Burning of the Bails & Sky Sports

15 October 2014, 9:20 pm

Another bad day for England cricket fans. Those of us anyway who have been waiting for the sound of Soul Limbo to blast from our  terrestrial televisions in the summers of future years. The bloody ICC has awarded the rights to England cricket games to the blinking Murdochs, FOR THE NEXT EIGHT YEARS, meaning no cricket in my pub again this summer, and for many more I would expect.

In the Horse and I expect in many other rural pubs Cricket especially Test Cricket,   doesn’t draw crowds of people in. Compared with a large football match or Rugby match, when you can get a result in two hours. It is a shame, but many in our ADHD society cannot cope with a five day game.  In our case the football doesn’t draw that many in either!  However, as I see it Test Cricket on Sky in pubs is background, not a crowd drawer. People will pop in during the week (60% of the game) and check the score, some not even bothering to get a drink. Occasionally I have to feed the score to diners, but I can do that with the ECB app on my phone - which is great by the way, and free, try it, every ball can be reviewed. On weekends too, the number of people watching a game is seldom more than four, this isn’t going to pay the £18.56 a day it costs, even if they sit there from the first ball to stumps, not a thing that has happened yet. I relish the chance of containing the hordes wearing fancy dress and the 20 foot plastic glass pythons writhing around the games-room. I may even show them my renowned cricket watching / Guinness spilling trick. (Sorry, whoever you were!)

The problem I feel is that keeping cricket out of sight, locking it into the sports-mega-bars, removes it from Joe Public, and as in the nineties when satellite tv led the West Indians to become increasingly engaged in baseball, basketball and the NFL, damaging their national side. No wonder we have to have so many whinging foreigners in the side, who can blame The Big Cheese (no relation) and  Freddie Flintoff for putting the odd pig’s head in their lockers.

To add insult to this obviously injured and tortured soul, unable to get his cricket fix. Today also happened to be the day I sorted out getting the Autumn Rugby internationals on the box, and therefore had to hand over 565 quid to the incredibly rich Australian, who’s buggering up our national game. Still it will help those prima-donna footballers keep up their lifestyle, there’ll be another sports car on the streets of Wilmslow before the end of the month.

Anyway the point of this rant is just to let you all know, we’ve got the Autumn Rugby Internationals, some other sport and Darts on in the pub during November. Might see you there!

Annual Leave Entitlement with the Irregular Employee.

9 October 2014, 2:25 pm

I noticed a  big problem this week, team members who had seemed to have taken all their annual leave this year were still showing as being owed large amounts of annual leave.  This was getting worrying as it looked as though my wife and I would be covering the pub single / double-handedly for the next two months, hold on we’ve waited all year for a quite time so we can get away and remember what the kids look like. My own entitlement though was immutably sticking still. I spoke to my HR people (Peninsula) who provide this great system called HROnline for working out people’s annual leave entitlement.  However, they cannot do this if a person works split shifts, oops that cuts out half of the pub trade then.  Whereas most of my employees don’t work splits, at least five do, I don’t want to have to rum two systems to work out annual leave. They then read the law to me, so that I had all the facts at my disposal, which I took as “YOU HAVE TO SORT THIS OUT YOURSELF.â€�

My problem is produced by the split shifts, variable hour shifts and by having guaranteed hours for an employee, for example  I guarantee the person  2o hours work a week, but I will pay them the extra at busier times when they are needed to stay on. Reasons for this include to get the kitchen clean (don’t want the EHO wandering into a used kitchen during the afternoon) , or eight diners all walk in at  five to two (don’t they always), or we suddenly have a busy spurt  when I am going to do a shift on my own ( customers are always lurking in their cars until I send my assistant off shouting “no I’ll be fineâ€�).  Cleaners also invariably have one room to clean on one day, but four on another etc.  The list is endless because our job is keeping people happy, and that takes time.

The law now states that we have to pay each employee annual leave at 5.6weeks per rata a year, but at a rate that is equal to their average hours for the previous 12 weeks including overtime. Good old EU. We thus need to work out the average hours someone works in a week and then derive a multiple as to how many hours that would equate to for an average hour in a week.

For instance a member of staff works 20 hours a week, but over the last twelve weeks they have averaged 24 hours. If they then take a 2 hour lunchtime shift off they should get paid for 2.4 hours annual leave.  Easy eh!

