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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64675352017-07-26T11:12:13.221-07:00They Got Me Over A BarrelThe Great British Pubco Scam. Pubs are closing all over Britain yet pubs are places that most people love and think fondly of as some of the most significant, treasured, iconic parts of our culture, places to be cherished, nurtured and looked after. Yet they're closing everywhere... WHY? It doesn't make sense does it? Read on... A bit about me. And a bit about them. And some photographs...J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-85850786229239080452017-05-16T14:53:00.003-07:002017-07-03T09:21:52.850-07:00OH the memories... IN 2009, which seems like Back in the Day when it comes to Pubs and what's been happening to them, Nicky Francey was on the front cover of the national catering industry magazine Caterer and Hotelkeeper The Caterer >< this article came a year after Nicky co-founded the Fair Pint Campaign with Gill Morris, me, Steve Corbett, Dave Law, Simon Clarke - Mike Bell, Brian Jacobs, David Morgan and a handful of other shadowy people who stood to benefit personally in very self serving ways (as Ted Tuppen, the lying cheating double dealing CEO of Enterprise Inns, characterised almost bankrupt penniless people like us voluntarily fighting for freedom and fairness while Tuppen himself was trousering over a million a year in performance related bonuses on top of his million a year salary for rapaciously asset stripping British villages, towns, city centres, communities, our unique culture, our traditions and the very essence of Britain's own particular secular Sense of Place).

Mind you, to be fair to Ted the Shred he wasn't alone in the private equity feeding frenzy that's been devouring the best of Britishness since the advent of Thatcher's inspired 1989 Beer Orders and the invention of that truly ironically British thing: 'The non-brewing pub companies' companies who hate beer and pubs and people but love high ROI - or: Money For Doing Nowt... Into the naughty corner with Ted go Punch Taverns, Star Pubs and Bars (formerly Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company) owned by Heineken (yes, they are all at it), Admiral Taverns, Marston's and Greene King. Brutal bastards every last one of them when it comes to tied pubs they own, along with dozens of smaller bottom feeders such as Hawthorn Leisure and New River Retail, companies pretending to have an interest in pubs but DESIGNED to render pubs into alternative assets. Ie: cash to make their owners and directors even more fat and LOADED than when they borrowed OPM to set up their asset stripping vehicles.

What has changed in that time? Our work led to the implementation of the Pubs Code in 2017... but materially, nothing much has progressed. Ted Tuppen retired.

The pubco's continue to asset strip our heritage to the point of 1,200 pubs flogged off for alternative use every year.

Nicky and I lost our jobs running the Sun and Doves (each earning less than £100 a week while paying over £1,200 a week rent, £575 a week business rates, over £1000 a week more for beer than if we had been free of tie for working 70+ hours and employing up to 15 people.

I was evicted from the pub and was homeless for three years.

The pubco lost around £1,500,000 while our customers' pub was closed for 14 months.

The Pubs Code came into place last July after ten years' of agitation and wrangling.

Campaign for Real Ale turned native and pulled out of pressurising the government to outlaw the practices of beer tie abusing pubcos and brewers.

I moved out of the family home. My sons became teenagers.

Nicky and I became life partners rather than business partners.

I did a PhD equivalent on research into the #GreatBritishPubcoScam have been on committee of several community pub campaigns - have been to countless marches and protests about pubs. Have helped with campaigning.

Nicky started a new successful career outside of the pub sector (OBVS) in high profile restaurants - straight from being a failed publican to the sit back and relax thrust of central London high end catering.

And we both invested in Berwick Brown Bear to be proof of principle for the People's Pub Partnership which is another step on the route to proving the existence of pubco's has seriously damaged Britain's natural human history timeline.

Fair Pint
Protect Pubs
British Pub Confederation
Peoples Pub Partnership
Ted Tuppen (Cultural Criminal)J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-68996307922124002882017-04-05T09:31:00.003-07:002017-04-14T04:37:21.175-07:00The Status Quo Stands as CAMRA's silence in effect backs a wrongun while blocking all pub sector reform ... Greg Mulholland caused a stir when he published his open letter to CAMRA members on the first day of CAMRA's 2017 AGM since when internal CAMRA memos have threatened a lawsuit - this response is a measure of their upset and simply indicates how remote, haughty and up their own arses CAMRA HQ are since everything Mulholland said is BANG ON THE MONEY and CAMRA is guilty as charged.

I've worked on campaigns with CAMRA HQ since 2007 when I co founded the Fair Pint Campaign with Steve Corbett , Nicky Francey, Dave Law, Simon Clarke Brian Jacobs, David Morgan and a handful of others - I've literally sat at the table when CAMRA HQ has backed out of the battle to save pubs from pubco asset stripping ... in some disbelief we've all been WAY too polite to CAMRA HQ in private and WAY too quiet in public because we hoped we could win them round ... this happened BEFORE Tim Page was appointed but SINCE he was briefed for the job of CEO they've simply edged further away from the URGENT ISSUE of the end of pubs and distanced themselves from people who are vociferous about #GreatBritishPubcoScam

The 'revitalisation project' is part of the evidence. There was no need for it anyway - where CAMRA should be going is bleeding obvious - what is fine delicious idiosyncratic ale without fine delicious idiosyncratic pubs to drink it in while sharing it with friends or family? CAMRA saved ALE now it should be saving the natural home of ale - the Public House. What happened to 'revitalisation'? It ground to a halt. Why? Internal wrangling and stubborn refusal by some part of the edifice to take a stand against private equity ransacking British culture... What a load of nonsense. What better reminder of the meddling in the background could there be than this?

My take on the situation has been this - as below - for years. I've been discouraged by close friends from saying any of it in public... in case CAMRA responded badly.

The Campaign for Real Ale has a serious problem... CAMRA's refusal to take a stand on pubco reform is damaging communities and the fabric of social well-being of every part of Britain - nowhere, no community anywhere, is free of the blight of the pubco hegemony that has been asset stripping Britain's genuinely unique social and cultural heritage, timeless traditions and our very Sense of Place by running down and rendering OUR Public Houses to alternative use on industrial scale for the last 25 years. No person in Britain is unaffected by the loss of local amenities and services supplied by well run Pubs, the secular meeting places that were the core, the foundations of humanity's original social network...

When it comes to pubs and beer CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, is the ONLY 'independent' body in the UK with enough clout to make any impact on the status quo in the British Pub sector. Newspapers, television and government all listen to CAMRA yet since 2014 CAMRA HQ has been silent on the fate of pubs in the hands of tied pubcos.

CAMRA HQ's refusal to be drawn into stating a position on pubco reform and most recently the appointment of a totally compromised Pubs Code Adjudicator is tantamount to support for a Tied Pubco Hegemony that has been asset stripping Britain of OUR pubs on an industrial scale. CAMRA's position is fundamentally deleterious to the health of the British pub sector. Thousands of communities have been damaged permanently by their local pub closing forever. Time, history, will prove that the true costs of pub closures to the UK's fundamental social fabric are so costly as to be incalculable in conventional financial terms.

Until November 2014 CAMRA was a key member of the Fair Deal For Your Local campaign coalition that was instrumental to bringing the Pubs Code into law. Then, while celebrating backslapping themselves 'our job is done' while another two years' government imposed 'consultation' on the Code lay ahead CAMRA dropped pubco reform like a hot potato - we do not know why - it was just as if CAMRA were a carpenter who'd been hanging a door and left it with only one hinge in place.

Since 2014 CAMRA's absence of a position on pubco reform has in effect endorsed pubco's continued asset stripping of British pubs everywhere and with the appointment of a director of Fleurets the pubco's estate agent of choice - Paul Newby - as Pubs Code Adjudicator CAMRA's silence has pretty much rubber stamped the hiring of a very serious 'wrongun' to police abuse of the tied pub sector.

CAMRA's negligence in the matter is quite frankly unbelievable. All over Britain at Regional and Local level hundreds of well informed CAMRA members, particularly local Pub Protection Officers, while remaining loyal to CAMRA's founding ethos, are dismayed, disappointed and distressed by what they regard unequivocally to be HQ's negligence towards pubs' protection. Internally they are highly critical of CAMRA HQ's refusal to get down and dirty where they need to be on attacking pubco's shockingly delinquent behaviour toward OUR national pub stock, and the thousands of tenants whose lives they ruin while extracting all the profit from the supply chain which they use to pay interest on the gargantuan loans the pubcos raised to buy 'their' (OUR) pubs in the first place... J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-27022932609894672262017-03-14T19:00:00.000-07:002017-07-03T09:50:35.220-07:00The Mirror is NOT a Crystal Ball... You couldn't make it up. I've been busy since my last post... got a pub up and running in Berwick-upon-Tweed it's been FULL ON for for the last four months, barely a day off, and learned a lot about the Edge of England but more of that later.

What gets my goat and everything else right this moment is this flagged up in my 'community pub' news alerts:

Irony abounds in the Tied Pub Sector ...

The Mirror; whose affable and accessible Kevin Maguire told me face to face in Strangers' Bar at House of Commons he'd be interested in doing an expose of the #GreatBritishPubcoScam - 'we do a lot on pubs' 'send me what you've got' passing card in my direction - never get a response; The Mirror teams up with Admiral Taverns one of the arch white collar criminals of the pub sector, well of Britain, - owned by Cerberus a US based private equity asset stripping vehicle specialising in converting British pubs into cash and ruining the lives of hundreds of publicans and their families - and the communities they hoped to serve when signing a toxic tied lease - OH KEV the joy of being important and distant from the public interface of a pub shop floor. SEE HERE:

The National Pub Quiz is a marketing push for Admiral Taverns, nothing more nor less. Tap in the participating pub (exclusively Admiral bonded) in my case (from TD15 1EQ Berwick-upon-Tweed) and my nearest pub is fifty miles away in my home town of Morpeth and it's called?

