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James, I realised that the whole rating system had been abused years ago and then screwed up even further in later years. Using turnover or barrelage was acceptable when fruitful discussions took place on viability with individual freehouses. Now they have the unsustainable rents linked to an existing turnover on record and naturally since these valuers have no experience or need no experience to read the accounts to establish profitability with no thanks to the learned Mr Tattershall, we have even more over valuation based on comparables. The pub leasing side is in freefall since the majority of leases numbers do not add up, if they did we would not have the BISC making such a critical report. Changing the Valuation Office's direction is easier said than done, but it is high on the list.

James you have a very short memory the BBPA made a confidential agreement with the BII and the FVLA last year and then pushed the content to the press causing huge embarrassment to the BII and FVLA long before it was scheduled to be released. Duplicity is byeword in certain bodies when the rest of us are trying to get fairnessand transparency.

It used to be normal practice for brewers to sell off their dross or under performing pubs, I have owned several and turned them back into viable pubs. They are viable if the trading conditions are right, but the tunnel vision that I come across with a number of brewery bosses I find staggering. The world is changing and changing fast, rents used to be reasonable with a tie and profits could be made, they have never been able to truly compete with the freetrade, the identification of the abuses of the rental system by the RICS is going to leave a lot of these Brewery Dinosaurs way behind. If one of the major Pub Co's fail the effects will be catastrophy for the industry, not just because of the domino effect on their suppliers, but no bank will loan money to any person or organisation wanting to finance a pub or pubs for years, which could destroy any long or short term development. Having talked to two of my banks in the last week, they are so jittery about anything to do with pubs and a mass failure would be nearly terminal. I and a number of other people would have liked to have seen a number of prominent Pub Co's go to the wall, but I now realise that it could destroy the industry and we have to change the thinking, the major companies have to retract in size and the regional brewers have to think outside their box. The freehouse market long starved of brewery cast offs needs to be increased and an acceptable balance achieved. Certain companies appear to have run very close to a pyramid scheme and the top has been reached without considering viability as with any pyramid scheme, the effects are now obvious, a mass failure has to be avoided at all costs, in my opinion.

I find it very bizarre, Guy Arnold is spoken of as a relatively knowledgeable voice in the industry, yet to my mind he appears to be totally out of touch with the realities in the industry. I was involved in raising issues to the RICS exposing the abuses and misuse of their Guidelines, the effect on thousands of people being totally shattering to them. Possibly as many as 11,000 people in one company in two and a half years, which I submitted details to the Select Committee. The ex accountant of the BII told me that one company had an average churn of nine months four year ago. Since then leases can barely be given away, all these people cannot be idiots, certainly most of the ones that I met were honest hard working people, who were struggling with impossible trading conditions. I have three in the last week that defy belief and I and others are doing our best to help them. If the GMB can do anything to help them all well and good, the greater the voice for fairness and transparency the better. Guy if you really want to help get out there and start helping these people, there are far too many that have gone beyond help, even for the LTC. Licensees are reluctant to accept that they are failing or have impossible trading conditions where their BDM or whatever's only answer is, "Get out." Sadly they leave it past the point of redemption and nothing can be done.

Continuing from my previous post. When you see the amount of trainers who only do the very basic qualifications it is staggering, and then consider that they have equipped someone to run a pub I find an embarrassment, it is not a meal ticket it should be a commitment to ensure people can do the job. Maybe this is a wake up call to trainers to ensure that they do equip the people that they train. I set up www.buyingapub.com to help people with information and the more people and companies that supply me with information on their services, products and experiences the greater the help for people in the industry. The NITA awards have for years in my opinion been mutual back slapping awards for a number of companies, lets make it really tough and make sure these people doing courses get the best information from all sources and an award is well earned. Lets see some serious innovation, I make my information free to everyone, how about the Pub Co's making free in house training a prerequiste for the first two years, rather than deterring people by extortionate training charges.