'Rent boycott licensee awaits bailiffs'

A Merseyside landlady has joined a national boycott of two leading pub companies over rent and beer prices. Angela Bennett, who runs The Brooke Hotel, in Crosby, is facing a visit from the bailiffs tomorrow (Monday) after refusing to pay for £9,500-worth of beer and rent owing to Enterprise Inns. The 42-year-old joined an internet campaign called Pub Revolution, set up to boycott Enterprise and Punch Taverns over the cost of beer. Ms Bennett is refusing to pay her £8,100-a-month rent and the prices Enterprise charges for beer. She now expects bailiffs to strip her pub of fixtures and fittings, effectively closing her down. - Liverpool Echo​

A drinker chopped down a giant tree with a chainsaw to stop it blocking the sun in his favourite beer garden. Forestry worker Sean Hutchison woke sleeping residents when he hacked down the tree at 4am. The incident initially left the residents of the Perthshire village of Birnam - famed for being the home of the last oak in Shakespeare's Macbeth - completely baffled. But it emerged Hutchison, of Dunkeld, had targeted the giant tree because the leaves and branches stopped the sun shining on the walled beer garden at the Merryburn Hotel. - Glasgow Sunday Mail​

A legal dispute over proceeds from the £1.6bn sale of convenience store chain Somerfield, once part-controlled by Robert Tchenguiz, has taken another twist. A company controlled by Vivian Imerman, the investment tycoon's former brother-in-law, has filed a lawsuit claiming it is owed millions of pounds from the deal. Imerman is behind a lawsuit against Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which had provided loan financing for part of Tchenguiz's investment in Somerfield four years ago. As the Icelandic bank failed last October, Tchenguiz was unable to meet a demand to repay a £645m overdraft facility and forfeited substantial stakes in Sainsbury and pub group Mitchells & Butlers. - Observer​