THE TRAP
Main Street
Morpeth
Alnwick
Northumberland
NE65 9UT

You couldn't make it up. FFS thanks Kev.

Anyway, while Kev is entertaining people at his leisure - I'm off in a few hours to Birmingham to stand alongside my colleagues from the Pubs Advisory Service, Fair Pint and other fine folk who have been demanding FREEDOM and FAIRNESS (a non tucked up free market) in the Tied Pub Sector for a DECADE ... We're off to stand outside the Pubs Code Adjudicator's office to protest that the placeman who took the job (he was headhunted by the government) is CONFLICTED

Until he took up this policing role for ensuring fairness and the tied tenant should be no worse off than the free of tie (the 'Prime Principle') Newby was long standing (20yrs) senior director at Fleurets 'The UK's leading leisure property specialist' or a leading gatekeeper into the tied pub sector. He resigned his directorship but still owns shares and a director's debenture, or loan, or somesuch, valued around £230K - by their own admission 20% of Fleurets' business is in pubs... leases, sales, recruiting tied tenants for the furnaces of pubco hell... IF Newby does his job right and the pubco's don't like it - any dip in their using Fleurets means he may never get his money back.

No conflict there. Eh?

J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-58350442338997932882016-10-15T04:55:00.002-07:002016-10-15T05:17:18.356-07:00Chuck Berry, godfather of Desert Trip, turning 90 without fanfareChuck Berry, godfather of Desert Trip, turning 90 without fanfare

Yay!

Hail Hail Rock n Roll

Thirty years ago I was GM at Legends in Old Burlington Street, Mayfair and organised the London opening night party for 'Hail Hail Rock n Roll' the Taylor Hackford film documentary made to commemorate Chuck Berry's 60th birthday.

By and Large, 'stars' don't get involved much in organising parties, instead someone from their management company does the tedium of planning how the big night will go, who'll be invited and what they're gonna be fed and watered with.

Legends

So here I sorted the spread for four hundred glamorous people and hangers on. When you do catering professionally all this kind of stuff is pretty pedestrian really, your job is to make sure a load of people have a great time enjoying themselves without being distracted by the delivery of the event. Your job is about managing your clients' expectations while translating their ideas into a workable smoothly delivered event. You get to have to deal with lots of ego and bollocks as every client is fragile and precious and special in their own different way. To be fair, some people just say 'we've got a party for X and there's going to be x number of people and we've got x amount of quids can you do something nice?' They are the BEST clients and always get the BEST deal and have the BEST time AND they usually go out of their way to say so to you and the staff who made it all happen...

This event organiser was particularly picky about every last detail of a reality which was they wanted four hundred people to be meticulously attentively looked after when the reality was the club's limit on number was 420 and 400 fans of Chuck Berry would be hanging out in a huddle waiting for the great man himself, little bothered with the elegance of the finger food and champagne flutes... Chuck's fussy food demands and fear of offending his taste seemed high on the agenda of his management company's events organiser. Basically, I knew we'd deliver a great time, the party would go down a treat with everyone and Mr Berry would likely enjoy himself but the organiser's unfounded fears made the whole thing a right pain in the arse.

So. On the night of the party I, being God of the club, got an invite to the film premier. I went with a mate who'd also got an invite and we arrived at the cinema to a red carpet and the press pack flashing us walking in and sat in the same row as Chuck, three seats along with my mate Richard Watt to my left, him next to Mick Hucknall who, another whole story aside Watty and I were at art school with, and him sitting next to Chuck Berry.

A couple of hours later we arrived at my club for the big fabulous wonderful carefully crafted and planned party laid out in honour of the great man and Chuck Berry turned round just after we squeezed into the throng through reception and said 'Hey Mark, is there a good Indian takeaway nearby? Can we get one delivered?' Actually, I think he called the curry a 'carry out' and I was completely confused initially because: 'can we get an Indian carry out and have it delivered?' surely was the last thing on earth i'd ever expect to hear coming from the mouth of any American abroad in the UK let alone in a swanky West End nightclub when there was a couple of grands' worth of canapes and champagne on tap ... You know; I heard the words but the synapses just couldn't process what was coming into the ears.

Curry for fifteen was duly ordered and one of the doormen went and got it, Chuck and his closest entourage ate in private in the mezzanine...

What a man. :)

shot from 1987 editorial for the club. photo J Mark Dodds Ricardo Ostaccini is the bartender

J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-43522669507591566962016-09-24T04:59:00.000-07:002016-09-24T04:59:00.435-07:00A SHORT STORY about the power of people working together against all odds.
A SHORT STORY about the power of people working together against all odds.

James Watson is one of Protect Pubs' founders. James is an ordinary bloke who likes a beer. Yet James is also a #PubHero He is in large part responsible for the campaign that led to a closed 'suitable for alternative use' local pub being saved from inevitable conversion into housing.

Like all stories about pubs, it is a long one; James may put more bones on but basically the pub suddenly closed and was a goner, sold to a developer for a ridiculous figure who immediately boarded it up and made plans to turn it into residential... Locals came together and worked their socks off for a couple of years and against ALL odds, made a miracle happen. Eventually the predatory developer had to give up and re-let the pub as a pub and the Chesham Arms eventually reopened again, completely refurbished in part BY the community, in 2015.

ONLY A YEAR LATER IT WON EAST LONDON PUB OF THE YEAR!
Chesham Arms East London Pub of the Year 2016 26/02/16# Some pics of the evening

James is a senior, highly trained and experienced electrical engineer. The principal responsibility of his metier translates modestly to:

'It's my job to make sure London's lights stay ON'.

To put this into context James' work involves fiddling with cables thicker than a telegraph pole and switches bigger than a domestic oven.

James' wide ranging non-professional interests take in photography, the collection of, playing and listening to vinyl recordings on high quality very high fidelity equipment. He's a sociable person who loves very well kept ale and everything it goes with, including pies; so he's been a CAMRA member for some time, and he and wife Sarah enjoy visiting pubs wherever they go, to get a feel for the locality and the offchance of meeting people and getting to know more ...

He and Sarah Watson (who created the Protect Pubs' website) lived in Poplar for some years. James noticed that ALL the local pubs were closing and became concerned that without pubs there was nowhere for he and Sarah to meet people in their neighbourhood and saw that without pubs there was no way to sustain the traditional weft and warp of local community, no way that people who don't know each other can meet and glue together socially and this became a great concern.

James began looking into this and began to come across others, similarly concerned; people like all of us in Protect Pubs, people who are, for all manner of reasons, alerted to the very serious deleterious multiple impacts each pub closure represents to its own community, as local social networks rapidly fray and to the fabric of wider society and to the very foundations of Britain's unique Sense of Place. That bit of Britain that peculiarly defines US to the rest of the world...

When The Chesham Arms, HIS Local, closed James got together with neighbours and then mobilised parts of the wider local community. Together they arrested the inevitable and put the pub's history back on track... They made history.

IMAGINE what WE, all of us in Protect Pubs, thousands of us, can do together. We can make history on a much bigger scale. All we need do is work together...

First thing we can all do is send emails to Government and demand that Permitted Development Rights be removed from Pubs' planning class... Might put a template below here.

https://goo.gl/photos/Pit7SSfWJb6duVKDAJ Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-13888681859467009022016-09-22T06:45:00.003-07:002016-09-22T06:46:37.108-07:00CAMRA's 'Revitalisation Project': HQ's deliberate navel gazing while Britain's unique traditions and cultural heritage burn furiously out of control

Bull and Swan, Diseworth, Nottinghamshire. Proud to be a Former Pub

In full view, such as this, of a passionate, committed and sizeable but under resourced on the ground force of volunteer firefighters CAMRA HQ studiously ignores blatant evidence that to stop the calamitous rate of British Pub closures there needs to be powerful market intervention, and Permitted Development Rights must be removed from their planning class.

All over the country at beer festivals and other shindigs evidence of CAMRA's compromise at HQ level is printed on brochures and flyers emblazoned with recruitment ads for tenants to occupy Pubco tied pubs... I'm not making any of this up, this is not the blinkered opinion of someone with a skewed view of what is happening to Pubs and an unrealistic view of the potential viability of thousands of pubs that are closing forever, it's not rocket science, it's observation. CAMRA HQ are up to their neck in the sticky dirty doodoo of the #GreatBritishPubcoScam

CAMRA HQ get away with it by publishing and speaking soundbite platitudes (always alongside a 'right to reply appearance by the British Beer and Pub Association) about how important pubs are to community and society while letting concerned, hard working, diligent volunteer foot soldiers to run on hamster wheels trying to save pubs all over the country, saying:

'ACV and Article 4 directives, used as tools in conjunction between local communities and CAMRA branches work well to protect pubs from inappropriate development, and government has made support and grants available through the coop and Plunkett Foundation, Power to Change, More Than a Pub' initiatives relating to the Localism Act 2012' etc. All sounds very reasonable, thougthful and sensible.

Whereas, frankly, it's ALL piss in the wind. It's an imperious arrogant view that ignores the well informed membership on the ground's knowledge and clear understanding of what really is happening to THEIR local pubs translates into almost ZERO impact on the reality; The published ambitions of the programmes they bang on about the impressive £3.6 million grant stream 'aim' to 'help up to 80 communities save their pubs in the next three years' during which time 'officially' another 3,270 pubs will be divested by the pubcos to close forever and be rendered into alternative use. It is utterly pathetic. The measures CAMRA HQ officially support are not even statistically measurable against the tsunami of pub closures.

To add insult to injury here ask ANYONE in Britain:

'For every pub saved by a community how many communities mobilised to save their local pub and failed, outwitted by well funded developer, intransigent estate agents and a pubco / freehold owner reluctant to even communicate with the community group?' and, I guarantee, no one knows, that is NO ONE is monitoring the success rate of grass roots community save the pub campaigns against the failure rate. If it's not measured there are no grounds for saying the community pubs' movement that has sprung up around ACV nominations has any significant impact whatsoever.

