THE SUN AND DOVES shut

[Mark Dodds]

The Sun and Dove is shut now forever as the pub I operated for sixteen years. I was served eviction papers by Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company for 23 September 2 days short of 16 years since the day I signed the lease in 1995.

The rent and beer prices were so high the business barely made any money. Which is a contributing factor to all problems the business experienced - right down to shaky service at times. If you can't invest in a premises it makes it harder to keep customers, harder to keep staff interested and tends to lead to a cruel downward spiral of disrepair and neglect.

If you're interested in why so many pubs are closing all over the UK it's because of the beer tie.

I've got a blog here [anotherdayanotherdollar.blogspot.com] which has a lot of stories and thoughts about it all but is not a timeline that's easy to read through.

The Morning Advertiser, the publicans' publican's newspaper has an article about it: [bit.ly]

The years of being in a pressure cooker made me have a nervous breakdown in 2007 - which you may understand to some extent affected normal service at the Sun and Doves for a whole couple of years - I was suicidal for a while. It was a grim period. But during my recovery and since I vowed to do something about this inequity and gathered together a bunch of other tied lessees and set up The Fair Pint Campaign www.fairpint.org.uk which has lobbied government for the end of the beer tie and has presented evidence about the pubcos to three Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committees who subsequently have recommended that pubcos be legislated against.

IN the last two years I've been working on the foundations for The People's Pub Partnership: [bit.ly]

It's going to take a couple of months for me to gather my things but PPP WILL happen. If you're interested to know more please do send a note to [email protected] with KEEP ME UP TO DATE in the subject - THANKS