Bob you are really grinding my gears

You will have to forgive this post, it is without doubt a rant but a well needed one.

As you know I am a publican and as you also know all pubs in the country are currently closed. Now if you read the various forums and social media streams from the licensed trade then you probably also ‘know’ that all property landlords are evil and eat babies. You ‘know’ that all publicans are angelic hardworking and earn nothing and you ‘know’ that the support of hospitality ‘needs’ to continue for 5 years at least.

This is what I am seeing on a daily basis, it has got so bad that I no longer listen to the radio in the day because I am sick to the back teeth of the shameless way that inept operators are embarrassing this trade. Publicans used to be pillars of the community and many still are but the loudest voices make us look like snivelling kids begging for more all of the time.

The hospitality industry has had an unprecedented amount of support to get through Covid-19, more than anyone could have envisaged a few months ago. I want to look at the grants in particular, to be clear this is cash given to a business not a loan not a deferral it is real money paid into the bank .

From day one the message board were filled with whines about ‘when will I get it’ in fact by the end of week two I read publicans honestly claiming that they only had ‘5 days of food left for the family’. Firstly this is a business grant, do with it what you wish but it was not established to feed you and your kids fillet steak.

Mobilising this amount of money takes time and there has to be checks and balances within the system. If the money had all been distributed overnight by central government then there would have been justified uproar at money being sent to ex publicans, dead people and cats.

From about week three the ‘trade’ has been saying they need more grants, like a needy child looking for more milk. I have seen stories of people who are honestly moaning that they have spent £25K on bills for a closed pub in 5 weeks. There is currently no rent or rates so what the hell can you spend that much on? Especially when the majority of these publicans refused to pay their staff a penny until the furlough scheme kicked in.

I read today a woman at her ‘wits end’ because she had spent half her grant already on ‘vat and back rent’ whoa hang on a minute… VAT is collected by you on behalf of the government so you had this money, where did that go? and you owed your landlord rent, so you used the taxpayer grant to clear some bills did you? Well that might be where you are going wrong.

Anecdotally I am reading of people paying off their credit card bills, car loans and last payments on holidays before demanding the government does more to help them. These are not business people, and the pubs that they run are not businesses.

Then there is the satanic cult of the pub companies who have stopped collecting rent but refuse to make a blanket statement that you can have your property rent free for 9 months. Such is the anger at these awful organisations that the licensed trade is demanding that the government force the private companies to grant their wishes, come on Tinkerbell you can do it.

I have written about this before but the pub company is an intermediary. They borrow the money to buy the pub that you rent off them. Of course they cannot declare a blanket forgoing of rent, they have lending covenants and shareholders and nobody knows how long this will go on for. Some tenants are trying to make offers to buy the freeholds at a reduced rate, this may at least knock some sense into them.

Before every pub in the country was closed down commercial lending was considered high risk, mortgages struggled at 50% LTV and needed 40% deposits to achieve 6-9% above base rate. I don’t imagine that not trading has improved the appetite of the lenders.  So off you trot Bob with your happy smile and clutching your last weeks Z read and see how hard the banks laugh at you. Buying pubs is tough, lending is expensive and if it wasn’t you wouldn’t be a tenant would you?

Then we hear that grants are ‘not for paying rent’ yes they are! Bloody hell Bob you don’t even have to read anything, the nice man on the TV explained it, all you had to do was listen. The grant was intended for fixed business costs and rent is one of those in that it is fixed whether you trade or not. It is a bit like a mortgage on your house, if you are not there for a month you still have to pay it.

Throughout this tenants are paying private landlords or coming to sensible agreements. They are paying mortgages or deferring payments. The quiet ones in this trade are continuing to do what we do whilst collectively tutting the idiots who just make us all look bad.

So to be clear the whining idiots that you see are not publicans, they are chancers and failures and dreamers. They are probably all very nice people but they are still chasing the seat at the end of the bar with brandy and cigars, chasing but not working very hard.

We have been closed for 6 weeks, 14 pubs a week change hands due to closure every week so that is 84 pubs that we the taxpayer are currently keeping afloat. But we are not are we, we are keeping Bob afloat and Sharon and all of the people who think that the reason that they are not living the dream is because of the evil landlords.  When we all reopen theses pubs will still fail no matter how long the government pour our money into them.

