The Idle Lord Brings his Blog to ‘Trumpit’ Readers, (With no apologies to sensitive ears)
Sport England’s CEO Jennie Price, recently announced its four-year funding programme for grass roots sport; the headline grabbing news was that almighty football was losing £1.6m of it’s £30m slug because of a reduction of some 100,000 participants over the last six months.
Apr 2012-Apr 2013 Oct 2012-Oct 2013
Source: Sport England’s Active People Survey – Participants
Swimming 2.88m - 2.93m
Athletics 1.95m - 2.02m
Cycling 1.86m - 2.00m
Football 1.94m - 1.84m
Golf 771,000 - 751,000
Tennis 423,400 - 400,600
Squash 257,100 - 240,700
Rugby Union 166,000 - 159,600
Boxing 149,700 - 154,800
Cricket 189,000 - 148,300
A glance at the table above suggests few sports are in rude health and remember this quote from Sport England’s Annual Report from Price herself.
“In December 2012 we published results showing that 15.5 million people play sport, once a week, every week. This is the highest ever figure, over 1.5 million more than in 2005 when London won the bid to host the Games…”
The only sport showing real growth is cycling which is largely because people cannot afford petrol; dodging buses and cars to work does not count as sport!
The quango also claimed that the £1.6m would still be directed to football but funding a new project, in other words more twee ideas from people who just do not have a clue.
If football, the most accessible and popular of all sports kids play today, is losing numbers what does that say about our approach to sport and any Olympic legacy? Well actually it says just what we all knew; it was and is a total load of bollocks.
Thank you for the money?
Of course, football is awash with cash at the top level.
For example, Wayne Rooney earns from Manchester United alone, over £15m a year; yet the grass roots struggle on with a disinterested elite and a pointless quango doling out cash on useless surveys.
Just to prove how in touch with real grass roots they really are, Price, interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme, claimed that the grass roots was struggling “…because up North on muddy pitches…”.
This is typical of the insulated arrogance that dominates these pitiful quangos with their ivory towers funded by you and I.
For Price’s salary alone you could employ half a dozen PE teachers and that would be a good use of public funds for a starter.
And here’s a thought. As most grass roots clubs are dying through lack of funds with charges to use council slag heaps going through the roof how about this?
According to Deloitte’s Sports Business Unit, the average Premier League player earns £30,000 a week. There are 18 Premier League Clubs and each squad has 25 players at least.
If the FA had any balls, introducing a scheme where a player donated one week’s salary to grass roots annually would generate £13.5m. We could then sack Price and her cronies and save a fortune.
Debts No Honest Man Can Pay – Part 2
There was a very interesting piece in Private Eye (1362) on the continuing saga of the slow but inevitable de-railing of the Punch Taverns Gravy Train. Regular readers will know I am no fan of these faceless, corporate blood suckers and nor is the Eye.
Punch is known as a “Zombie” company; although generating cash, typically, these only have enough funds left to pay off the huge interest on their debts, but not the debt itself. So they are, in effect, the walking dead.
When did Maths teachers ever look like this?
So here’s a crude bit of arithmetic; the current debt aligned to the leased pub estate tots up at around £575,000 per pub. Fine perhaps if all these are in central London selling champagne.
Part of their bold plan, according to the Eye “is to raise £100m through selling 1,100 pubs designated “non-core” – corporate bullshit meaning we cant make enough money here as these are shit-holes even though we paid a fortune for them.
So, selling over 25% of the estate will reduce debts by some 4%! Brilliant!
And the debt to pub figure goes to circa £760,000. More brilliance!
Punch resemble a Third World dictator, rumbled at long last by the people, now using the last few days to gather what they can before making off into the sunset with the dry roasted nuts in the corporate helicopter.
All smiles for the cameras…even if nothing changes
(Picture from CAMRA – Campaign for Real Ale)
Unregulated, unchecked and unashamed this is corporate greed at its naked worst. As for Vince Cable, Business Secretary, his response has been pitiful with threats as flat as a pint of three day old lager.
