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£8k up in smoke

A couple, who flouted the smoking ban at their East Wretham pub, have been ordered to pay costs of more than £8,000.

Martin and Karen Turver, landlords of the Dog and Partridge, appeared at Thetford Magistrates' Court on Thursday following a prosecution by Breckland Council for smoking offences under the 2006 Health Act. Magistrates found they had clearly and deliberately flouted the ban and gave the couple a conditional discharge and ordered them to pay costs of £8,302 (Bury Free Press)

Honey Dew gets ad boost

Fuller’s Organic Honey Dew beer is to get advertising support centred on a poster campaign to be seen at railway stations and London Underground stations. Brand Manager Clare Draper claims that Honey Dew is the UK’s best selling organic beer with sales up by 40% in the last year. The poster campaign will be supported by a merchandising campaign with sampling road shows in pubs and supermarkets during July.

Don’t drop ‘em in Rushden

A woman has been fined £155 for dropping a cigarette butt in the main street of her home town of Rushden Northants. The news follows a recent prosecution in which another woman was prosecuted for a similar offence and fined £130. The council has said it will install cigarette bins in the High Street, Rushden in the next few weeks – presumably when the stealth fund has built up.

GK might REIT

Rooney Anand, CEO of Greene King, is reported to be looking at the prospect of converting the pubco’s property portfolio into a real estate investment trust. This way of releasing shareholder value has been pursued by the likes of Enterprise and M&B but will be influenced by debt market conditions.

Bitter at M&B.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Mitchells & Butlers was the darling of the stock exchange, now it is reported that shareholders are turning nasty and want a change of management. Matters took a turn for the worse when Punch Taverns, one time suitor of the post-hedge fund disaster struck M&B, announced that it has ended all contact. Punch, it seems, no longer thinks that any deal with M&B would be in the interests of the Punch shareholders – probably, having done due diligence ahead of the possible merger, finding that the finances at M&B are not as healthy as the board had made them out to be.

Sad to think that the M&B directors, having made a good fist of running a pubco, are to be felled by a Punch from the City boys for failing to run what they see as the real business – a venture property outfit.

As has been reported here, the pubcos such as Enterprise are beginning to realise (too late perhaps) that hard pressed tenants might need some help to see themselves through these testing times. Help in the form of rent concessions has been suggested but when the supermarkets are offering lager at less than 60 pence per pint it’s going to take something more to prise the punters into pubs where the amber nectar can cost over three quid.

Old Bushmills. New Note.

In a remarkable PR coup, the drinks group Diageo has persuaded the Bank of Ireland to incorporate a picture of the Old Bushmills whiskey distillery on the reverse of the notes it circulates in Northern Ireland. The move is in celebration of the 400^th anniversary of the granting of a licence to Bushmills to distil whiskey. The notes, in £5, £10 and £20 denominations, will be in circulation from April and the existing notes, which featured Queens University Belfast, will be withdrawn over time.

Greene Blues

In common with many pubcos, Old Speckled Hen brewer Greene King is getting something of a cold shoulder from the City. Talk of backing the property portfolio into a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) have been kyboshed by the credit collapse, whilst a general malaise created by the smoking ban and an overall decline in beer sales paints a gloomy picture. Pundits are now saying that Greene King shares, once trading at nearly £12 but now down to nearer £7, might well continue to fall. Investors may think that the GK estate and trading figures are worth supporting – in any event it was another brewer that used the slogan “follow the bear”.

Vending Machines to be banned?

The anti smoking charity ASH has welcomed a possible ban on Britain’s 96,000 cigarette vending machines, following revelations that children are accessing the machines in pubs. The People ran a story on 2 December revealing that a 14 year old had easily obtained cigarettes from a vending machine in an Ember Inns pub. The possibility of a ban has been given further credibility in a report published on 3 December by Prof. Mike Richards, the Government’s Cancer Tsar which supports the idea of a ban and recommends that the retail display of cigarettes be moved “under the counter.”

LTC at time of Flood or Famine

The Licensed Trade Charity (LTC) has reported a 35% increase in calls for help from the trade following an awareness campaign seeking to remind members of the licensed drinks business that the LTC stands ready to help - perhaps even years after an individual may have left the trade. The recent downturn resulting from poor weather and the smoking ban and with with reports that as many as 6,000 pubs may close due to lost business could see many more looking to the LTC for help in the future.

The floods in England and Wales saw the LTC stepping in with help – with offers of temporary accomodation, help with paying regular monthly bills or paying for essential household items not covered by insurance. Just one example of the many ways that the charity is able to help those in need.

The Licensed Trade Charity was formed by a merger of the Society of Licensed Victuallers and the Licensed Victuallers National Homes. The charity operates under the SLV Royal Charter which was granted in 1836.

The LTC's remit is to look after those who have worked or are working in the licensed drinks trade, an industry which employs over 1.6 million in the UK, which is 4.5% of the working population and contributes over 4.5% of the nation's GDP. The LTC makes grants of over £1 million every year to its beneficiaries ranging from bursaries at one of the charity's two schools, regular allowances, convalescence breaks and mobility aids to name but a few.

For further information contact the LTC office at
Heatherley, London Road, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 8DR. Tel 01344 884440. Email info@ltcharity.org.u

A History of Brewing

In the Middle Ages when ale was the general drink of all classes, brewing was a necessary and often domestic industry, and few records of local courts are without some reference to its regulation. When, however, brewing became an extensive trade, and especially after the gradual change of taste which substituted hopped beer for the old English ale, we have few notices of any interest relating to brewing in rural Middlesex until comparatively modern times, though, as hereafter mentioned, a number of breweries are known to have existed near the river bank east of the Tower as early as the 15th century and perhaps before. The history of the licensing and regulation of ale houses more.....

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