Well don’t worry if you are lost, I spent a day and a half in front of a spreadsheet to sort it out for my business. You have to add a person’s hours, absences, sickness into the sheet and the hours they were rostered for and took holiday for, but it works it out and tells you how much leave to pay, and as far as I can tell it continues through to the end of the year so all is good. Having had a bit of trouble with sickness this year it also works out the annual Bradford Index for the person.  If you’re interested email me and I’ll send you a copy. If you want it altered though I might have to charge for my time.

Now to go and convince the team that they want to be paid “annual leave backpay� rather than all have 7 weeks off this year. Wish me luck.

Glasswasher Problems

27 March 2014, 1:05 pm

An angry Jack today, caused by a company that claims to service all brands of catering equipment. I am just glad they didn’t do my dishwasher.

Dear Sirs,

I write to inform you that I wish to cancel my contract for glass-washer maintenance with you. The reasons being as set out below.

Last November I booked and paid for a service contract with you, the engineer duly arrived in February this year.

At this time I had a reasonably well functioning glass washer, its only problem being it didn’t rinse so well. The gentleman that visited me took a long time servicing the machine, in attempt to get the wash / rinse arms to turn, he removed the whole central housing and a washer that was obviously integral to the functioning of the machine. He advised me to do this regularly to allow the arms to spin, by the end of the visit he instructed me not to do so as it caused the machine to flood, and allowed the bottom casement to detach. He left the machine with the rinse arms still not spinning particularly well. Within a day or two we noticed that the glasswasher was leaking water onto the floor. This had not occurred before the ‘service’ I called you and the operative came back. Apparently a pipe had split, he managed to fix the problem with a temporary fix, this caused the glasswasher to stop leaking. Soon after that I called out another company to look at my dish-washer, my mother, who was in the pub at the time this engineer arrived didn’t realise which machine he was to look at and showed him the glass-washer, which he serviced, descaling it, as it was very crusty, and in doing so freed the nylon washer that enables the rinse arms to turn. The glass-washer now looked pristine and rinsed the glasses properly. Oh hold on wasn’t what I had paid for the first time.

Last week the same Hobrat UK engineer returned, as the part that needed changing from his second visit had come into stock. Within two days my glass-washer was leaking again, this time blowing the electricity. Which incidentally wiped out my beer ice bank in the cellar, this took a reasonable time to rebuild and thus gave me a day of fobbing beer, and therefore waste. After much complaining I managed to get another engineer back to fix the problem.

Now my reason for wanting to cancel my contract with you is thus.

I paid you, Hobrat UK for a service, you attended, but did not do the job properly causing me to have to pay another company to finish the job. I am sure if the machine had been clean of scale and working properly the other engineer would have realised this was not the machine he needed to work on.

Immediately after the service my glasswasher started leaking. Which I reported to you, there is no doubt in my mind that this leak was caused or at least exacerbated by the part-servicing that your company carried out. You have now fixed these problems.

However I have received a bill for 19.25 hours labour and callout from you totalling £538.31. On complaining I was told that you would rebill and credit me the callout charge of £103.37. Well whoopy-doo. This I would suggest leaves me with a bill for £414.27, however I paid £148.97 for a service which I evidently did not get. I then had to pay a further £128.50 to the second company to finish the service. Amazingly they charge less and complete the job. I suggest to you, that problems I have had were directly caused by your operative in his botched attempt to free the washer arms.

In my view then I have therefore had £20.47 worth of service from you, for which I have paid £148.97, submitting this enormous bill after the trouble I have had, I think is an amazing case of bare faced cheek.

I therefore do not wish to trade with your company. You may be assured I will also let my colleagues locally know of the great service supplied by Amaze Maintenance http://www.amazemaintenance.co.uk/

Tax Parity Day 25th September 2013

18 September 2013, 1:45 pm

The White Horse Inn in Clun is backing “Tax Parity Day� on Wednesday 25th September, with a 7.5% price cut:

‘We will cut all VAT-able food and drink prices at the White Horse Inn in Clun by 7.5% for one day on Wednesday 25 September – “Tax Parity Dayâ€� – as part of the hospitality sector’s campaign to reduce VAT’.

