This week is an interesting week as we not only be represented in Europe via the good offices of fellow executive member Dave Atherton, we also find ourselves thrust into the front line of the battle courtesy of our good friends over at JFL
Inez Ward, founder of this high profile organisation (with more than 400,000 Facebook members) has just announced its 2011 manifesto, part of which sets things out fair and square.
“We urge all in the trade to come together and to work together to ensure that this initiative reaches its full potential with all due haste”.
On taxes and duty, JFL noted: “We believe that it would be in the interests of both the trade and the Treasury for a meeting of minds”, adding: “There has to be an improved formula, which would be beneficial to both” rather than the continual increases in duty and tax.
The pressure group wants a reduction in red tape and called for an independent investigation into the effects of the smoking ban and “the reality of the claims made by opposing parties”.
Hello?
Now we all know what ASH, YouGov, CRUK, RCP and all the other anti-tobacco organisations have come up with and we also know that they are now ‘poo-ing their collective panties’ in case the truth comes out because in a true court of law the smoke ban would be shown up as the totally fallacious being it really is-providing, of course, that the court was upholding truth & honesty and not adhering to government wishes of a predetermined result (SCOTH Committee!)
We know ‘they’ fear us for we have encyclopaedic knowledge of how this smoke ban was formed – and they know we know, which is why the Amsterdam debate should be very interesting indeed!
“We urge all in the trade to come together” – never a truer word spoken for as long as all the different factions bicker about their own particular grievance this government, and any other, will continue to sideswipe us all! United we can be the force they fear. Together we can bring about change!
Inez & JFL know exactly what the ban has done to the trade – slaughtered it! One of Leicesters largest clubs, the Scraptoft Valley WMC which had more than 2,000 members only a few years ago, closed its doors for good two weeks ago. The membership had dwindled to well under a thousand souls after July 2007. The area had a high proportion of smokers – and, amazingly, still has! It is the club that suffered as the smokers departed for home parties where smoking & drinking was in abundance!
Everards have just sold a massive pub named The Blackbird, it is to become an eatery for ‘Sizzling Inns’, part of the M&B group-good luck there then! Everards told me that it no longer fits in with their ‘tenant plans’ – which in ‘Everard speak’ means “we know we can’t get the price we want from any sane tenant and can no longer find ‘availablemugs.com’ so we have sold the place for a pretty penny! Mind you, if you view the Everards ‘availability’ site you will see plenty of pubs up for grabs, all of them with unrealistc earning potentials next to them! No one in their right mind would pay the deposits required to be lodged in the first place simply because the smokers have decamped. Take “The Dominion” for instance, a massive pub set back from the road and a premises this old tiger has been known to frequent; but no more. You will notice that Everards claim: ”We anticipate that a tenant could earn £53,700 net profit from this site per year.”
Four years ago, I would have believed that statement. Four years ago, it would have been worth putting down the required deposits etc had the Smoking Ban not been enacted. Four years ago, it was flourishing! Any tenant taking the place on now will be lucky to see even 50% of that proposed profit yet Everards will not reduce ‘their required monies’ at all to give any new tenant even the remotest chance of survival-and this is exactly the drum that JFL (& FairPint) are banging. The “beer-tie” has got to be smashed or another 20%-25% of our pubs will disappear, of that you can be absolutely sure. Punch & Enterprise are playing the same pathetic game! They don’t want to reduce ‘tied rates’ to give tenants a chance, instead they would rather see the tenant go skint and then sell off to a developer or another pub company. This what the smoking ban has done, shown the pubcos up for what they are-money grabbing Scrooge’s!
That is why we at freedom2choose fully support JFL & FairPint in their quest to smash the pubco hold. Licensees need freedom of choice, not only for smoking or non-smoking, but for the choice to be tied at an independently set figure or simply on rental (again, on an independently assessed figure). We will fight alongside both organisations to achieve this, for they took little notice of the “TISC” in 2004, and then we will continue for the right for licensees to allow smoking, or not, for as sure ‘as sure as eggs is eggs m’lady’ once the tie is removed, licensees then need the customers to flood back in.
The non-smokers have already proved to be dismal failures in that department!