Saturday, 9 August 2014

SISU, sports and wasted public dosh



9 August

Coventry City supporters may well be thinking that at long last they are being proved to have been right in their condemnation of the clubs owners SISU. The FA has stepped in and ordered SISU to pay ACL Ltd, the owners of the Ricoh Arena over £400K in rent arrears. There is still a lot more arrears to pay though. Now SISU say they are ready to talk to ACL about a return to the Ricoh. However, considering that they have lost every action they’ve tried to wriggle out of paying up, I fail to see how they can return without losing even more face than they already have. It would be interesting to find out just how much all this has cost them and the ACL over the years it’s taken to sort this out. I’m sure it would have been a lot cheaper to have paid up in the first place.

ACL is partly owned by Coventry City Council, so some of the rent owed to ACL is needed by the council to help fund services. Only this last week the council has closed the 50m pool in the city centre because it can’t afford to keep it open; nor can it afford to build a new one. Perhaps the rent owed to them by SISU might have helped to keep it open. A 50m pool of course is a large pool; it’s an Olympic sized pool and there are few of them available within the UK as it is. There isn’t one another one within our region. Then the public asks why so many athletes move aboard to keep up their training.

Such short sightedness by councils is a national issue really, and one now restricted just to sports venues. How many useless pieces of public art have you seen locally? Dorktown has had quite a few over the years. There was the huge white concrete heron that stood over the entrance to the Heronway shopping arcade in the town centre. That is now flat on its back in the council yard waiting for someone to come up with an idea where to use it. It was removed when the arcade was sold and renamed the Abbeygate.

Then there was statue of two naked wrestlers that was in Bond Gate. One of the wrestlers had his delicate bits removed (yes, sounds painful,) so often that the council removed it after several years and repeated repairs. Last I heard was that it was sitting in their yard too, but as a pile of rubble this time because they couldn’t remove it in one piece.

I’m sure you will have heard of Billy Pointywobblystick from Strafford. But have you ever heard of Izaak Walton? No; well, I’m not surprised really but if you are an angler you may well have heard of him. He was born in 1598 and went on to write a book called The Complete Angler in Strafford as well. Are you be any chance old enough to remember all the fuss n bovver over Brighton opening Britain’s first nudist beach in 1979? The big fear at the time was of creating depravity.

Over the years I have fancied many different cars and could never afford them. Here’s another one I fancied … 

A Ford Zephier 6. This is the first one I’ve seen in years. Perhaps it was the old telly show called Z Cars was behind my fancy at the time. Yes I know, I’m showing my age again.

Today’s funny is also from the motor museum … and yes, it’s no better than yesterday’s …

Q       Did you hear about the wooden car, with wooden wheels and wooden engine?
A        It wooden go either.                      

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