The community groups who succeed in saving their pubs rightly get loads of column inches and even get into the Mainstream Media and broadcast all over the country. This on a balance against no news being good news where the failures ONLY get a mention when the pubs are being marketed as a new coop shop or for sale as luxury spacious residential homes like this travesty of journalism bizarrely doing the work of the developer and estate agents FOR them, for free (?).

Overall this gives an impression that there is a point to the community cooperative pubs' movement; ie: That it IS saving pubs and IS adequate to the challenges before us when palpably it is not capable of dealing with anything like the scale of the crisis. And, it IS a crisis. While palpably there IS a very valuable point to encouraging communities to mobilise the fact is they do not have the tools, and cannot hope to have them, to be able to act effectively, they are being set up for failure and the amount of news coverage the successful groups/pubs get belies the pissing into the wind reality. AND then people who are prepared to point this all out politely are completely sidelined and ignored (as in the hundreds, at least, of genuinely well informed and determined CAMRA members as mentioned above) and people like me who only try to be honest and unblinkered... And when we get vociferous we experience being deliberately isolated from the Top End discussion and being characterised as 'militant' 'noisy' 'ill informed' 'unrealistic' and 'dreamers'.

J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-3468375123939548762016-09-17T19:29:00.001-07:002016-09-18T05:57:24.815-07:00We MUST mobilise. We MUST act.
We need to lobby government hard about what's happening to pubs. By rights this should be the Campaign for Real Ale's job but as many, many pro pubs' campaigners know CAMRA HQ is clearly in touch with the Other Side and instead of acting to REALLY save pubs has developed a range of navel gazing techniques designed to create torpor in the membership and avoid getting off the HQ fence.

Revitalisation Schmevitalisation. Unfortunately I've not been able to get to the two Revitalisation sessions that have been near me for sake of other commitments saving pubs, 'ironically', as it happens. But members I've spoken to have come right out and said without hesitation they consider the sessions to be steering in a direction HQ wants it to be driven 'No room for individual comment, just multiple choices to tick' is what one concerned Campaign For Real Ale footsoldier told me.

It's NOT exactly complicated, is it?

Without pubs there's nowhere to commune, nowhere to share ale and have a national conversation. Without pubs there is nowhere a community can readily drop in and share views, ideas and information about anything with anyone from all manner of background and occupation. What's happening is a cultural disaster the impact of which has not been acknowledged by anyone officially.

WITHOUT #PUBS there is nowhere for people to drink ALE in convivial, controlled, civilised surroundings other than er, living rooms. What is happening to pubs is an unprecedented cultural crime wave sweeping Britain.

The Campaign For Real Ale: Ale bought from cut price supermarkets to be drunk in living rooms.

Oh. Except UKIP. BRILLIANT. UKIP support pubs. GREAT.

Every local Pub Preservation group around the country, every CAMRA branch Pubs' Protection Officer, every ordinary concerned community needs to take the initiative and write in absolutely clear terms to government and demand immediate action in national planning policy to remove permitted development rights from all pubs.
J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-7793747831187679372016-08-23T11:43:00.003-07:002016-08-23T11:49:40.860-07:00Little Britain. Public Private sector service. Infrastructure. Society. Virgin Trains.
There has been such a ridiculous furore about Corbyn #TrainGate and speculation - as with everything else the man does - he's being fingered for ineptitude, hints at lies and much more... It is PATHETIC. Mainstream news Britain manages to behave like a badly brought up spoiled brat child all the time. Truth is that British infrastructure is a shambles and a total rip off and bits and pieces of 'scandal' like this one are used to distract we the people from the reality we live with every moment of our lives: WE ARE DECADES BEHIND where we should be as a post industrial 'civilised society' in just about every measure one can think of ... Very recent Olympian successes are some of the extremely rare exceptions to the rule. And we know why that is, don't we? The proceeds of gambling (after gigantic profits taken by administrators of the gambling) have been used to fund sports.

Well. I wasn't on THAT train with Corbyn but I use the East Coast line a LOT and the scenes described are absolutely common during busy periods. THIS is a post I made on Facebook on 11 July about Virgin Trains.

Little Britain. Public Private sector service. Infrastructure. Society. Virgin Trains.

Under resourced. I'm on the east coast train from Aberdeen to London. Picked it up at Berwick-upon-Tweed. My reserved seat is in coach E where the air conditioning is broken and the carriage is unbearably hot. So I've moved voluntarily to the buffet, sorry FOODBAR, car, where there are free seats and the air is cool, in fact uncomfortably cold, and the carriage stinks of sewage, overlaid with high notes of stale male sweat BO and hints of fresh strawberries, from the lollipop the young woman in seat 55 (aisle) is sucking behind me.

This joy all after Andrea Leadsom stood down because of the abuse she received for gallantly standing for Little Britain on a ticket she said two years ago would plunge the UK into a ten year recession which she switched into being an opportunity for her children and grandchildren that Theresa May would never understand because she's a sad, barren woman without commitment to the future. And now 'we' have an unelected 'leader' to 'take back our country' from the faceless bureaucracy of Brussels which imposes laws its member states have no power to opt out of, except for when it comes to pubs and the beer tie etc... which is another story. . . And we have no one who set us up for the charade of Brexit in place to actually begin to manage the colossal workload of 'our' extraction from decades of administration and habit that embedded half the population with the belief they are, actually at heart and soul, European... And only people who wanted to stay in Europe are left 'in charge' to LEAVE

YOU could not have made it up. Sitting in this stinking privatised Virgin train where it's either too hot or too cold is just a wonderful pause for reflection of this utterly nonsensical situation that we the British (English largely) like to consider a 'Great Nation'. Let's use an analogue everyone can compare our situation to: Britain is like our pubs: reduced, broken, run down, smelly expensive and failing everywhere, failing everyone. It's unavoidable yet we just put up with it and persist in believing 'our' fetid gutter press that anything that doesn't work is the failure and fault of foreign forces abroad in Britain.

It's all so ironic it's impossible to fully grasp how we find ourselves, everyone in the UK, let down by our politics, our fellow sufferers and our corrupt, asset stripping, ordinary salt of the earth people hating cultural stupidity. We're like a parody of Vulgaria, the fictional country in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang where the child snatcher is as important as the ridiculous Emperor who's a buffoon incapable of running a pissup in a brewery.J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-88212607345124408192016-08-22T03:11:00.001-07:002016-08-22T03:12:44.085-07:00Iconic Chelsea gay pub set to close after lease disputeWe ain't seen nothing yet

The avalanche of cultural crime quickening all the time. It will only stop when the remaining pubs are high footfall, branded blanded homogenised and owned by the big players who are mostly responsible for the closing and flogging off of all the others... #GreatBritishPubcoScam running amok, unhindered

Iconic Chelsea gay pub set to close after lease dispute

There isn't a pub in Britain that isn't under threat. Together we can stop this and put pubs back at the heart of their communities. All it takes is a vision, professional knowledge, capital and working together. It's NOT rocket science.

J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-13141150223896534272016-08-13T07:04:00.002-07:002016-08-13T07:38:53.664-07:00FAO ALL PUB TENANTS: DON'T WASTE THE POWERS WE'VE WORKED SO LONG FOR
MUST say, because it should be acknowledged: The York Press do the most joined up and comprehensive coverage of what is happening to pubs, anywhere in the country. Down in a large part to Gavin Aitchison I reckon but excellent that a regional/local press should be so on top of a subject that affects everyone in the UK while the rest of the press is basically is ignorant at the level of 'you should have used it if you didn't want to lose it' on pub closures.

This article linked to here in York Press is by a very good friend who's also a publican, Paul Crossman. YOU should read it. Everyone should. AND if you know a publican, anywhere, tell them about The Pubs Code, and about Market Rent Only option for Tied Pub Tenants and about Paul's article. It could save their business and YOUR Local Pub:

FAO ALL PUB TENANTS: DON'T WASTE THESE POWERS WE'VE WAITED SO LONG FOR

Paul Crossman in his Punch tied pub the Swan, York

Absolutely crackingly well informed article by Paul Swan York (Crossman). It's very unusual to read commentary on the pub sector that has such accuracy and authority and this is because coverage is usually done by journalists paid by the article and much research is needed to get a grip of what is, as Paul has described so well here: essentially a simple situation where thousands of publicans (and the national communities they serve) have been systemically robbed blind by their 'pubco' freeholders... People whose business model is driven by private equity greed to extract so much profit from every last one of their pubs that they are fall into chronic dilapidation which leads to business failure and the property being unfit for purpose, suitable for alternative use. This is all done so the pubco CEO and boards of directors can pay interest on the debts they raised to buy 'their' pubs in the first place and, of course, to justify the enormous salaries and performance related bonuses they earn for reducing the size of their estates and having a business plan which is to asset strip the rest of Britain's pubs while they can.

The reason Paul writes do fluently a about the situation is that it's his subject. Tied lease pub owners HAVE to be lawyers, accountants, book keepers, model employers, cellar trained weight lifters, silver tongued raconteurs, psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers, counsellors, purchasing and budget setting experts, brand ambassadors, sales and retail experts as well as journalists to get their message across... After all it's THEY who make ALL the money that oils the wheels of the WHOLE of the rest of the pub sector from every brewery to the school fees the pubco CEOs pay, all of the money is generated across the bar in fine pubs like the three great examples of Community Locals that Paul Crossman operates and, usually these marvellous people we call publicans are the last people who are asked anything about what's going on in the pub sector...

