The Pub, Britain's unique secular social construct, admired and envied from afar as the world's original social network, is under existential threat. All over the UK closed and dying pubs are the consequence of late stage rentierism gone mad: All over Britain closed, boarded up formerly tied lease freehold pubs are on the property market 'suitable for alternative use'. EVERYWHERE there's a run down closed pub there's a community around it who wish THAT pub was a Brilliant Local they could be proud to call THEIR PUB. But they, local communities, gradually stopped using 'their pub' after pubcos bought most of Britain's public house stock during the 1990's and financialised the life out of bricks and mortar and aggressively profiteered publicans they rented out more than half the national pub estate to as 'tied leases' which in effect are contracts to indentured servitude.
The parlous, perilous state of the nation's pubs is wholly down to the #GreatBritishPubcoScam - general pressures on all retail businesses that have decimated high streets have impacted pubs of course, but the underlying weakness of tied pubs is they don't make profits because the freeholders extract as much as possible through manipulation of rental values and by grotesquely overcharging for beer and other product supplies their tenants are obliged to buy through the 'tied supply contract' at, generally, around 40% over open market pricing.☝ THIS ☝ pernicious overhead of the hidden TIED supply contract is why tied pubs in particular are extremely vulnerable to outside financial shock like rapidly rising business rates, and mandatory wage increases [which most good employers want to pay but struggle to because of the rentier sitting on their back].
HOWEVER this means that all over the UK are distressed assets, detritus of the disastrous tied pubco model of vulture capitalism that's gripped Britain's pubs for the last 35 years ... are available to be bought, brought back into use and made into fantastic, proper, bustling, busy, financially sustainable Locals again.
All that's needed to make this happen is a people's pub company, call it a national trust for pubs if you like, funded by public subscription, of the people, by the people, FOR The People to bring pubs into the commons and back to life at the heart of communities, all over Britain. AGAIN.