Wellington, March 17 NZPA - New Zealander Tim Martin says the chain of pubs he runs in Britain has paid out nearly 10 million pounds ($NZ27 million) in bonuses to its 20,000 staff over the past six months as it defies the credit crunch.

And contrary to other big businesses which have saved their big payouts for top executives, 80 percent of the windfall had gone to bar staff -- with average payouts of 500 pounds ($NZ1350).

Mr Martin -- who named his JD Wetherspoon chain of pubs after a former teacher in New Zealand who wrote on his school report that Tim would never amount to anything -- controls 720 bars in the business he established 30 years ago.

He told The Sun newspaper that rewarding frontline workers was "quite a bit fairer" than making bumper payouts for executives.

Wetherspoon profits in the half-year to January 25 rose 2 percent to 30.8m pounds on sales of 468.7m pounds.

But Mr Martin complained the British government was crippling the pub trade with tax and red tape, and that Wetherspoon generated 190m pounds worth of tax revenue over the six months -- an average of 530,000 pounds per pub annually. The after-tax profit per pub was less than a 10th of this, 50,000 pounds. "The enemy of pubs is the government," said Mr Martin. "The levels of tax now being levied are unsustainable". But Mark Brumby, analyst at Blue Oar Securities, said: "Wetherspoon is outperforming a poor market".

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