What Paul has described is the Great British Pubco SCAM (the #GreatBritishPubcoScam in social media parlance). It's everywhere it's working its poison on several pubs near you wherever you are in the UK and we ain't seen nothing yet. If YOU know a publican ask them if they're 'tied' and tell them about The Pubs Code and about #MRO Market Rent Only and tell them about this article...

Paul's so good on the subject because he's an absolutely exceptional licensee and publican - he's turned previously definitely failed suitable for alternative use ex tied Pubco asset stripped pubs into thriving Local Social Hubs again. He also has a fantastic tied pub... That's fantastic because he is the operator, not the pubco. He knows what he's talking about.J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-5089757865200585912016-07-25T19:01:00.001-07:002016-07-25T19:01:32.298-07:00Emperor's New Clothes
The Great British Pubco SCAM

I was sitting in a Select Committee hearing last week and listening in turn to the accounts of 'pub industry stakeholders' and their views on the appointment of a man called Paul Newby, you may have heard about him in the national press because Newby's just left his job as senior director and still a 12% shareholder in Fleurets, Pubco estate agents of choice, to take up post as the Adjudicator of the Pubs Code, which is designed to regulate the six major pub companies who Fleurets, by Newby's own admission, earns at least a fifth of its income from, as it handles multiple hundreds of freehold and lease sales, transfers and tied lessee placements into pubco pubs across the UK every year. The appointment of this servant of the pubco's caused quite a stir because people might think he's compromised in such a role ... largely because he unavoidably is.

The Pubs Code, which came into effect on 21 July, just two days after the hearing, is the first legislation to be brought to bear on the tied pub sector since the 1989 Beer Orders which heralded the invention of non brewing pub owning companies to own tens of thousands of pubs rented out to tens of thousands of publicans under pub leases that tie them into buying beer, and often other products, through a supply chain determined by the freeholder ie the pubco's charge their tenants whatever they like for whatever beers, wines, spirits and soft drinks they choose to sell them... Typically double the price these products can be readily bought on the open, non tied, wholesale drinks market that normal people, like restaurateurs and bar owners use. Like Bookers, for example.

What struck me listening to the submissions, first of publicans who suffer from tied leases and their customers complaining about the price of tied beer they sell followed by the CEOs of Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns talking on the same subject; Mr Paul Newby the man some people call 'the pubco's placeman' or 'the Pubco's Code Adjudicator' and it was fascinating to contrast the two sides different grasp of the British Pub Sector.

The tenants very clearly had a firm grasp of the whole market and were able to talk with confidence and authority, showing a lively grasp of all aspects of the pub sector from micro pubs to giga brewers, local ales to global brands and commenting on the likely perspective of the owners/operators of pubs from small wet led boozers to chains of food and drink destination venues and how Newby's appointment would sit with them.

The CEOs, each of whom is taking home the best part of half a million quid each year plus pension scheme top ups that would buy the campaigners' pubs and leave spare cash enough to buy another pub... were by contrast almost 'humble' as Rupert Murdoch would say in such a situation and at pains to express their determination that justice be done for the tenants whose hard work and business acumen they so admire because without them they wouldn't be driving their Porsches and sending their kids to the right schools... or drinking Big Toscana Rossos in Lunigiana out of season.

The first guys in the seat earn a pittance and work behind the bar and in the kitchen and have a command and fluency of the subject that makes the CEOs with their teams of lawyers, surveyors, suits and dresses backing them all the way, look like rank amateurs by contrast.

It was an interesting couple of hours. It's here if you care to have a look http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-innovation-and-skills/news-parliament-2015/pubs-code-adjudicator-evidence2-16-17/

And the interesting thing, really, is that while the CEOs tell everyone how much they care about pubs, and the people and places they serve, we know they don't mean it, we know they're flogging off as many pubs as they can, that their asset stripping is changing the face of Britain forever, paying their gargantuan bonuses and reducing the size of their estates by over a thousand pubs a year, and we all watch the proceedings as if there's a point to it all... They say they care, everyone else knows they don't, the CEOs know they don't care and the publicans know they don't, and we all know that Newby should never have been offered the job; the Pubs Code is ten years too late, at least, and the pubco's will run rings around it yet we sit there discussing the degree by which he should not have been appointed, knowing that everything that's thrown up at this Select Committee will do nothing to change the situation except, possibly, to make a few important people feel awkward for a while and a lot of insignificant tenants miserable for years.

Emperors New clothes

http://www.theygotmeoverabarrel.co.uk/2016/07/the-great-british-pubco-scam-as-mro.html?m=1

J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-65162574397222886522016-07-25T14:07:00.000-07:002016-07-25T14:07:42.221-07:00The Great British Pubco Scam - as #MRO Takes Hold another take on what's taken hold already.On a drive through Sussex, as with any other part of the UK, it's impossible to miss the scars on our landscape that are the cultural ravages of the #GreatBritishPubcoScam

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Image 1 The Coach House Inn, Cowfield, Sussex
Images 2 and 3 the former Cooperative foodstore, Cowfold.
Image 4 the new Cooperative foodstore, Cowfold (ex Coach House, Enterprise Inns) photographed from the old foodstore site.
Image 5 is The Ship Inn 'Oh No It's NOT, it's the Coop Foodstore' at Cuckfield just up the road from Cowfold.
Image 6 Campaigners trying to save the Ship from the Coop This is a link to the article image 7 is grabbed HERE
Image 7 screengrab of listing page for Pegasus Group, planning consultants to the Pubco's. their website url is: www.pegasuspg.co.uk - I get 'not authorized to view this page' when I try it. Perhaps just a glitch on their site...

On the same trip through some of the most gorgeous best of British rural idyll we came across the Coop Foodstore at Cuckfield too, the site of the former Ship Inn. Right next door, literally next door, to the original independent shop which, one must imagine, is now under severe threat from the competition of the coop...

Congratulations due to Enterprise Inns, Pegasus Group, and Cooperative Food... for rendering excellent community pubs into excellent alternative community use that no one wants...

There is a lot more to be said about this shenanigan but I am weary.

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J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-24271677396250481432016-07-15T05:29:00.001-07:002016-07-16T11:35:54.852-07:00And, you know what John?
Thanks John Friary two pubs I owned both were victims of the #GreatBritishPubcoScam

The Sun and Doves at the hands of Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company (aka Heineken, aka Star Pubs & Bars)

The Pacific at the hands of Enterprise Inns aka Unique Pub Company.

And, you know what John? (I'm sure you do BTW) Since I shut Pacific and handed back the keys in 1999 I've learned that when you're in a position of weakness and you tell people the truth, they ignore you, belittle you and treat you as if you are a liar.

And, you know what John? Pacific shut in 1999 with the pubco having given me promises of financial, legal and material support, having lied to me about licensing conditions, lies without which I'd never have even signed the lease, lied about terms of my future tenure and all manner of other stuff and, my habit taken a filthy no hope utter shit hole boozer with dogs on string as the most frequent customers, a key meter for its electrical supply, extensive, rotting private accommodation without even a hot water boiler or central heating and turned it through two weeks of intensive refurbishment into South East London's buzziest, busiest most exciting, slightly more civilised, slightly more responsible, slightly artier, slightly safer and more sophisticated version of Brixton's 'Dog Star' they simply more than doubled the rent. Incidentally the Dog Star was Punch and I knew the lessee there, and what happened to him at the hands of Punch... just another of the hundreds of lessees I know who have been totally rolled over by the spivs of the Great British Pubco Scam...

And, you know what John? Then, through sixteen years' experience of similar lies and skulduggery at the hands of another pubco, whose staff literally were interchangeable with all the other pubco's doing exactly the same shafting of tenants all over the UK, I learned that the whole construction of the beer tie and its endemic abuse is a scam. And I set up a blog in 2004 called 'they got me over a barrel' and in time began to call what happened to me and literally THOUSANDS of other Licensees across the UK, every year, year in, year out, the #GreatBritishPubcoScam...

And, you know what John? I became determined to do whatever it takes to end that scam, the endemic, cynical, deliberate and intended extraction of all tenant profit for the benefit of the pubco, forgetting pubs, publicans and the people and places they've sustainably served through previous generations... And in the last twenty years I've met hundreds of these tenants, I've met dozens of politicians, I've worked alongside extraordinary other Licensees towards our common goal of wanting to see fairness and freedom in the tied pub sector and what has been consistent all the way through is an attitude among the people we meet in our campaigns, MPs, ministers, 'Pubs Ministers', pub sector pundits, journalists, beer bloggers and business correspondents, people who want to know WHY pubs are failing everywhere, all the time, without respite, people to whom we simply explain what's happening in great detail, with clear evidence and verified, unshakeable sources of facts and figures about the national cultural crimewave that's ripping through communities from John O'Groats to Land's End leaving them bereft and grieving for social glue that's been stolen forever by greedy men in dark blue suits... And all through this experience, for twenty years I keep being told by all these people who we've proven to that it really is the #GreatBritishPubcoScam

And, you know what John? You know that 'they' say? They say: 'Hear what you're saying and though it does look like that, I/we don't think you're reading this right. Are you sure you're being objective? You see, it doesn't make sense... It has to be wrong, it can't be on the scale you're describing surely, what you're describing is not representative of the whole, no company in it's right mind would behave like that, because what you describe simply isn't sustainable, is it? Why would they do that? I think some of what you're saying is true but overall it's to do with changing habits, externalities, market forces, competition from new business models, like Starbucks and the high street, micro pubs and so on... '

And, you know what John? Answer all of their cautions, prove they've fallen for the pub sector scam stories and they look at you, glaze over and switch off.

And, you know what John? They don't believe the truth from the little people while totally accepting the lies of the Big People. It makes me sick.