One other point that seems to have passed Bob et al by is basic maths. You see they are all losing a fortune but, of course, that is not the truth. The true loss is the money currently leaving your bank account for the period of closure. That party you had booked in for last Saturday, that is not a loss Bob that is a lost opportunity try and remember that.  And do try and remember that pubs were closed on the 20th of March, that overdue account from Christmas that really isn’t Covid-19 related now is it?

The conventional wisdom is that a business should have sufficient liquid capital to cover 3-6 months of fixed costs. So we have been closed 6 weeks and you have been given some form of state assistance. Pipe down Susan I know you didn’t get a grant you have told everybody because it is just so unfair. You did get rates relief though, so if you were at the very bottom of the band you are saving just shy of £500 a week.

I know its not real money Susan and you can’t touch it but try this little trick. Place the money you would usually use to pay your rates on the table in front of you, touch it, feel it, its real isn’t it? Well you can keep that, how nice is that?

So lets be clear, if you cannot cover your fixed costs minus rent and rates (the two largest fixed costs) then you are not a viable business, you will not survive. Stop the teary eyed emojis and clapping the NHS and do the whole country a real favour, stop milking the state aid chuck the keys in and f*ck off.

There are a great many great tenants running good businesses please don’t think I am tarring all with the same brush. I am just so tired of reading whining posts from incompetent and bankrupt tenants who will all exit stage left when beer duty and VAT rise to pay this all back. This is a tough trade, it has been for years, but there are some tough operators and they are just getting on with it.

Thanks for listening (I know you speed read it) I feel marginally better and am off to do some decorating while Bob applies for some charity loan.

 

NOTE: All names are made up apart from mine, I think I am real….

 

It’s not all about incubators

Before I star this post I would like to make it clear that I know I am generalising and I know that not everyone is the same. I write from my experience rather than to castigate an entire sex.

This week the mother of my children has won her ultimate goal to make me no more than a financial institution, to be fair she probably achieved this some time ago but has now finally made it public.

As you know I have two beautiful children but, when their mother started sleeping with other people, I am separated from their mother. Whilst I am by no means a shining example or a great man I did nothing wrong, I lost my home and my family because my wife couldn’t keep her legs shut it is as simple as that.

The mortgage expires on the ex marital home early next year and so arrangements have to be made (my youngest is 18) to address the debt owed to the bank. This is not only perfectly normal it is in accordance with agreements made (via the courts) over ten years ago. Apparently suffering a mortgage, which prevented me from buying my own domestic property and moving on, for my ex-wife, her new child, lovers and my children makes me a horrible person and a failure as a father.

Apparently if I was a good Father I would somehow find the funds to purchase the love of my children. It is like one of those ‘sponsor a child’ adverts:

“For only £55K you can house a woman you despise, her partner, a child you don’t know and your children. In return we will ensure you receive bi-monthly updates addressed to Daddy”

My own situation is my own lookout for being stupid enough to sleep with such a horrible excuse for a human being, but I think it opens a wider point. As a woman think of what Dad meant to you and if, as in my ex’s case, you were denied that opportunity talk to your girlfriends about how they felt. Women talk about everything so even if you don’t have your own fond memories listen to others talking about how safe the world was when they were sat on Daddies knee. When you are consoling your girlfriends about how much they miss their father or, indeed, when you are seeking their sympathy because you feel the same stop and think.

When you consign a man to being nothing other than the idiot who funds your lifestyle then you, and nobody else, are denying your own children that opportunity. So you don’t like the guy who Fathered your children, you have changed your mind, found a better partner or it was just a blag to get a free house who cares but he is the Father of your children.

Whatever he is and however twisted you are the Father of your children is their safe knee, the man they turn to when the world is dark and seems against them. He is the man who tells daughters they are gorgeous when the boyfriend says they are too fat, the man who tells sons to dress up and get out there when girlfriends ditch them. There are two parental roles and you have stolen your children’s right to have both.

Do you think that the Father of your children could never be the man that your Father was? You are right (how does that feel?) he will never be the man your Father was because he is not your Father. To YOU he may be a bank, the man YOU cheated on, the man who didn’t make YOU feel special but, and here is the rub, if you were a half decent mother YOU would realise that it is not all about YOU!

