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Nice to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer had time to knock of a p

Won't Lloyds require a valuation before they make a loan for the remainder of the funds required?

Hat's off to Ian and all who working so hard to enable the transition of the Bell to a cooperative share scheme. Too much gastro is one of the reasons for the ill wind.

Nice hat.

The "sharks" swimming around obviously think it is too pricey otherwise Ian would have sold it them by now. He said himself as soon as he got an acceptable offer he would sell and that he was not waiting especially for the co-op to form in order to sell to us.

That is not correct, Alan. I meant what I said about the altruism of Ian's generous offer of time to get the whole thing together, and I happen to know that - if he said anything like that - it was purely in order to kick everyone into action, for understandable reasons. As far as I am aware, what he did say was that he was not going to wait forever, having made the decision to sell.

There is nothing like a crisis with a time-limit attached to focus most people. I am sure he turned down quite a few offers from very reasonable buyers, long after the initial decision to not sell to large corporations. Give the man some respect and credit for his actions.

I'm grateful that Ian was prepared to wait for a community buy out - I'm sure there were other offers in the wind.

There certainly must have been, Marty. Anyone who has run two successful pubs and another successful club over that many years is by no means unaware of all the possibilities in the sale of a single one of them. What didn't he do which he could have done? Pull the rug from under everyone's feet without notice.