And, you know what John? It's the #GreatBritishPubcoScam that continues to prevail against evidence, reality, common sense and decency.
J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-26585694263850942622016-07-14T05:29:00.002-07:002016-07-15T00:41:34.415-07:00I can tell you a story about the pub sector. I'm sick of telling stories about the pub sector. Mind you. Knowing and understanding the pub sector is the only thing that could have prepared me for the circus that has dropped out the back of Cameron's charabanc as Theresa's Big Top came to town...

AS the Pubs Code was being finally scrutinised yesterday... As THIS committee room 9 final OK before ministerial sign off of the Pubs Code meeting happened at 2.30pm (I arrived late for this because I had a sudden pub opportunity to chase up) yesterday 13 July, ANOTHER meeting concerning pubs was gathering pace to take place immediately after Anna Soubry finished here... , completely unannounced or broadcast to anyone on the PUB stakeholder side of the pub sector - as I say, I arrived late and went through security at St Stephen's entrance at 2.55pm I bumped into Andy Slee (ex big man Punch Taverns) who was ahead of me on the conveyor belt... 'Andy! How you doing? You here on Pub Business?' 'Well, yes I am Mark, and what are you here for?' 'Final reading of the Pubs Code. Are you going up to Committee Room 9?' 'er, No. I'm here for something else'... hmmmm

Anyway. I arrived just as the meeting in this video ended and the whole was passed without objection for signing off officially by The Minister next Tuesday and coming into law by the end of July. (See you next Tuesday anyone?)

Anyway. Cut a long story short. I went down to the Strangers Bar with Simon Clarke and Tom Burke and we had some pints of fine ale (NOT subsidised beer by the way) on the terrace and discussed ten years of campaigning. As we were about to leave we were joined, unexpectedly, by:

Andrew Griffiths the right honourable Member for Marston's, Punch and Molson Coors, oops sorry, MP for Burton and Uttoxeter, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group APPBG
Tim Page and Jonathan Mail, CEO and Marketing comms and policy director or something amorphous at Campaign for Real Ale CAMRA
Kate Nicholls, CEO Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers ALMR
Andy Slee ex Punch Taverns external affairs now 'independent put trade consultant'
Nick Stafford Commercial Director Society of Independent Brewers SIBA
John Longden CEO Pub is the Hub PitH
Mike Clist, MD British Institute of Innkeepers BII

and a couple of others who got by me without me being able to clock them (about fifteen in total) so by omission they MUST have been the British Beer and Pub Association... BBPA the Pubco's and Big Brewers' trade propaganda poodle followed onto the terrace a few minutes later by none other than

Anna Soubry

Now WHAT were they all meeting up together to talk about? It wasn't the small talk Kate Nichols and John Longden and Mike Clist told me they were talking about... (Andrew Griffiths, Tim Page and Jonathan Mail pointedly avoided us)

I cannot convey how surprised they all were to see Simon Clarke and me... (none were shocked by Tom because none of them has met him before) 'OH! HOW ARE YOU? What a nice surprise to see YOU here!"

HA!

J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-55419811701458596622016-07-08T18:02:00.001-07:002016-07-10T08:26:59.271-07:00WAKE UP BRITAIN!WAKE UP BRITAIN!

For starters Ian Hislop has something to say

Everything unfurling in front of us is akin to a big top being set up by boy scouts who've never erected anything more sophisticated than a sheet over a washing line, to house a circus of aspirational slapstick clowns performing vaguely thought through acts they haven't worked out the punchlines for, unrehearsed, in the round without a compere. It is, literally, unbelievable. Like a parade of naked Emperors... And we're ALL just letting it happen.

Half the country is frozen, depressed and aghast in utter disbelief, feeling they're living out a nightmare that somehow they'll wake up from to find it never really happened; the other half are in super excited, rapturous junkie mode, full of high expectations that once the show's out of backstage pranks and into the ring it's going to be a rip-roaring thigh slapping, world beating success.

DREAM ON EVERYONE. WE'VE BEEN HAD> a few rich toffs from the 1% have royally shafted EVERYONE in the 99% who actually matter.

MORE THAN FOUR MILLION people made history immediately after the irrational vote and signed a petition for a 2nd referendum... David Cameron said to the millions of outraged people "the decision must be respected. We must now prepare for the process to exit the EU and the Government is committed to ensuring the best possible outcome for the British people in the negotiations." and resigned all responsibility for putting Britain in the mess, immediately.

IF YOU voted to STAY don't be one of the audience at this ridiculous pantomime TAKE PART and pledge a small amount to #BrexitJustice HERE: just over three hundred people have pledged almost £10K between them. If a small fraction of us who signed the 4 million 2nd referendum petition pledge a fiver - fifty quid each we'd break £100K in a matter of days...

J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-6344803908766146002016-04-30T13:22:00.001-07:002016-04-30T13:22:07.089-07:00Lazy Profiteering Capitalism Does the #GreatBritishPubcoScam Rounds
'Independent' pharmacist's letter edited by Boots senior execs

My mate Ed Gillespie posted a link to the above story on his Facebook... And his comment:

"Shameless and shameful. Do not give Boots your custom...this is simply venal, just what you'd expect from their owners KKR" - www.kkr.com

This shitty example of complacent corporate cuntery resonates so clearly with my experience of the routine behaviour of tied pub sector 'executives' that it fired up my response:

Have no doubt about it. These behaviours are absolutely everywhere, endemic in our global consumer supply chain. That they only get exposed by mistake like this is the evidence. It's a tip of the iceberg whoever it is and whenever it crops up.  This kind of awful thing is pretty much endemic in bigger and big and giga business, everywhere on the planet.

Volkswagen get their pants pulled down over emissions? It's a sign of them all at it... Other car manufacturers fiddling emissions data? Guaranteed.  A few months later? Mazda gets rumbled.

Sepp Blatter? They're all up to backhanders and back room deals. Guaranteed.

Strauss-Kahn? It's a prick in a vein running through top end male diplomatic circles. Guaranteed.

One national utility ripping customers off? They're all doing it. Guaranteed.

The people who aren't party to the party? The honest, forthright, upstanding ones, the people who are prepared to stand on principles and expose corruption wherever it lurks? They don't get invited to the party. Guaranteed.

ExxonMobil covered up their clear knowledge that the fossil fuel industry is triggering runaway climate change since the 'seventies? They've all colluded in the cover up. Guaranteed.

One pub company exposed abusing tied tenant publican's rights to asset strip them and effectively trap them into indentured servitude? The low cost entry to bonded labour? They're all at it, everywhere, from top to bottom and getting away with it,with collusion by government and most of the organisations in the supply chain and 'independent' management of the entire tied pub sector hegemony ... Guaranteed.

This is the top end of the insane corruption and filth that world commerce and production is greased with and we're swimming in it, we're all in it together.

And it's incumbent upon everyone who's not directly swept up in the mess: WE HAVE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-65926402565752982612016-04-24T16:08:00.003-07:002016-04-24T16:10:03.839-07:00Government to discuss Pubs Code with British Beer and Pub Association which deems key parts "unworkable"As reported in City AM by Francesca Washtell @fwashtell

My comment on CITY AM. AS of 11.00 Saturday 23 April it hadn't been approved.

It's understandable the British Beer and Pub Association is begging for 'transition' time to train its members '1000 colleagues' because in the last eighteen months these highly trained 'Business Development' employees have been going round the 13,000 or so tied pubs in their massive estates and telling their tied 'business partner' tenant leaseholders (publicans to the general public) that MRO (the Market Rent Only option - the legally enshrined right for publicans to become free of tie and to retail beers they source from the open market at open market price (read: real ale; craft and smaller batch beers customers actually want to drink; and the same old global brands we all know and love, at prices that don't need a mortgage advisor to arrange when buying a round) that:

a) MRO will not apply to them

b) MRO will mean their rent will double, or even treble to compensate the pubco's for loss of profits on the beer or

c) if the leaseholder tells the pubco they intend to go for MRO the pubco will give the tenant notice to quit for either:

i) taking the pub back to become part of their newly established managed pub estate

ii) intention to change of use.

There are stories among tied publican circles of pubco's coercing tenants to sign new contracts in advance of the legislation (this is called 'gaming) and many more examples of pubco's selling large numbers of pubs, hundreds, in one go and with them their sitting tenant tied publicans to property developers who won't be affected by the legislation and are then increasing the wholesale prices and reducing the number of beers the tenants can buy... and squeezing them to leave their pubs and homes to be turned into shops or housing. It is a feudal nightmare if you're a publican under one of these profiteering bully boy pseudo pub companies.

The need for legislation was first clearly identified by Select Committee in 2004 since when there's been five further Govt investigations and more market consultations in the pub sector all establishing that pubco's were profiteering by asset stripping Britain's pubs and serially churning tenants through leases then, when the pubs have been run into the ground, flogging them off for alternative use.

In short pubco's have only had twelve years' notice that their mediaeval business practices were on watch; Two years' notice of legislation being definitely likely to be implemented; 18 months since the proposed regulations passed into law in principle and six months since the detail of written draft law was published, to get themselves ready to tell their colleagues that they can no longer shaft their thousands of tenants and get away with it with impunity.

No wonder the pubco's need another six months to begin packing their bags on bad business practice.J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-90599250484678422612016-03-24T08:09:00.000-07:002016-03-24T08:12:42.198-07:00More on the Establishment I've been involved in this area of Protecting Pubs for over a decade.

I'm one of many people who have been (tirelessly and selflessly though described by the multi million per year earning CEO's of the pubco's as being 'self serving with a personal agenda') been working our butts off for YEARS trying to expose the #GreatBritishPubcoScam In this time I've seen journalists and production companies take a serious interest - and have seen some of those come to publication in dilute form from the original synopsis. on at least three occasions a Panorama / Dispatches has been about to be commissioned. There has been a Sunday Times expose in the offing, a Sunday Mirror, a Financial Times, and so on... we got feedback Steve Corbettcan confirm on the FT that their editorial desk got threats of litigation within three days of our delivering a massive amount of verifiable evidence to a journalist on the churn rates of Punch Taverns pubs between 2006 and 2008.