Every child deserves a Father, a safe place, a man who can save them from the world and a man that they will always love. When you deny a child their Father, by whatever means you use, you lose any right to call yourself a mother you are just an incubator.

 

Note: You will notice that I have capitalised Father and not mother, this is intentional. When I am writing about somebody who deserves a title I will capitalise. 

Catharsis, guilt and context

First off can I just say a big thank you for bearing with me over these posts, normal service will be resumed I can assure you.

As part of the cathartic process of blogging I feel that I do need to answer a question put to me recently by one of the two most important people in my life, my daughter.

As some of you know and some will have gathered it is that time when we start to process the legalities with regards to my ex marital home and my perspective has not been presented well (if at all). So the question was ‘do you feel guilty?’ and I guess it was aimed at the fact that my financial commitment to said house is coming to an end.  So, for the record, I just want to address this question and who knows one day my beautiful daughter may read and understand.

Do I feel guilty for unconditionally loving my children – No.

Do I feel guilty that the mother of my children had an affair – No.

Do  I feel guilty that I tried to maintain a marriage for the sake of my children – No, I feel stupid but not guilty.

Do  I feel guilty over the divorce – No, see first point.

Do I feel guilty for the time spent sofa surfing and sleeping in my car whilst providing for my children – No.

Do I feel guilty for never rearing up in the face of the unrelenting cruelty and vindictiveness of the mother of my children – No.

Do I feel guilty for never-failing to provide for my children whether I had an income or not or was ill myself – No, I am a father.

Do I feel guilty for providing a home for my ex-wife’s partners and her other child – No, I am not responsible for others lack of substance.

Do I feel guilty that I spent 16 years unable to move on financially, living in rentals and with my life on hold – No.

Do I feel guilty that I am not in a position to pay a mortgage off and gift the house to my ex wife and thereby allow my children, their half-sister, mother and her partner to live there rent free in perpetuity – No.

Do I feel guilty that I have provided a home for my children here with me should/when they ever need or want it – No.

Do I feel guilty? Yes I feel horribly guilty and have blogged this before. I feel guilty for the decisions and choices that I made which resulted in that one thing being the mother of my two beautiful children. I feel guilty for not being able to rescue them from the psychological damage and for not being able to protect them from the emotional abuse.

I feel guilty for the slow and creeping damage to two beautiful and innocent souls that results from Munchausen by proxy and for not being able to stop it. I feel guilty for allowing the destructive and sick matriarchal control to pass through another generation.

I feel sad, pointless and a failure of course I do. But in answer to the question: yes is the answer, I do feel guilty but I think the context of the question is wrong.

Sorry guys I tried…

Advanced warning – Not a humorous post (sorry)

So the time has come, as we both knew that it would. Our oldest child is about to attain the heady age of 18 and we need to address the elephant in the room. The elephant, in this case, is the 3 bedroom house that you still live in and I still pay for.

Of course it is not just you, our son and daughter live there and your current partner oh and your daughter who shares a room with ours. We both knew that this day would come, it should be etched in your mind after all the state sponsored lawyers fought hard to achieve this among many other wounds while you continued to sleep with the third party in our marriage.

As in everything else I have forgone revenge, ignored hatred and looked after my children. I have provided the home that any spare prick could enter if he called you good looking (hey I ain’t specsavers am I ). I won’t lie, the mortgage has often been a relatively easy payment, in cash terms, but sometimes not so. If there is a credit for going above and beyond then I should maybe earn it for paying the mortgage from a hospital bed (no sick pay here) or when I had no work. There may even be points for paying a mortgage whilst living in cesspits over pubs or on mates floors, if so I claim them now.

It is ok I know my role, I guess I always did. I am here to provide and I will ALWAYS look after my gorgeous children. So you have had some 16 years to make provisions, you have had a number of bequests and a number of partners living rent free how did that work out?

Let me tell you how it worked out for me, I couldn’t remortgage because I was bound to a house I couldn’t enter. I missed my children so terribly that I cried as I shuffled in the car to get to sleep or waited for the party to end so I could grab a sofa, I didn’t miss my bed because I knew by then that three of us shared it. So what did I do? I worked, I worked hard and then I worked some more but you knew that I would because that’s why you chose me, you knew it was who I was, an easy mark.

