote about the tied pub sector - your deliberately contentious hagiography of Tuppen is towering proof of this.

The professional profile on LinkedIn says:

"I am a hugely experienced and multi-skilled journalist and multiple award-winning writer ... I am an author, news and features writer ... I have excellent news judgment (sic) ... I am used to investigating and solving problems ... Specialties: ...news delivery; writing, interviewing, researching and editing; "

You agreed somewhere above that you've not engaged with tied lessees - who by definition are the only people who actually experience at first hand what really happens between the pubco and the tied lessees - these are the people who say the tie is abused and you, along with many other people in your position simply do not engage with them at any substantial level. These are real people who work pubs, pull pints and serve the punters. They know what they are talking about, They are not publishing marketing and promotional material supporting a business model. They are describing intelligently, with insight and experience, what REALLY goes on.  They have produced, in between working extremely long hours managing their businesses, objectively verified, undeniably strong, irrefutable evidence proving that pubco's routinely, endemically abuse the tie to consistently take a far bigger slice of profit than the publicans do. The proof includes many submissions to successive government select committee enquiries.  The evidence runs to thousands of pages of case histories, examples and clear supporting documentation. It has been published again and again, updated and added to, for a decade and people like you purporting to be arbiters of pub sector events ignore it all, keep toeing the pro pubco BBPA line and stand behind glib statements like:

"still waiting for them to offer to post me extensive case histories numbering at least in the hundreds"

As if it's THE LESSEES fault that you don't engage.

It's disingenuous, insincere and frankly the indication of where your professional standards lie when it comes to 'reporting' news on the pub sector.

You must be pleased that this thread has had such a long response from so many people though - clearly you know how to engage a target audience and keep them coming back for more... of your suppositions and off the cuff assessments of what really is happening in the tied pub sector.