[Ken Moss]

I feel I must wade in and leap to the defence of the government here. The decline of the pub trade (whilst not being helped by the smoking ban) has been accelerated by the greedy pub companies.

Benipete used to post about this sort of stuff but whilst ALL governments of ALL colours have raised duty by 1 or 2 pence every budget the price of a pint then goes up by 10 or 20p as a result and they blame the government.

Bonds of a few thousand pounds are secured from new landlords, all eager to make a go of it and then they find that the rent and overheads are crippling them to the point where in six months they lose their bond and a new eager (equally doomed) landlord takes over.

Two pubs that I have worked at grew steadily in custom over a number of years, both tied to the pub companies so they could only buy their drinks from the supplier, ergo the more they sold the more money was shovelled at the pub company. Add to that the fact that the barrels of ale were sold at twice the price that a free house would pay from the brewery and the pub companies are onto a pretty good deal.

However, this is never enough so they screw the landlords even harder. One pub saw their rent jump up to £1,500 per week which is a lot of beer and crisps before you even start to think about overheads, salaries and profits.

The pub companies are the problem, not the government. Look at free houses if you want to see this in action.

I cite the wonderful Victoria in Great Harwood as an example.