In every instance - at some point along the line - the story gets diluted or hits buffers and doesn't get made... and there is never a reason given for why - in every instance the trail / scent just tails out and there's no further contact made with the people concerned... There is no doubt there is a conspiracy and it's rooted in the Pubco's and Family brewers being totally at ONE on this - deny abuse of the beer tie, with aggressive, litigious threat - and manipulate the narrative. It definitely happens right up to government level, BEYOND Select Committee and departmental responsibility. The evidence for this assertion lies in the complete lack of these stories coming together in a cogent properly joined up way for public consumption. OH, and in the Tories three line whip against the Market Rent Only option coming into effect via the vehicle of the Small Business Enterprise and Employment Act 2015... the Tories are up to their neck in it. But then Labour obfuscated and pushed it around for years as well... the glue that is keeping the Pubco Establishment together is ... more later

The scam is touched on in dribs and drabs in local news stories and short slots in national newspapers (usually business pages) and on television... all the massive amount of evidence there is does not get gathered up and NEVER gets joined up into the mainstream.

I've been involved in Publican and Tied Tenant led groups gathering evidence and delivering it to Government since 2004... and this is not just some insignificant disgruntled rump of pubs - this is major stuff including evidence gathered by Federation of Small Businesses, Forum for Private Business, GMB and Unite Unions and several tenant groups with between them several thousand tied publicans. Remember Tied Publicans NEVER put their head above the parapet because they live in fear of being pressurised, bullied, evicted, bankrupted by their 'business partners'... even writing these words, couching the reality this way, seems so extreme to modern sensibilities about business it seems an exaggeration - but in all honesty - anyone on the outside of the reality of the sordid goings on in the tied pub sector cannot possible rationalise the reality because it IS so extreme.

AND WHY would any of it get into the mainstream press? There are hundreds of £millions at stake in profiteering from the downfall of pubs everywhere... :

Tied Pubco's need to sell for alternative use because their revenue streams are less than the amount they HAVE to pay in debt interest - if they do not make their payments they go into default. Pubs are being used as cash flow.

Where pubco's dont' render the pubs into the outside market they become landlords directly to Tesco Coop whoever - Enterprise Inns recent business forecast announced an average rental income on their 'pubs' as supermarkets at £58K a year. The average rent on 'their' pubs that are still pubs is £36K - doesn't take a genius to figure out why they want their pub estate to go the way of NOT being pubs...

End users of the pubs - in succession: ie: betting shop chains, Sainsbury's; Tesco; Coop Food; McDonalds; Lidl, Aldi etc - interspersed by hundreds of small time (big to you and me) petty developers rendering pubs into residential / shops / other alternative retail use everywhere - there is a LOT of money to be made out of these units

And around the country there are hundreds of people interested in buying pubs to turn them into houses for themselves>

WHY would ANY of the above want what is happening to stop? They are all profiting hugely from the demise of pubs.

The Coop and CAMRA BOTH are at the forefront of the Government's OFFICIAL Pubs' Preserving measures through promoting ACV status and the saving of pubs via the mechanism of the Localism Act and the Community Shares scheme - Locality, Social Investment Business, Power to Change, Big Potential and other smaller granting initiatives have been set up to fund these areas with tax payer / Big Lottery money - such as with the £3.6 million just announced to support these programmes.

These schemes are not even worthy. They get more column inches than the whole of the rest of the pub sector put together - that's an area of economic activity involving at the moment fewer than 60 pubs nationally against a sector that has around 40,000 units overall and several £billion turnover against perhaps £30 million a year with a projected expansion in the community pubs' sphere to maybe (maybe) 140 pubs by 2018. Does that make sense? At ALL?

To help save 80 pubs over two years - it is a statistically, data wise - completely insignificant intervention in the market. Plunkett Foundation already has OVER 100 communities showing interest NOW at this moment in trying to save their pubs market evidence proves that like clockwork in the next 2 years another 3,000 pubs will be sold for alternative use out of the tied pub sector... to pay interest instalments (NOT capital) on the debts the pubco's raised to buy the pubs in the first place...

The figures, the sums tell the truth, it is ALL about money and NOTHING to do with the desire among communities to see their local pubs preserved and thriving, generating social capital and community well being... Quite simply the press and mainstream media aren't allowed to report it.

Though Coop and CAMRA are at the forefront of saving pubs they both are complicit, COOP and CAMRA in the #Scam - and it is all about money for them too... I'll go into the reasons for their being involved later if anyone is interested. I have to go and see a man about a pub right now...

There can be no doubt whatsoever that CAMRA HQ is an absolutely structural part of the problem.J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-6318845150132380152016-03-18T19:36:00.001-07:002016-03-18T19:36:53.145-07:00The Establishment
Friends who know about my work campaigning against the #Pubcos, the Elephant in the room of British pub failures, the unacknowledged invisible white collar cultural crimewave that's closing pubs and destroying community all over the UK... Bear with me... Our government held a Select Committee inquiry into the relationship between Pubco's and their Tenants in 2004. The outcome was unequivocal, Pubco's were abusing tenants and MUST change their behaviour or be legislated against.

It's now twelve years later and at least TEN THOUSAND pubs have closed, forever since then.

There's been four more Select Committees, and loads more evidence and every time the Pubco's have been proved to have done NOTHING to change their behaviour except to lie more, obfuscate more, tell government WE lessees, publicans and members of the public - the consumers - and the government are the ones to blame for the pubco's failure to change their habits and keep on abusing tenants by overcharging them on rent and beer supply...

The pubco's tell government WE are to blame because WE keep on going to pubs less and less and it's OUR fault pubs are closing because we go to Starbucks or stay at home and play games on telly.

Nothing about their continual bullying, scamming cheating and double charging their tenants everywhere from Land's End to John O'Groats. No. They are disingenuous thieving lying scum.

After LOSING a historic vote in parliament on 18 November 2014 where democracy prevailed and the majority of MPs in the House of Commons voted to bring legislation in to regulate the Pubco's... government conceded defeat, accepted the three line whip they placed on all their MPs to vote against the law coming into effect, and announced an 18 month period of consultation to give the Pubco's an opportunity to pack their bags before the law makes them gradually stop shafting tenants, closing pubs and killing British culture, traditions, heritage and sense of place.

The law is due to change in June. The law is to be ruled over by a Pubs Code Adjudicator whose job is to make sure that the Pubco's behave and that disputes between Pubco's and their Tenants are conducted fairly and equitably...

Last week Anna Soubry the Minister for Big Brewers and even bigger Pubco's announced the appointment of the newly created post of Pubs Code Adjudicator would be taken up by a man who has been for twenty five years, ever since the Beer Orders that created the Pubco's in the first place, an employee of Britain's biggest 'Leisure Sector Surveyors and Licensed Property Agents', Fleurets, a chartered surveyor and most recently Director of the company who's worked for all the biggest Pubco's as a matter of course in his career.

Read this http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/01/18/bernie-sanders-speaks-the-truth-tells-us-what-no-other-presidential-candidate-would-ever-admit/
J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-42962430756414058342016-03-13T18:00:00.002-07:002016-03-13T18:08:21.481-07:00Protect PubsProtect Pubs has set out to enable people to come together to Protect Pubs. It's not rocket science, The Pubco's and Family brewers are closing pubs or homogenising them... The only people who can stop the rot are the people who use pubs and love them... In a pub in York on Saturday night 12 March 2013 They gave an informal seminar about Protecting Pubs.

Graeme Wilson.
Paul Crossman Paul Swan York
and Nick Love

have been doing in York is brilliant, joined up and very much based in evidence of the pub sector and pub market at ground level. Their work and action has directly informed York planning authority and changed the way pubs are handled when asset stripping freeholders are about to scam the system and sell them off for alternative use... to pay interest on the loans they raised to buy them in the first place.

These guys KNOW what is going on and have not allowed the York local authority to be swamped by lies and misrepresentation spun and published by the Pubco establishment on a daily basis, coordinated via their own press offices then disseminated and hogwashed by their national trade body, the British Beer and Pubs Association.

The stories the pubco's spin to support the fact that ALL the pubco's are selling off hundreds of pubs for alternative use, every year (why we have 12,000 fewer pubs now than we did a decade ago) I've listed below... (paradoxically pubco's preen in their company statements about how successful they are at SELLING OFF PUBS ie: reducing the size of their estate to reduce their debt burden, which in any normal business practice is regarded as a sure sign of business failure).

According the pubco's the reasons they are failing at being Pub Companies are many and complex and out of their hands; the market is shrinking because:

People (that is US, the general public) are not using pubs the way they used to. And this is because:

Changing demographics (people prefer coffee (and tea) now)

Competition from supermarkets undercutting them with cheap booze

Competition of Home Entertainment

Competition of Social Media

Red Tape

Expensive business rates

Issues of Faith and Religion (seriously)

The SMOKING BAN

Living wage

Publicans not being entrepreneurial enough - not evolving their 'offer'

Publicans not moving with the times and not being food led (which is the way the Pubco Establishment says the market is going)

Beer Duty

YOU will notice that NONE of the reasons has anything to do with the pubco's. Pubco's NEVER take responsibility for the failure of their business... They never mention their impact in the pub sector. They NEVER tell the FACTS which are:

1) Tied Pub Rents are higher than free of tie rents
2) Tied Publicans have to buy their beer from their pubco at prices that generally are around DOUBLE the open market price
3) the majority of pubs in Britain are Tied Pubs - this means more pubs than any other type - free of tie, managed, owner owned, themed whatever, are tied pubs selling expensive beer, and they are run down because their publicans don't earn enough profit to invest back into their businesses.

