Madam, – I appreciate that opinion pieces are not required to be either objective or factually accurate, but to allow Bill Nowlan to publish two consecutive pieces containing blatant bias is doing your paper a disservice (Commercial Property, February 16th and 23rd).
His comments, spurious facts and statistics are extremely unhelpful and do not accurately reflect the current state of the marketplace. Mr Nowlan states that any solution “should not interfere with the well tried and tested procedures and market practice”. He is quite happy for landlords to ignore tenants and let them go to the wall; to hell with those of us involved in “hairdressing and similar businesses”! The article contains lazy stereotyping and retrograde, outdated thinking. It is the continuing acquiescence of government and the pandering to vested interests such as faceless pension trusts and institutional investors and their advisers that has led to the need for the next government to redress the balance through the introduction of legislation.
Please can you show some objectivity and balance when allowing interested parties to comment on matters of such huge importance?
The issue of unfair and disproportionate rents and the unwillingness of landlords to listen to the problem affects thousands of people reliant on the retail sector for their employment. I didn’t read of any landlords or their agents complaining that the system was unfair when it resulted in rises of in the region of 400 per cent over the last 15 years, while retail sales lagged far behind in proportion.
It’s only now that the balance is being redressed that we hear them crying for “fairness”. That’s a bit rich! – Yours, etc,