Licensee's fury at Mail

over booze laws letter

by Ewan Turney

An irate licensee has lambasted the Daily Mail for censoring part of a letter criticising its coverage of the pub trade.

In his letter, Alan Piper said that the majority of licensees had never wanted changes to the licensing laws.

However, he says the paper cut out direct criticism of itself before it was published on 6 September.

'They edited so much out of it that it lost focus on the original target, which was the paper's constant criticism of the trade and the assumption that we are all going to make a killing from the Act, said Piper, of the Sun pub in Coniston, Cumbria.

Although 'flattered the paper published his letter along with a photo, Piper was angry that other elements were removed detailing the 'Byzantine com-plexities of the Act, such as the unfairness of basing fees on rateable values.

Also removed were references apportioning blame to super-markets planning to sell drink 24 hours a day at half the price of pubs.

In a follow-up letter to the Mail, which was never published, he said: 'Part of the reason for writing was to say to you the Mail that your campaign against the trade profiting from this fiasco is off-target.

'Instead of beating up the trade why aren't you lampooning the Government?

'To a cynic, it begs the question why would you choose to remove references to super-markets while in the same paper criticising the BBC for not standing up to the Government. You don't happen to have a lot of Tesco shares by any chance?