So. The REAL reasons people don't go to pubs as much now as they used to is largely because:

Beer is RIDICULOUSLY expensive

AND: Most pubs are run down, knackered and not fit for purpose - the toilets stink, the carpets are threadbare the upholstery ripped and the bartenders are depressed

The MAIN reason BEER is expensive and MOST PUBS are run down and it's served by depressed publicans is:

The Beer Tie

And what Greg Mulholland and Gareth Epps and others like US have been doing has been setting out the stage for change.J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-83484020260023146292016-03-13T16:51:00.001-07:002016-03-13T16:51:22.371-07:00The Solar Dynamics Observatory - if you haven't been, you should go there

If you haven't been, you should go there and have a look round. It's FUN!

J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-8319186926145643912016-03-12T11:40:00.000-08:002016-03-12T11:40:01.287-08:00EDITORIAL: WHEN IS A LOCAL PUB NOT A LOCAL PUB?EDITORIAL: WHEN IS A LOCAL PUB NOT A LOCAL PUB?
From Southwark News
My comment

It's happening everywhere - when a pub's not about to be demolished or converted into something like a Co-operative Local Store they are being rolled over into bland carbon copy 'traditional pub' pastiche places that are busy but which ironically absolutely no one, really, really wants to go to...

The Half Moon, Herne Hill is under threat... of homogenisation by Plc corporates with no vision, creativity or concern for authenticity, community culture, British traditions or local sense of place.

Money is the lowest possible common denominator when fabulous pubs like this come onto the market, once in a Blue Moon. Huge opportunity here that Dulwich Estates could have capitalised on when planning the shape of their estate years ago... it's ALL about money, and falling off logs. The Half Moon has a rich history as a great Local with a great live performance venue integral to its being... This can easily be sustained and enhanced now, especially as there will be investment involved. But no. Let's just do Sunday Roasts, oh, and Fuller's unique Pie & Ale concept... Like all the other Fuller's managed pubs. What a RUBBISH COP OUT!

When you know the pub sector well what's happening to the Half Moon Herne Hill is not astonishing in the least. Between its freeholder the Dulwich Estate and its desire to see maximum possible income for longest possible time into the future from its long-paid-for bricks and mortar it's to be expected they will lease to a branded bland corporate that will turn the pub into Just-Another-Homogenised-Food-and-Drink-Dispense-Unit indistinguishable from all the major competition. There is nothing genuine here about retaining, sustaining and promoting authenticity, tradition, heritage, sense of place, nothing of integrity. It is ALL about money. Fuller's retains a vestigial romantic glow of being a 'Family Brewer' but that's just a hogwash notion. When it comes to pubs Fuller's is just another predatory Plc - like all the others.

The community has mobilised to try to prevent the almost inevitable from happening to the Half Moon - Locals should be lobbying the Dulwich Estate HARD but they will most likely remain deaf to any pleading no matter how well presented... Dulwich Estate has become as bland and beaurocratic as most large fat lazy organisations do. Unimaginative, lacking creative thought or vision... Focused on a fat bank balance rather than on the things it was set up to sustain.

Protect Pubs was set up by people concerned by this type of completely unnecessary erosion and valueless homogenisation of British culture to begin to stem the tide of banality and bland in the pub sector. If you're concerned about the Half Moon and the countless other pubs that are falling prey to this everywhere in the UK you should join Protect Pubs and add your voice and opinions, skills, energy and experience to our growing numbers. Protect Pubs will quickly become THE voice in Britain for Pubs' Protection... it has no political affiliations, no axe to grind with anyone other than the faceless people and organisations that place Britain's future at threat by threatening the future of British Pubs ... in cases like these Protect Pubs will be uncompromising

Twitter @ProtectPubs
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/group...
Website www.protectpubs.org.uk

Join US!

J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-68833870945438078072016-02-26T09:33:00.001-08:002016-02-26T09:33:25.009-08:00Of course Earth is the best planet. But aren't you a bit curious about NASA's missions to Mars?Er. Yes. But not for the reasons you think WE might be.

Been reading about NASA's planned mission to Mars.

This post here is generated from my comment made on article below on the NASA Climate website which asks the question: But aren't you a bit curious about NASA's mission to Mars?

Yes, I'm very curious.

Couple of things - In principle I agree with everything you're casting out as reasons for humans to have curiosity in visiting other planets. But; What I'm REALLY curious about is WHY resources are invested into an essentially hostile planet rather than into working on overcoming similar environmental challenges that are numerous on Earth? Does 'doing it for Mars' mean there's a conceptually different impetus for us there than rather for inventing new technologies for alien environments that may have benefit to us on Earth? What is the pay off for doing it the other planet way instead of looking to say, restlessly search for means of creating comfortable habitats for Humans at the bottom of the Marianas Trench or say in the middle of the Atacama desert? Then I find myself being curious about these issues:

Do the NASA planned missions to Mars include return of the travellers or are they one way missions?

Can you please clarify, because I am befuddled:

NASA is preparing for a manned missions to Mars
SpaceX is preparing for a manned mission to Mars
Virgin Galactic is preparing for a manned mission to Mars

Is this impression I have correct?
Is anyone else planning a manned mission to Mars?

Why are Humans not focusing our incredible resources on ensuring our safe future on THIS planet when there is no other habitable planet anywhere within reach of Earth?J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-77400622449432966602016-02-20T16:28:00.002-08:002016-02-20T16:28:45.125-08:00The Seven Vectors: An Overview by Arthur ChickeringThis was forwarded to me by

Wynn Lare

@RippleCreekNW

The Seven Vectors: An Overview
by Arthur Chickering

Lasting personality changes may not occur in a blinding flash. As Dylan Thomas (1939, pp. 29-30) said, "Light breaks where no sun shines…Dawn breaks behind the eyes…Light breaks on secret lots…On tips of thought…" While some epiphanies are dramatic and sudden, most occur gradually and incrementally. We may not know for years that a single lecture or conversation or experience started a chain reaction that transformed some aspect of ourselves. We cannot easily discern what subtle mix of people, books, settings, or events promotes growth. Nor can we easily name changes in ways of thinking, feeling, or interpreting the world. But we can observe behavior and record words, both of which can reveal shifts from hunch to analysis, from simple to complex perceptions, from divisive bias to compassionate understanding. Theory can give us the lenses to see these changes and help them along.

The seven vectors are summarized below.

1. Developing competence. Three kinds of competence develop in college–intellectual competence, physical and manual skills, and interpersonal competence. Intellectual competence is skill in using one's mind. It involves mastering content, gaining intellectual and aesthetic sophistication, and, most important, building a repertoire of skills to comprehend, analyze, and synthesize. It also entails developing new frames of reference that integrate more points of view and serve as "more adequate" structures for making sense out of our observations and experiences.
Physical and manual competence can involve athletic and artistic achievement , designing and making tangible products, and gaining strength, fitness, and self-discipline. Competition and creation bring emotions to the surface since our performance and our projects are on display for others' approval or criticism. Leisure activities can become lifelong pursuits and therefore part of identity.

Interpersonal competence entails not only the skills of listening, cooperating, and communicating effectively, but also the more complex abilities to tune in to another person and respond appropriately, to align personal agendas with the goals of the group, and to choose from a variety of strategies to help a relationship flourish or a group function.

Students' overall sense of competence increases as they learn to trust their abilities, receive accurate feedback from others, and integrate their skills into a stable self-assurance.

2. Managing emotions. Whether new to college or returning after time away, few students escape anger, fear, hurt, longing, boredom, and tension. Anxiety, anger, depression, desire, guilt, and shame have the power to derail the educational process when they become excessive or overwhelming. Like unruly employees, these emotions need good management. The first task along this vector is not to eliminate them but to allow them into awareness and acknowledge them as signals, much like the oil light on the dashboard.

Development proceeds when students learn appropriate channels for releasing irritations before they explode, dealing with fears before they immobilize, and healing emotional wounds before they infect other relationships. It may be hard to accept that some amount of boredom and tension is normal, that some anxiety helps performance, and that impulse gratification must sometimes be squelched.

Some students come with the faucets of emotional expression wide open, and their task is to develop flexible controls. Others have yet to open the tap. Their challenge is to get in touch with the full range and variety of feelings and to learn to exercise self-regulation rather than repression. As self-control and self-expression come into balance, awareness and integration ideally support each other.

More positive kinds of emotions have received less attention from researchers. They include feeling like rapture, relief, sympathy, yearning, worship, wonder, and awe. These may not need to be "managed" so much as brought into awareness and allowed to exist. Students must learn to balance self-assertive tendencies, which involve some form of aggressiveness or defensiveness, with participatory tendencies, which involve transcending the boundaries of the individual self, identifying or bonding with another, or feeling part of a larger whole.

3. Moving through autonomy toward interdependence. A key developmental step for students is learning to function with relative self-sufficiency, to take responsibility for pursuing self-chosen goals, and to be less bound by others' opinions. Movement requires both emotional and instrumental independence, and later recognition and acceptance of interdependence.

Emotional independence means freedom from continual and pressing needs for reassurance, affection, or approval. It begins with separation from parents and proceeds through reliance on peers, nonparental adults, and occupational or institutional reference groups. It culminates in diminishing need for such supports and increased willingness to risk loss of friends or status in order to pursue strong interests or stand on convictions.

Instrumental independence has two major components: the ability to organize activities and to solve problems in a self-directed way, and the ability to be mobile. It means developing that volitional part of the self that can think critically and independently and that can then translate ideas into focused action. It also involves learning to get from one place to another, without having to be taken by the hand or given detailed directions, and to find the information or resources required to fulfill personal needs and desires.