So I moved into a rental, the best that I could do as I was shackled to our home. I cleaned cigarette butts from under the bed in the only furnished let that I could find. I made the best second home for our children that I could it was all that I could do. Our children asked questions of my accommodation that left me crying at night, I wanted to provide an example of life, of what you could achieve if you worked hard, but instead I demonstrated how to apply pest powder.

Am I proud of my life? No, quite simply I am ashamed, ashamed of how little I have achieved and how poor a parent I have been but more than anything I am devastated that you are the mother to two of the most perfect people in the world.

So the day came, we knew it was coming. How did you handle it? How about telling the kids that the old man hasn’t done too bad? after all you slept around and he kept at it, kept his cool and kept on paying. How about mentioning that he didn’t always use that deodorant but on that ice cream trip he had slept in the car and had no chance to change his clothes but still would have cut his arm off to see your smiles. You could mention how he paid the mortgage when he had nothing coming in, never faltered, never failed to keep a roof over you and whoever s head? How about telling them that 16 years on they can still make that grizzly old man cry and have tonight?

Nope because, and I learned this a long time ago, it is and will always be about you. So take your opportunity, enjoy the sympathy as the ‘evil’ man stops paying the mortgage on the house that he first mortgaged at 20 years of age. Yes, my mortgage was long before you because, unlike you, I know the meaning of work. Enjoy the fruits of my labour and hide any realism behind your sense of entitlement. Enjoy scaring our children because you feel it will help you extract some additional sympathy from the situation, above all never admit what you are.

Don’t give me a second thought, don’t look at the pictures of the doting father and wonder how this has affected him. Don’t for one minute think of how you have systematically poisoned the relationship he has with his children for no tangible gain. Make me into your demon and I will just plod through after all its what I am here for isn’t it? I will cling desperately to the hope that one day our children will realise that I was the good guy and that I love them and I will hope I am still here when that day comes.

 

No blame = punishment

Those who follow my blog will know that I rarely get overly political and normally try to inject some humour but occasionally even I have to get serious.

I have just started the process that is required to resolve the last steps of my divorce and it reminds me of the plight of men in these situations. Before you stop reading let me make two things clear; this is not a rant against women and I was not the party responsible for my divorce, my partner had an affair.

So with that straightened out let me explain what happened to my ‘marital home’. To set the picture, I had a mortgage before I met my wife and the various properties that we resided in were entirely in my name, she was never added to a mortgage. So we split up and we have children, she cannot afford to make a home so the court orders that she shall remain in the house and make ‘best efforts’ to remove me from the mortgage.

Herein lies an issue that the legal system has not caught up with. No ‘best efforts’ will convince a mortgage company to remove a wage earner in favour of a welfare case, in their defence it would make no financial sense. So the ex stays in the house for 15 years and the fella has to make his own way, I have no particular objection to this it makes sense in terms of easing the burden on the state.

But, because he remains a mortgagor, the fella cannot move on in any real terms. The days of simply obtaining a buy to let mortgage are gone and you now have to provide evidence of your primary address, the one that you don’t live in anymore. Simply put, for 15 years you are prevented from owning your own home and have to suffer at the hands of the rental market. And when these 15 years are done? you are probably too old to take on a mortgage for the standard term.

So whilst the party who remains in the house moves on and enjoys a home that she will eventually be able to purchase at a bargain basement price the fella sees his capital eroded and spends his time renting rather than purchasing. This seems to me to be an unfair penalty on the fella and it is one that the courts are complicit in since they make no provision for the exiting partners accommodation.

Surely if she has not removed your name from the mortgage then she has not complied with the courts instructions I hear you say. Well firstly the instruction is a vague ‘best efforts’ and secondly what can the court do? Whilst the bank are a party to your life (and will be for at least another 15 years) they are not a party to the divorce and therefore the court can do nothing to compel them to do anything. I am not saying for one minute that I have the answer to this but isn’t time somebody asked the question? why are we condemning men to back street lending or high cost commercial lending simply because their marriage has failed?

