But how? Surely this is impossible?

A Kent pub is reopening for business after villagers gave it a facelift in just one week to prevent its closure.

I wonder what help they had?

More than 100 residents donated their time and money to refurbish the pub.

What? No grants, no loans from the council, nothing like that?

They were encouraged to take action by resident Eileen Dickinson.

But how did Eileen Dickinson manage to do this? Surely this sort of thing can only be done a council employed community cohesion officer or a fourth sector volunteer coordination manager or something?

She said: "I've lived here for 20 years, and in that 20 years I've seen seven businesses disappear, and I wasn't prepared to sit back and let this happen again."

She added she decided to muster up as much support as possible, and 120 people came forward.

I'm amazed the BBC has covered this story. This is an example of people getting together, off their own bat, identifying a problem and then setting out to solve it.

No doubt that if the council had become involved, there would have been conditions attached, the whole thing would have taken six months as everyone involved would probably have had to have been CRB checked, in case anyone brought their kids along to do a spot of painting, and then they would probably have had to have sourced their materials from a preferred supplier at four times the market cost. At the last moment the plug would have pulled, or their licence revoked as it would probably have been offensive to Muslims, too near a school, not had a lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-gender engagement policy, or something else.

This will never do.

I wish them and their pub well.