Here We Go…Again
The smell of cut-grass – the club cricketers’ marijuana – can only mean one thing. Gear is being dusted down, wives are being placated and dreams of impossible glories crowd heads up and down the land. On a doubtlessly freezing cold night we will soon all assemble again for another summer of attempting to preserve the great game of cricket for future generations so that Sport England can keep doing surveys; junior training is back again. Footballs will be put aside for the time being and skills that have been ignored for decades in schools up and down the country will be demonstrated by old lags, not long for this world, as we part kids from various devices. Volunteering glues together so much of our changing society and yet we few struggle on under expectant gazes of those that could and should help more. We don’t need surveys we need bodies. We do it because we care and because we value this part of life. So we hope that the cakes are fluffy and the tea is warm come closing time on practice night and that the kids have not pushed us one step further to assisted dementia.
The Idle Lord Brings his Blog to ‘Trumpit’ Readers, (With no apologies to sensitive ears)
Sport England’s CEO Jennie Price, recently announced its four-year funding programme for grass roots sport; the headline grabbing news was that almighty football was losing £1.6m of it’s £30m slug because of a reduction of some 100,000 participants over the last six months.
Apr 2012-Apr 2013 Oct 2012-Oct 2013
Source: Sport England’s Active People Survey – Participants
Swimming 2.88m - 2.93m
Athletics 1.95m - 2.02m
Cycling 1.86m - 2.00m
Football 1.94m - 1.84m
Golf 771,000 - 751,000
Tennis 423,400 - 400,600
Squash 257,100 - 240,700
Rugby Union 166,000 - 159,600
Boxing 149,700 - 154,800
Cricket 189,000 - 148,300
A glance at the table above suggests few sports are in rude health and remember this quote from Sport England’s Annual Report from Price herself.
“In December 2012 we published results showing that 15.5 million people play sport, once a week, every week. This is the highest ever figure, over 1.5 million more than in 2005 when London won the bid to host the Games…”
The only sport showing real growth is cycling which is largely because people cannot afford petrol; dodging buses and cars to work does not count as sport!
The quango also claimed that the £1.6m would still be directed to football but funding a new project, in other words more twee ideas from people who just do not have a clue.
If football, the most accessible and popular of all sports kids play today, is losing numbers what does that say about our approach to sport and any Olympic legacy? Well actually it says just what we all knew; it was and is a total load of bollocks.
Thank you for the money?
Of course, football is awash with cash at the top level.
For example, Wayne Rooney earns from Manchester United alone, over £15m a year; yet the grass roots struggle on with a disinterested elite and a pointless quango doling out cash on useless surveys.
Just to prove how in touch with real grass roots they really are, Price, interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme, claimed that the grass roots was struggling “…because up North on muddy pitches…”.
This is typical of the insulated arrogance that dominates these pitiful quangos with their ivory towers funded by you and I.
For Price’s salary alone you could employ half a dozen PE teachers and that would be a good use of public funds for a starter.
And here’s a thought. As most grass roots clubs are dying through lack of funds with charges to use council slag heaps going through the roof how about this?
According to Deloitte’s Sports Business Unit, the average Premier League player earns £30,000 a week. There are 18 Premier League Clubs and each squad has 25 players at least.
If the FA had any balls, introducing a scheme where a player donated one week’s salary to grass roots annually would generate £13.5m. We could then sack Price and her cronies and save a fortune.
Debts No Honest Man Can Pay – Part 2
There was a very interesting piece in Private Eye (1362) on the continuing saga of the slow but inevitable de-railing of the Punch Taverns Gravy Train. Regular readers will know I am no fan of these faceless, corporate blood suckers and nor is the Eye.
Punch is known as a “Zombie” company; although generating cash, typically, these only have enough funds left to pay off the huge interest on their debts, but not the debt itself. So they are, in effect, the walking dead.
When did Maths teachers ever look like this?
So here’s a crude bit of arithmetic; the current debt aligned to the leased pub estate tots up at around £575,000 per pub. Fine perhaps if all these are in central London selling champagne.
Part of their bold plan, according to the Eye “is to raise £100m through selling 1,100 pubs designated “non-core” – corporate bullshit meaning we cant make enough money here as these are shit-holes even though we paid a fortune for them.
So, selling over 25% of the estate will reduce debts by some 4%! Brilliant!
And the debt to pub figure goes to circa £760,000. More brilliance!
Punch resemble a Third World dictator, rumbled at long last by the people, now using the last few days to gather what they can before making off into the sunset with the dry roasted nuts in the corporate helicopter.
All smiles for the cameras…even if nothing changes
(Picture from CAMRA – Campaign for Real Ale)
Unregulated, unchecked and unashamed this is corporate greed at its naked worst. As for Vince Cable, Business Secretary, his response has been pitiful with threats as flat as a pint of three day old lager.
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