Who's to blame for pub closures?

[AtW]

Business Rates kill pubs and businesses.

They are not too bad on office space (at least locally), but they are impossible to contact - phones are too busy or won't answer, email took like 3 weeks to answer and WE PAY them money. They'll apply very quickly to local court if you don't pay on time though.

What really pisses me off is that they also take business rates on car parking in front of our office for employees - it comes free with office (obviously included in price), and we have to pay £25 per month for each of car parking spaces FFS - I asked publicly on some meeting council guy on WTF they are trying to make environment better for businesses to grow jobs and they have this tax on employment, he said I should not be suprised there is a tax on employee parking, FFS, if it was in USA the people would revolt!!!

[MarillionFan]

They are not too bad on office space (at least locally), but they are impossible to contact - phones are too busy or won't answer, email took like 3 weeks to answer and WE PAY them money. They'll apply very quickly to local court if you don't pay on time though.

What really pisses me off is that they also take business rates on car parking in front of our office for employees - it comes free with office (obviously included in price), and we have to pay £25 per month for each of car parking spaces FFS - I asked publicly on some meeting council guy on WTF they are trying to make environment better for businesses to grow jobs and they have this tax on employment, he said I should not be suprised there is a tax on employee parking, FFS, if it was in USA the people would revolt!!!

You are such an IT Geek!

[AtW]

You are such an IT Geek!

I tried to phone first, FFS - they put email on the council tax form.

Took just 5 months for them to re-value new office

[Shimano105]

@Marillion - that's ok then - Manchester is a cut-price Leeds so that would be expected.

@AtW - if you think that Stella (which is now brewed with Maize and has lost 0.2% of alcohol along the way) is quality then everything you have just said is void - you are clearly retarded.

[MarillionFan]

I tried to phone first, FFS - they put email on the council tax form.

Took just 5 months for them to re-value new office

Working for a client at the moment. I visited their Call Centre. We have 25000 calls per month. Ok. Whats your SLA's? 95% of calls in 20seconds? Average waiting time? etc etc - 'Yeah we have loads of those'.

Ok what about Email? 'Errr. Yeah? Right. We do have some, but not much, and we don't have any KPIS or SLAs?'

I looked into it. 5000 Emails per month!!!!!! No Service Level.

[AtW]

@AtW - if you think that Stella (which is now brewed with Maize and has lost 0.2% of alcohol along the way) is quality then everything you have just said is void - you are clearly retarded.

The point is that they replaced it with St Miguel, ffs, have you tasted it? Brewery in a pub that I frequent (more in the past than now) had prices put up so they had to switch to stay in business. btw, I am talking about old Stella now new 4% tulip

[AtW]

Working for a client at the moment. I visited their Call Centre. We have 25000 calls per month. Ok. Whats your SLA's? 95% of calls in 20seconds? Average waiting time? etc etc - 'Yeah we have loads of those'.

You can't get through on the phone to them either - the real irony is that they are effectively "sales channel", people pay them big bucks FFS - sales calls that make money should always go through very quickly FFS, we pay like £6k a year in business rates, surely that's enough revenue to guarantee instant response time to a few queries a year?

Why councils are doing this anyway - HMRC should have handled money and sent revenues directly to councils, who should not be responsible for tax collection in the first place.

[Shimano105]

So am I - all the third world peasant beers (San Miguel, Sol et al) are branded as premium beers in the UK cos they is from the continent innit.

Thing is, UK Stella is the same. The original Belgian Stella is ok (not brilliant mind) but the UK stuff just gets progressively cheapened because they know that UK p!ssheads won't notice.

It was always marketed as being 'reassuringly expensive' but never was.

Anyway all this booze talk is making me want to go teetotal.

[AtW]

the UK stuff just gets progressively cheapened

It might be getting progressively cheapened but it sure as hell not getting cheaper...

I had to switch to Guiness, now if they remove those from pubs I will quit using them

[HairyArsedBloke]

I had thoughts of not going to the pub today ......


.... no chance of that now. First, I've got some stuff to do. Then my weekly bath. Pub late afternoon / evening.