Mark Daniels: Rage Against The Machine

Who, or what, do you blame when the glasses coming out of your glasswasher fail to clean properly?

Without doubt, we nearly all point the spotty finger of water-marked blame at the detergent. "I've lost count," my chemical supplier said to me on a recent visit, "of how many times I've walked in to a customer's premises only to be assaulted by an angry landlord unhappy with the fact that his glasses aren't nice and shiny, and blaming my product for it."

Like water, we all look for the path of least resistance when it comes to finding something, or someone, to blame for whatever's gone wrong. When it comes to pubs, Pete Robinson is quite eloquent in his writings about the Smoking Ban; Fair Pint point the finger of blame squarely on all the pub companies; I like to say it's all the fault of the supermarkets. Not only do they sell alcohol to the general public at prices below that which most freeholders pay to their suppliers, they also seem to get a pretty light ride when it comes to the legislation; this year's "Mandatory Code" debacle being a prime example.

But, at the end of the day, it's one, or all, or none of each of these - plus a whole heap more - that's making life difficult for the individual Twenty-First-Century Publican.

Unfortunately, though, anybody who appears to write in defence of the Tie, comments that there are other issues to face, intimates that pubs need to change to meet demand in order to survive or, indeed, dares to suggest that we might need to buck our own ideas up in order to make ends meet gets accused of working for a pub company, sounding like a BDM or being out of touch with reality.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about the "Myth of the £2 pint." Ordinarily, I don't feel the need to defend things I write - not everything that's written in the public domain will be to everyone's taste. But what did catch my attention were some of the comments left in relation to that particular piece, and I do feel the need to address one or two of them.

I used some figures to highlight the potential financial difficulty that could be faced if pubs were able to buy cheaper and therefore sell cheaper. The figures used were examples and weren't relative to any particular individual's business, but the maths behind them were sound. And yes, I'm fairly sure that anybody using this site could indeed do most of the maths in their head - the point is, however, that so often it's obvious it isn't being done.

Indeed, it appeared that because I use spreadsheets and work out the physical attributes of what price I buy and sell my products at that I might be in danger of sounding - oh, the horror of it - like an accountant. Apparently, real people don't think like that, and this is slightly worrying because anybody running a business SHOULD be thinking like that. Even householders think like it: they have to work out if their income is sufficient to meet the expenses of their home.

Much as some may hate to admit it, a pub, after all, is a business.

If thinking like that makes me an accountant, then so be it. By being such, I know when it's safe to rob Peter and when it's time to pay Paul. Any business owner should be aware of that; if, as was suggested, publicans don't work things out like that then we, as a trade, are in real trouble because now is the time we should be keenly aware of such information.

In the last two years my business's turnover has plummeted, my profits have dropped and I have had to make changes. It ain't easy out there right now but is that the fault of my Tie? Personally, I don't think so. In the early nineties people found themselves tied into high interest mortgages that they couldn't get out of. A friend of mine found himself paying 13.1% fixed for five years; it seemed the right thing to do at the time and then the interest rates fell. The penalties for changing his mortgage outweighed the physical cost of paying for it, so he stuck with it until he could renegotiate or get out.

I believe the tie is causing publicans pain right now. I believe the smoking ban is still causing people pain. I believe the supermarkets are tempting our customers to drink and be merry at home with ridiculously cheap prices. But I also believe that by sitting back and blaming everybody else for the problems our businesses face is working against us. The public cries for the death of the evil pub companies, complaining to our customers that it's not our fault and calling for self employed individuals to actually go on "strike" is going to do nothing but tarnish our image in the public eye, damage our industry further and, ultimately, leave many already financially beleaguered publicans further in the mire. All the Government, and certain pub companies, have to do is sit back and wait for us to implode.

As my friend the chemical supplier also said: "of all the people who blame my detergent for not cleaning their glassware it's amazing how many, when asked, haven't put salt in the machine for weeks, cleaned it properly in months or even had it serviced."

The bits, in other words, that we are responsible for.