You do misunderstand, pooling tips ensures those who work just as hard back of house get a proportion of the tips.

... and, in others, not.
For example, in 2008, Carluccio's were still using tips to actually top up their staff wages to the minimum wage ... and it was legal !
Whether that has now changed, either at Carluccio's or in law, I don't know, but I seriously doubt it.

Service charges ... there is no universal use of where that money goes and in many (most?) cases it is just a boost to the bill and profits ... and, as you can't go fetch your meal from the kitchen yourself, it's just a shifty Ryanair-style trick in restaurants, if you will.

All tips are supposedly taxable but it must involve guesswork on the part of HMRC to decide just how much is taken in tax.

As long as tipping persists there will be employers who exploit it.
Again, to be fair, surely it's much better and simpler to pay a proper wage.

It was outlawed – rlbecame law in 2009rl.

I once had a huge argument with a restaurant in Chester (and was asked to leave ) for refusing to pay the "service charge" element of the bill. The bill without the service charge was £220 and they had added 12% on (£26.40) which I told them I wasn't paying. We had been served by 2 young girls who had done a good job so I gave them each £20 in cash as a tip. The restaurant owner still insisted that I had to pay his service charge on top of that, which I told him was nonsense and there is no legal obligation to pay a service charge on any bill. Restaurants trick many customers by implying that the service charge is something they are obliged to pay when there is no legal basis for it.

Fair enough (and thanks for that, I hadn't realised) but it doesn't affect my point about how they should get a fair wage anyway.
If I buy a shirt at M&S the service I get is determined by a system and is not reflected by tipping, so why should it be like that in a restaurant?

My present potted theory is that, in 2013, they really don't actually care whether people vote for them or not, they must know with certainty that they have zero chance of being re-elected yet are doing nothing about it. Instead they seem to be hell-bent on offering protection, advantages and doing cosy deals with big business, carry on as usual with banks, line the pockets of the big insurers, crack on with more crazy PFI schems and "outsourcing", hell they even talk about privatising the courts and the borders etc. Maybe some of them will do rather well out of it with non-exec directorships etc in the near future. Maybe some already have.

As I mentioned the other day, 206 of 'our' Parliamentarians have recent or current private financial interests in private healthcare. They got to vote on privatising the NHS.

And that's just one subject.

Thing is with TripAdvisor, you can see straight through the stupid-trivial-complaint-blown-up-into-a-major-incident-stuff and the over-the-top-friend-of-the-owner doing-a-favour stuff.
You get to able to judge from it anyway.
If a place gets nothing but complaints, there's got to be a reason.
If an American liked the service and says so on TripAdvisor, wow, it's got to be top-notch.

As my work has taken me all over the place over the years and as my indulgences have also been travel and eating-out, I have contributed to TripAdvisor (fairly, I like to think) about hotels and restaurants, usually on either end of the satisfaction scale ... I mean what's the point posting about Pizza Express for example, doesn't everyone already know it's acceptably bland but out-competed by Zizzi?

I once started a TA review of a Travel Lodge in Birmingham with "I must have stayed at a different place to everyone who has already reviewed this place" because I found it perfectly acceptable in line with the Travel Lodge business model.

All of the reviews that preceded mine were having a right old go at it and rating it one star, in a perverse way I was looking forward to staying there just to see how bad it was, but it was fine, as a Travel Lodge it was exactly what it said on the tin.

Strange enough, every review that followed mine then said "Yeah I thought it was ok too..."

I'm surprised this lot haven't repealed that one already.They could always throw in the staff meals as remuneration too, so if they take a meal during their duty, the restaurant could dock them the £60 or so it would usually charge a punter

I've done similar ... and also the opposite, for places that preceding reviewers seemed to have thought that, because it was sy and they paid a lot, it must have been excellent.
If I pay a lot, I expect highly.
If I pay a little, I expect accordingly.