Developing autonomy culminates in the recognition that one cannot operate in a vacuum and that greater autonomy enables healthier forms of interdependence. Relationships with parents are revised. New relationships based on equality and reciprocity replace the older, less consciously chosen peer bonds. Interpersonal context broadens to include the community, the society, the world. The need to be independent and the longing for inclusions become better balanced. Interdependence means respecting the autonomy of others and looking for ways to give and take with an ever-expanding circle of friends.

4. Developing mature interpersonal relationships. Developing mature relationships involves (1) tolerance and appreciation of differences (2) capacity for intimacy. Tolerance can be seen in both an intercultural and an interpersonal context. At its heart is the ability to respond to people in their own right rather than as stereotypes or transference objects calling for particular conventions. Respecting differences in close friends can generalize to acquaintances from other continents and cultures. Awareness, breadth of experience, openness, curiosity, and objectivity help students refine first impressions, reduce bias and ethnocentrism, increase empathy an altruism, and enjoy diversity.

In addition to greater tolerance, the capacity for healthy intimacy increases. For most adolescent couples, each is the pool and each the Narcissus. Satisfying relationships depend on spatial proximity, so that each can nod to the other and in the reflection observe himself or herself. Developing mature relationships means not only freedom from narcissism, but also the ability to choose healthy relationships and make lasting commitments based on honesty, responsiveness, and unconditional regard. Increased capacity for intimacy involves a shift in the quality of relationships with intimates and close friends. The shift is away from too much dependence or too much dominance and toward an interdependence between equals. Development means more in-depth sharing and less clinging, more acceptance of flaws and appreciation of assets, more selectivity in choosing nurturing relationships, and more long-lasting relationships that endure through crises, distance, and separation.

5. Establishing identity. Identity formation depends in part on the other vectors already mentioned: competence, emotional maturity, autonomy, and positive relationships. Developing identity is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, remodeling a house, or seeking one's "human rhythms," a term that Murphy (1958) illustrated by photic driving. A person watching an instrument that emits flashes at precise intervals eventually hits a breaking point–the point at which the rhythm induces a convulsion. If, for example, the number is sixteen, the observer may rapidly lose consciousness as this number is presented in the standard time interval. Seventeen and fifteen, however ,are safe numbers. It is not until thirty-two or some other multiple of sixteen is reached that a breakdown recurs. Like the piano wire that hums or like the glass that shatters, we all have our critical frequencies in a variety of areas. Development of identity is the process of discovering with what kinds of experience, at what levels of intensity and frequency, we resonate in satisfying, in safe, or in self-destructive fashion.

Development of identity involves: (1) comfort with body and appearance, (2) comfort with gender and sexual orientation, (3) sense of self in a social, historical, and cultural context, (4) clarification of self-concept through roles and life-style , (5) sense of self in response to feedback from valued others, (6) self-acceptance and self-esteem, an d (7) personal stability and integration. A solid sense of self emerges, and it becomes more apparent that there is an I who coordinates the facets of personality, who "owns" the house of self and is comfortable in all of its rooms.

College student concern with appearance is obvious. Though gowns no longer prevail except at Oxford and Cambridge, town residents recognize students, especially younger ones who don emblems of student culture. Whatever the limitations or prescriptions, experimentation occurs. With clarification of identity, however, it diminishes. By graduation, most of the early creative-or bizarre-variations are given up. Experimentation with dress and appearance herald pathways to sexual identity. Looking at old high school yearbooks confirms the evolution of hairstyles. Macho, androgynous, or femme fatale "looks" come and go, but identity hinges on finding out what it means to be a man or a woman and coming to terms with one's sexuality.

Establishing identity also includes reflecting on one's family of origin and ethnic heritage, defining self as a part of a religious or cultural tradition, and seeing self within a social and historical context. It involves finding roles and styles at work, at play, and at home that are genuine expressions of self and that further sharpen self-definition. It involves gaining a sense of how one is seen and evaluated by others. It leads to clarity and stability and a feeling of warmth for this core self as capable, familiar, worthwhile.

6. Developing purpose. Many college students are all dressed up and do not know where they want to go. They have energy but no destination. While they may have clarified who they are and where they came from, they have only the vaguest notion of who they want to be. For large numbers of college students, the purpose of college is to qualify them for a good job, not to help them build skills applicable in the widest variety of life experiences; it is to ensure a comfortable life-style, not to broaden their knowledge base, find a philosophy of life, or become a lifelong learner.

Developing purpose entails an increasing ability to be intentional, to asses interests and options, to clarify goals, to make plans, and to persist despite obstacles. It requires formulating plans for action and a set of priorities that integrate three major elements: (1) vocational plans and aspirations, (2) personal interests, and (3) interpersonal and family commitments. It also involves a growing ability to unify one's many different goals within the scope of a larger, more meaningful purpose, and to exercise intentionality on a daily basis.

We use the term vocation in its broadest sense-as specific career or as broad calling. Vocations can include paid work, unpaid work, or both. We discover our vocation by discovering what we love to do, what energizes and fulfills us, what uses our talents and challenges us to develop new ones, and what actualizes all our potentials for excellence. Ideally, these vocational plans flow from deepening interests, and in turn, lend momentum to further aspirations that have meaning and value. Considerations of life-style and family also enter the equation. As intimate relationships increasingly involve the question of long-term partnership and as formal education and vocational exploration draw to a close, next steps must be identified. It is difficult to construct a plan that balances life-style considerations, vocational aspirations, and avocational interests. Many compromises must be made, and clearer values help the decision-making process.

7. Developing Integrity. Developing integrity is closely related to establishing identity and clarifying purposes. Our core values and beliefs provide the foundation for interpreting experience, guiding behavior, and maintaining self-respect. Developing integrity involves three sequential but overlapping stages: (1) humanizing values-shifting away from automatic application of uncompromising beliefs and using principled thinking in balancing one's own self-interest with the interests of one's fellow human beings, (2) personalizing values-consciously affirming core values and beliefs while respecting other points of view, and (3) developing congruence-matching personal values with socially responsible behavior.

Humanizing values involves a shift from a literal belief in the absoluteness of rules to a more relative view, where connections are made between rules and the purposes they are meant to serve. Thus, the rules for a ball game can change to accommodate limited numbers of players or other unusual conditions; rules concerning situations, while overriding principles (such as the Golden Rule) become more important. This change has also been called "liberalization of the superego" or "enlightenment of conscience"–the process by which the rigid rules received unquestioned from parents are reformulated in the light of wider experience and made relevant to new conditions (Sanford, 1962, p. 278).

Students bring to college an array of assumptions about what is right and wrong, true and false, good and bad, important and unimportant. Younger students may have acquired these assumptions from parents, church, school, media, or other sources. When others' values are internalized, most behavior conforms even when the judge is absent. Disobedience produces either diffuse anxiety or specific fear of discovery and punishment. Most of the values are implicit and unconsciously held; therefore, they are hard to identify or explain. With humanizing of values, much of this baggage comes to light. The contents are examined. Many items are discarded on brief inspection, sometimes with later regret. Some items are tried and found unsuitable. A few are set aside because they still fit and can be incorporated into a new wardrobe.

Personalizing of values occurs as the new wardrobe is assembled. Ultimately, the items selected are those required by the characteristics of the wearer, by the work expected to be done, by the situations to be encountered, and by the persons who are seen as important. In short, individuals select guidelines to suit themselves and to suit the conditions of their lives. In time, the components of this wardrobe are actively embraced as part of the self and become standards by which to flexibly assess personal actions.

Personalizing of values leads to the development of congruence–the achievement of behavior consistent with the personalized values held. With this final stage, internal debate is minimized. Once the implications of a situation are understood and the consequences of alternatives seem clear, the response is highly determined; it is made with conviction, without debate or equivocation.

These, then, are the seven major developmental vectors for college students. Each has additional components, and more detailed study reveals further ramifications. This overview, however, suggests the major configurations.

J Mark Doddshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467535.post-80436563669034377322016-02-05T08:24:00.002-08:002016-02-05T08:54:06.988-08:00Countdown for British Pubs
Countdown for British Pubs

Helen Fospero explains the #GreatBritishPubcoScam very simply in two minutes for #Countdown
Good job Helen @LadyFosp

The Royal Oak, Findsbury

My cousin met his wife-to-be in the Royal Oak. That is what happens in pubs - amazing things. Unless WE stop this deliberate rot in our society soon there will be no pubs to meet people in. Pubs, the original social networks are under threat not because of TV, demographic change, cheap supermarket booze or anything else we're told are the problems... they are closing because pubco's WANT them to close - so they can cash in on alternative value to pay interest on debts they will never be able to pay down the capital on.

The ONLY reason this pub is under threat is because it was sold quietly by a pubco that has never invested in it and, NO DOUBT, taken enormous profits out of the businesses of several tied tenants they've serially ripped off and then flogged it to a developer they told could make easy money out of it by knocking it down and building homes. This is happening everywhere, it is a private equity assault on Britain's heritage, traditions, culture and our very sense of place. Pubco's are damaging society.

Helen Fospero explains very nicely how it happens in this short clip above from Countdown yesterday (4 February 2016)

The pubs Helen mentions there without name are the Chequer Inn, Ash and the Red Lion, Wingham.

There is no doubt the Royal Oak will thrive as a pub in the right hands, well stocked, well run and selling ales and providing amenities and facilities that are relevant to the local population.

If you care about people, pubs and places, then sign Joe O'Donnell's petition and get behind his campaign! http://chn.ge/1PojXHW
J Mark Doddshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com


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We are happy to inform you that although winter just hit the city, our good friends at Acne Studios started their first pre-deliveries. Rene and I were fortunate enough to be invited to the Acne Studios fashion show in Palais de Tokyo in Paris last summer. We believe there is no beter way to get you in the mood than to show you the video of the Spring Summer 2015 show here!
In our upcoming Journal de Nîmes Rene and I take you back-stage in Paris. So stay tuned!