Kevin Foster - Stadium plans.

My Darling Stefano...what a lovely post. 

I don't think I was 'slagging off'  the other site, I merely stated that I felt sorry for one (or is it four) of its posters! 

That flo...pete f...and aussie! They're a bunch of wrong-uns...I tell you!

I am registered over there...ever wondered why they're the only TUFC site where you have to register to even look at it! I could tell you....but not today!

Being registered over there I have seen some great posters...sadly, I reiterate, the amount of great posters who have left because they disagreed with Merse and were  then verbally attacked by you know who must be immense...there might have been 8000 on there if Merse had been nicer!

So there you have it...do you really want to be on the  Dark Side! Stay in the light...think of all your children...grand children...great grand children...great great.....

Steve I can't go over to the dark side as I have been banned for years, I was an original member of that site when it first opened, had a disagreement followed by a Barney with his highness and have been banned ever since.

I must admit, I found the claim that almost one in five of the respondents were expressing a desire to live near a sports and concert stadium rather than Nightingale Park in it's current state, scarcely credible. The noise and ten thousand people using your front garden as a toilet once those big concerts are being held, the traffic congestion for every home game and fast food wrappers blowing up to your front door.....you have to wonder how representative this figure actually is, and how telling it is that Riviera Macron conceals the actual numbers of replies we're dealing with here. Actually let's hope it's not many as it does seem an incredible waste of Freepost envelopes when almost all evidence there's ever been is that the only good thing about living near a stadium is that you can buy a house cheaper due to the negatives such as light pollution etc and the many other frequently acknowledged downsides.

Yet Riviera Macron appears to have tracked down a most unusual 18% who would actually welcome the value of their property being depressed. It does sound as though he has plans for further meddling in Local Authority affairs, although his findings do seem to boost the case for Nightingale being the best venue. Nowhere else would 18% of respondents reply 'Yes please, bring it on' when offered the chance to have teenagers puking up over their garden wall every Summer's evening when there's been a concert held.

Although Riviera Macron wins the prize for most pointless survey question asked, that 18% figure looks suspiciously high. Maybe some people deliberately just answered 'Yes' to p*ss him off, just because it is so abundantly clear that he wanted it to be all 'No's'. Riviera Macron is now so closely associated with TUST that I'm sure the Nightingale residents don't view him as being in the slightest impartial and his opinion already cut and dried....and on that basis were the majority of his surveys put straight in the litter bin ? or was RM trying to generate more landfill waste so that he could argue that Nightingale Park needs to be expanded as a rubbish tip, and hence not an Events Stadium. Some transparency by divulging the number of surveys sent out and the number so far returned would have been useful......giving us some clue whether that 18% represents 6 replies or 60.

'Very interesting' perhaps, but so full of inaccuracies and sufficiently misleading that Hull City Supporters Trust appear to have been forced to correct, or as they prefer to term it 'clarify' the tosh they'd put out only the day before. It appears that HCST members were rather shocked to learn that the supporters group was part of a consortium bidding for ownership of the club.

The HCST have had to row back on their outlandish claims, and less than 24 hours later, put something out to the media that more closely resembles the truth of the situation. The latest HCST statement sees them admitting that those bidding for what they believe Hull City F.C is worth, will not be including any cash from the Trust piggy bank, or including Trust in the negotiations: “The meetings and negotiations with the Allam family will be led wholly by SportyCo and their representatives, and only when any deal reaches an agreement between both parties will the opportunities for supporter investment materialise. HCST have not used any funds as part of the process to date, nor have we been asked  to"

No doubt in response to Hull Trust members demanding to know why they'd been kept in the dark, the decision was made to climb down and divulge the truth of the situation. Taking another look at today's Trust press release, as opposed to Monday's 'very interesting' BBC article, we read HCST and SportyCo have done little more than: 'discussed a model that could result in an opportunity for Hull City supporters to invest in the Club to generate funds and an element of fan ownership'.

However Rob's question: 'Perhaps joint consortia such as the one at Hull will become a more regular occurrence over the next few years?'  does have more merit, as the initial idea of Supporters Trusts buying up shares and taking total control seems to have been put to bed for good. It's been tried too many times and been found severely wanting. Well intentioned perhaps, but a faulty collectivist model that's shortcomings soon make themselves apparent. A perceptive former Torquay United CEO pointed this out to fans some years back.....but there still remain those who would wish to learn that painful lesson the hard way.  The first step might be working hard to make sure your club is no longer 100% under Trust control, but how much better if you can avoid such Trust control from befalling your club in the first place ? 

