test please delete

[Menelaus]

Ohhhhhhhh! I seeeeeeeeeeee
You saying you were sitting politely in a Restaurant....really means
OK Gottcha Old Man!! Say no more!
I hope you enjoyed "lunch" Nuff said!

Sir! I refer you to http://www.albannach.co.uk/pdf/A-Board-Daily-Lunch.pdf and will offer you pistols at dawn, ye blaggard.

Mr Churchill will act as my second.

[zeitghost]

Byeeeee

[Menelaus]

Byeeeee

[cailin maith]

Bye everyone

[Menelaus]

Bye everyone

Night!

[BrilloPad]

gggrrrrrrr

Stuck at ClientCo : should have left 18 minutes ago.......

[NickFitz]

Evening denizens

Only one respectable shirt to go

[BrilloPad]

I finally left clientco 30 minutes late.....

[Menelaus]

I finally left clientco 30 minutes late.....

Night BP

[NickFitz]

Greetings denizens

I'm rather late back, after having ended up chatting to the landlord of my Cambridge local - not, as one might expect, about his musical endeavours with such luminaries as Lou Reed and Neil Innes, but about the epic fail exhibited by the management of Punch Taverns.

He's in an Adnams house so he doesn't have to worry; but if you hold shares in Punch Taverns, I would advise you to sell for whatever you can get, as their management seem to have no idea of how to cope - do bear in mind that I am not qualified to give any advice about anything, though

I told him how they had just sold my London local to the landlady, despite it being a pub that is never, ever empty (and sells the best ale in London). He came back with the example of a pub in Suffolk: country riverside location, good-sized pub with food trade and possibility for expansion thereof... and at the end of the sizeable garden is a bowling green with an active bowling club. A little while back Punch were planning to shut down the pub (which was profitable) as not "relevant to their core business" - but now they've sold it.

For £175,000.

That wouldn't buy you a three-bedroom house around there

Their problem is that they think "We need to rationalise our business" - and they decide to focus on trendy city centre bars aimed at young people with disposable income... because that's where trendy management types go themselves.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, what's the kind of pub that has tended to survive every recession, that doesn't need to be refurbished every two years to look "right", that never needs "rebranding"?

Maybe something like... a country pub in a riverside location with a sizeable garden and a bowling green with an active bowling club?

Seriously, I have no qualifications to offer this advice; but sell Punch Taverns shares now, before they end up with a portfolio of no-longer-trendy bars that they can't afford to refurbish and thereby retrendify, while all the successful pubs they sold off continue to be successful because they didn't depend on trends