'Rent strike could cost pubcos £50m in first 3 months'

"An organisation calling itself the Pub Revolutionary Group run by a Punch Taverns' licensee from Southampton and which claims to represent 2,000 publicans said they would start their rent strike within the next few weeks and that it would cost the companies £50m in the first three months. The pub companies have dismissed any threat of action as 'irrelevant' and say any licensee who refuses to pay rent will be in breach of contract and could end up losing their pub. In the event of legal action, money owed would be paid on the day before any court case, the group's founder said." - Mail on Sunday​

"We have a problem. Little is being done about it: the government seems frozen in indecision and pride, unable to accept reality. The Tories propose a weird, class-conscious clampdown, but only on what they consider "the drinks that fuel anti-social behaviour". Most inexplicably, the Prime Minister has ruled out one of the most creative and classless suggestions: that there should be a universal minimum price per unit of alcohol. It would be a start. It would not be class-conscious, not a stealth tax: just a disincentive to those who push stronger and stronger drinks at us, replacing taste and pleasure with cheap intoxication. But the government won't even consider it. Why?" - Libby Purvis, writing in the Sunday Telegraph​

"US police arrested a man for driving - and crashing - a converted armchair while drunk. Officers said Dennis Anderson, who injured his leg in the incident when he piled his 20mph lawnmower engine-powered chair into a parked car, was 'clearly intoxicated' and had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. This week, a year after the crash, he has been handed a 180-day suspended jail sentence and a £1,200 fine. As it was his second drink-drive incident, the armchair was confiscated and has been set aside for a police auction." - Daily Mail​

"I've lost count of the times a pregnant woman has told me her GP recommended Guinness for its iron content. Let's set the record straight. You'd need to drink three pints of Guinness to provide the same amount of iron as a single egg yolk (1.1mg), and alcohol is not good for babies. A pint of Guinness contains 0.3mg of iron, less than three per cent of daily adult needs. Put another way, you'd need to drink 15 pints of Guinness to get the same amount of iron as two Weetabix." - Catherine Collins, principal dietician at St George's Hospital, London, writing in the Daily Mail​