Currently it's the supporters of Newport County attempting to free their club from the yoke of Trust ownership.  Voting to ditch full Trust ownership and bring some proper commercial thinking and ownership on board. Only a measly 13.67% expressing a desire to retain the existing Trust ownership model link - Sense At Last At Newport ?


What Rob foresees as a possibility, would at least be the first steps back to sanity for Trust owned clubs. It seems clear that clubs that embrace the full blown Socialist model can survive or even make slight progress for a couple of years, when doctrinaire fervour drives on the more committed revolutionaries. But whether it's a small football club or Venezuela, the Socialist dream then starts to come apart at the seams, and business reality has to be faced. While diligently doing my Trust research last month, I came upon the sad tale of F.C United. A club still to a large extent trying to close it's eyes to the failing situation that Leninist ideals is bringing about. When compared to the more enlightened thinking guiding Salford City, the approach at F.C United indicates that the revolution shows every indication of ending in tears link- F.C United And it's Bleak Socialist Future

Fans at clubs such as Newport are fighting hard to get Trust control and influence greatly reduced. Whereas at Hull City the situation is less clear, and it looks as if it may well be a false alarm that Trust has any serious chance of being Consortium partners there. We had a temporary fright at our club, but thankfully it ended in farce as the Pre share offer crashed and burned in spectacular style. The Trust movement nationally is always scheming and plotting, and I'm sure TFF members appreciate learning what they're up to, whether it be in Hull or nearer to home, so thanks to Rob for this latest alert.

Thanks Rob - nice to see some informative posts!

link - I see there is opposition to the Stadium plans already; not that it has ever really got off the ground in the first place.

rjdgull 

Already ?     Some would suggest that Lib/Macron/Trust  has been a fairly blatant opposition alliance for some considerable time. But I wonder whether the Liberals are already quick off the mark, or have in fact deliberately dragged their heels ? It's probably something that you Torbay locals would know rather than those of us from farther afield. 

Observing how The Democrats sat on the Blasey Ford accusations for months, only putting them on the table to cause maximum disruption and publicity just before Kavanaugh's Senate appearances, I do have to ask whether the Liberals had any chance to object to Nightingale Park not being in whatever 'Master Plan' or 'Local Plan' they wish to see it in before now ? When were these plans produced, when was it known what categorisation Nightingale Park did or did not have ? I'm a little sceptical as to whether the first chance to request a change of categorisation has only now fallen just the month before the planning application for the Osborne Arena is expected to be submitted.

It says they 'want the council to ask the elected mayor to consider an objection to the Corporate Assets Master Plan'. Given the time and expense that would have gone into the Mayor's Riviera presentation on the scheme for a multi use stadium, and the considerable ongoing work that various Council affiliated agencies have been involved in, you'd imagine the Mayor would take a dim view if people had the opportunity to make such representations much earlier but deliberately held back.

Not knowing the ins and outs of the Torbay local government scene, there could well be a perfectly good reason why the Liberals could not ask the council to lodge this objection before now.This could well prove to be a baseless fuss. You also wonder whether Devon Live have put their most disinterested and impartial reporter onto this, as Edward 'when not practising bass guitar he's often out walking his dog along the coast and wild places of south Devon' Oldfield appears to be a self confessed 'Tree Hugger', much more likely to prefer Nightingale Park as a soggy bit of rough land, than home to the gleaming state of the art Osborne Arena.`

Best to treat this with a pinch of salt for the time being, remembering that while the Liberals are all wind and p*ss at national level, they're unlikely to be much different locally. Nothing substantial enough to cause Gary Johnson to walk out of Torquay in protest at the lack of ambition, or for Clarke Osborne to lose any sleep. That said, we're all probably aware who has been talking to who, and just who are absolutely desperate to stop the move to Nightingale Park, and could be urging ever political trick in the book to block it (hence their cosying up to councillors and Riviera Macron) and then wondering why they seem to be getting short shrift from Clarke Osborne.

Quite how a particular self styled 'Fans Representatives' organisation ever imagined that so blatantly trying to run with the hare while at the same time being seen to hunt with the hounds had the slightest chance of being feasible would take some fathoming. Nothing of substance so far achieved by these Liberals to hold up our new stadium plans, but the opponents of progress won't give up just because they stumble at the first hurdle. The Militants have been digging in for a long political battle. Their cause is inextricably linked with preventing the move, and they see the political arena as the place where others can win the fight for them. If the Militants do succeed then the collateral damage will be enormous. I sincerely hope that the Liberals are aware of that.