Regarding discussions about our main concern, I see one serious flaw. Concern neets to be plural, but can be time ordered.

The first thing that happens outside parliament is that the Local Authorities write their policies. We need to influence these over the next few months. One of the initial outcomes from Feargal Sharkey's group is an intention to pressurise Local Authorities to stress the desirability of Pubs including entertainment in their initial applications. That was one of the objectives of my draft of a few mailings ago. One aspect of that is to educate council's that the Act definitely does not favour recorded music over live music.

Sometime in the autumn it will become too late to influence the policy documentation and additional documentation going to applicants. At that stage and befor elicence applications are submitted we need to persuade premises owners to include entertainment in general and live entertainment in particular in their applications.

Richard