We believe the tourism dependent economies of Shropshire would receive a massive boost, if Chancellor George Osborne was to cut the VAT for hospitality businesses. At present the VAT man takes £1 in every five spent on drinking and dining out. Every one of the 27 EU member states, except Denmark, has reduced its rate of VAT. Thirteen have a reduced rate for restaurant meals. 21 EU countries have lower VAT rates than the UK. Jack has been encouraged to join the movement by the actions of veteran campaigner Jacques Borel, the French restaurateur, who is lobbying the UK Government to slash VAT, in order to boost employment. “Pub businesses are highly labour intensive with staff costs being up to 30% of net take – if lower prices encourage more people to drink and eat in pubs, pubs would be able to give more people better paid jobs, reducing unemployment and adding wealth to our local economy.�

For more information http://www.vatclubjacquesborel.co.uk/index.html

Carpet

14 June 2013, 5:03 pm

Arranged today. The pub will be closed up until 5.00pm on Tuesday the 2nd of July to change the bar carpet. It’s been a long time coming.

Castle Connect Bus

22 May 2013, 3:02 pm

Just a reminder about the fantastic new Castle Connect Shuttle. This bus will run every weekend until the 29th September 2013. From Ludlow – Bromfield – Leintwardine – Brampton Bryan – Bucknell - Knighton – Clun – Bishop’s Castle.

Whether you are into walking, shopping, castles or country pubs, this route has it all and more!

• Castle Connect route map
• Castle Connect timetable 2013
• Castle Connect Leaflet

Putting our employees first

22 May 2013, 12:33 pm

We find that in this trade, a common theme is regular staff turn around. Living in a close community, we like to give opportunities to most people who walk in our doors looking for a job. We get university students looking for short term work upon their visits home, local friends who need an extra income, and a range of other familiar faces.

However, despite quick staff turn around, we never take them for granted! As far as we’re concerned, whilst they work on our premises, we intend to keep them as safe as possible. For this reason, we train our employees with a local health and safety training company, ETD Training.

Let’s face it, the potential for an accident is always possible, but we intend to keep that to a minimum. For this reason, year on year, and for every new employee, we train them in the basics of Manual Handling, and Fire Prevention.

Manual Handling Training

Don’t get the wrong idea of an Inn it’s not all about just pulling pints you know. Someone has to help unload those delivery lorries and then move barrels in the cellar. (We also have to bring you that delicious food you’ve ordered). We know that once your spine gets damaged, it can affect you for life, so manual handling is always a fundamental course for our staff. Click here to find out more about their training.

Fire Safety and Prevention

This course speaks for itself. Fires can be hazardous things and in our eyes, even though the concept of one is unlikely on our premises, I intend to make absolutely sure that not one of my employee’s gets left behind.

Summary

Yes, it is my full intention to be compliant with the law in Manual Handling and Fire Safety Training; but it’s just as important to us that our employees work in a safe and secure environment at the White Horse Inn.

Poker League Results

2 January 2013, 3:59 pm

The current poker league season finished on Sunday.  Here are the final placings, I’m afraid they won’t be put up in the pub as I haven’t got a working printer at the moment.

Final Rankings at the White Horse Inn (Clun)

Final leaderboard positions for the White Horse Inn are below:

Pos       Name        Games Played      Points

1   Steve ‘Watters’ Watkins 12 1220

2  Chris Bodenham 12 905

3 Sandra Hughes 12 715

4 Steve Briscoe 5 520

5 Ray ‘Slowhand’ Deer 9 490

6 Luke ‘Lucky’ Hester 7 481

7 David Bradbury 9 438

8 Micky Gerrard 6 428

9 Andy Hockly 3 205

10 Ed ‘"Ache"’ Hullah 4 172

11 Ian ‘Chav’ Dudley 2 98

12 Russell ‘Catflap’ Cole 2 75

13 Matt ‘The Badge’ Bird 1 28

14 Darren ‘The Chauffeur’ Lewis 1 10

Steve’s currently on his 6th season win, I think. Not bad, but surely there’s someone who can take him on for the winners spot next season.

Next season starts on Sunday 6th Jan at 3.00pm, don’t forget to take down your deccies down first.

Continuation of the Pool Room

24 November 2012, 1:27 pm

The Pool room has continued to be worked on all this week. We now have progreessed from , joisting which I helped with.

Through to boarding out.

Pete Edwards then came in on Friday 17th and plastered out the room in one day.

Work this week has been mainly on decoration and Steve now without Sam his son has been doing panelling and shelving.

On Friday Ben Harvey came in and gave us a coat of paint.

This morning Matt Tortoriello and Ben Parry arrived to install plugs and the projector.

Not a bad big screen, eh?

Update on the Asbestos Removal

12 November 2012, 4:45 pm

Well CES from Shrewsbury have now left with all my asbestos.

The ceiling is coming down quickly. With Sam and Steve going on full steam ahead I might have to tap some Butty Bach soon.