The Guv'nor: Kevin Maidens

Why stop at Alistair? Let's ban the lot of 'em, says the licensee of the Blue Bell, Bolsover, Derbyshire

Banning Alistair Darling from 200-plus pubs around Britain — as the campaign has achieved after the appalling increases in duty at last month's Budget — will have no effect at all.

I doubt whether a visit to his local even rates in the top 200 of his must-do's on his way home from work or at the weekends. We have, rightly or wrongly, kicked out the smokers and are now well on the way to kicking out the drinkers.

Before long we will be meeting in the aisles of Tesco for a natter with the lads about the weekend's game and queuing at the five-items-or-less till with our boxes of cheap booze. The pubs that survive will be gourmet venues and trendy coffee bars.

Let's get real. We as an industry are bound by one common link, our inability to stick together in times of crisis. While we still have the opportunity, why don't we, for once, make a stand together against the unfair treatment we — the licensees, brewers and landlords — have been subjected to?

Banning one person has achieved nothing, so let's ban the lot.

Let's start a campaign to ban every MP from every pub in Britain until they sit down and discuss what we, the great unwashed public, already know. As an industry, we are not selling cheap booze in bulk to fuel yobbish behaviour on the streets.

When someone in your pub has had enough — not that they can afford to have enough these days — you send them home.

Someone can walk into a supermarket or off-licence and, providing they can pay for it, they can take away enough booze to put a herd of rampaging elephants into an alcohol-induced coma.

Please take note, any MPs who are reading this: kids don't get drunk in pubs like the rest of us — they can't afford to. They buy cheap booze from the supermarket and consume it before going out, thus presenting us with their problem.

The supermarkets have said BOGOF (buy one get one free) to the Chancellor's Budget and so the gap widens.

This might sound like the rant of a disillusioned Victor Meldrew impersonator, but, believe me, I am serious.

Let's get this campaign off the ground and force that load of renowned, beer-swilling honourables to discuss the problem and come to the conclusion that we, as an industry, already know: the best environment in which to sell alcohol is the pub.