I would like to say that this is the last political post but feel the subject may continue to irk for some time yet.

The language of youth and devilish reversing

I am clearly no longer a young man and one of the ways this shows itself is that I do not understand the language of youth. I understand this, it is as natural as the creaking arthritis that is becoming a more constant companion and the desire to hear the words in music. I am not completely oblivious to the altered interpretations of language that the youth use, I don’t dive for a bucket when I hear them say that something is sick. For me the youthful adaption of the language is quite unpleasant, the desire to mimic cultural tones of those less educated than oneself demonstrates a sad lack of identity and confidence. But the youth, by their very nature, will always be younger and always trying to differentiate themselves.

There are some aspects of the development of language that are more disturbing as they creep into general use. I am deeply unhappy, for example, that welfare has become “pay” or “money” in the UK since this softens the reality that the state is sponsoring a person. For some reason I got to thinking if I could educate the world as to one piece of language what would it be. The answer that I have fallen upon is the difference between the words ‘want’ and ‘need’. I think that if we could educate people as to the true definitions of these two words the world would be a happier and more fulfilled place and, more importantly, I wouldn’t get so angry.  I set out to establish some easy examples and came up with:

• You ‘want’ chocolate’ but you ‘need’ oxygen
• You ‘want’ takeaway but you ‘need’ food
• You ‘want’ beer but you ‘need’ water

At this point I started struggling, I could find loads more ‘wants’ but struggled to justify more ‘needs’. A home came to mind but, as many prove nightly, that is not a true need. Human life is a simple mechanism that requires fuel and hydration to survive, if it’s not one of those then you don’t really need it. We have complicated our lives and I fully accept that we need to pay the mortgage or fill the car to get to work but we don’t need to go the pub or visit friends, they are nice things to do but not essential.

In part this fuels the welfare culture, this belief that we need Sky or we need beer or, perhaps most sadly, that our children need toys. The happiest children in the world have little more than the love and attention of their parents but society, especially in the UK, creates artificial aspirations and beliefs. So we have parents who believe that their children’s happiness and welfare is directly related to the volume of “Made in China” labels under the Christmas tree. An aspiration to provide toys for your child is normal and correct but this has been manipulated and mutated such that, for so many, it is impossible to achieve. So we end up with badly educated parents trying to achieve the unachievable, giving up and getting drunk.

The result of this ‘feast or famine’ style of parenting is that little Johnny is fed garbage all year in a vain attempt to pay the loans taken out to pay for last years Christmas. By the time this Christmas comes around little Johnny’s parents will despair that they cannot afford more junk so will slip into self pity. The truth is that with no loans little Johnny could eat better and he would be happier making jam tarts with his mum than watching a drunk dad racing cars on the X-Box that the family ‘needed’. Next time that you find yourself saying that you need something just stop and check if you mean that you want it.

That’s my early morning philosophy done for today, next up the devilish train operators. I find myself on the first London departure from Derby today as I have to head South for a medical, the train departs at 04:37. Now normally this is the 05:00 departure but before Christmas they took to retiming it and running it on a diversion route. Without going into the technicalities of the diversionary paths from Derby station I will just say that the train departs in the normal direction but then stops and continues the journey in the reverse direction. I know this and so I claimed a seat at the ‘rear’ of the train facing in the ‘wrong’ direction.

My traveling companions did not seem to be aware of this twist to the journey and so they boarded the ‘front’ of the train. The train crew clearly knew as well as I do that the position of a commuter’s seat is more important than the arrival time, they ‘need’ to be at the front. So before the train sets off the train crew announce several times that the set has been retimed but will follow the timetable after Derby, no mention of the reversing move. With the doors locked and the train setting off in the ‘right’ direction tickets were checked as normal. Then comes the devilishness, an announcement that the train will shortly “come to a stand for a few minutes whilst the driver changes ends and will then continue with first class leading”. This announcement generates a stampede to join me in the ‘rear’ of the train. The thing that I found so English in this whole scenario was that following the first station stop the tickets were checked again and every one of the ‘end changers’ was greeted with “can I see your ticket please” before their flustered look elicited a “oh did you change ends”. No matter who you are in life you will always have a chance to know more than somebody else!