Just the cost of the conversion is a greater cost than almost any stadium built from scratch in this country. The Millennium stadium cost £114 million in 1999. Obviously that's over 15 years ago but inflation hasn't been that great and even adjusted prices would be considerably less than the white elephants conversion. The cost is actually only a bit less than the whole of the Emirates project, of which the stadium cost was only part.
The Chairman of the LLDC, the dodgy body charged with the responsibility of managing the post-Olympics asets or mis-managing them as it has turned out to be, has resigned. This has to be one of the least shocking pieces of 'news' of all time. As soon as they tried to withold figures of the dodgy deal with the Spammers, alarm bells should have been ringing and now the authorities should get down there sharpish before the remaining papers can be added to a bonfire this weekend. I'm betting the computers have already sold on ebay. I'll wager that there's more ridiculous expenditure yet to be admitted to and this story ain't nearly over yet. A number of projects with Boris' dabs on them are going to become news in the months ahead. It just happens that the gentleman concerned, Dave Edmonds, didn't spend the 70's and 80's knocking around with Nick Lowe and Rockpile but had a political career. I'll bet that guessing which party he represented isn't too difficult? That's right, it's another Tory politician in this unseemly tale. This one was Michael Hesletine's former Private Secretary. When Hesletine left the House of Commons he was replaced in the highly safe Tory seat by.............one Boris Johnson, who later gets Dave the gig as LLDC Chairman. Dodgy jobs for the dodgy boys.
You couldn't even make it up: ....the cost of installing and operating the retractable seating, which can be removed for concerts and athletics events.... The cost of £8m a year. West Ham contribute £2.5m-a-year rent That in my book is £5.5m a year( so multiply by 99 year lease=£544.5m) for the tax-payer on top of...£308m The outlay to modify the stadium has risen from £272m to £323m West Ham ..... the one-off £15m for the conversion.
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic but the ludicrous expenses are only those we know about. Parts of the contract (that was only obtained under freedom of information and was presumably not planned to be released) were still redacted. I'm wondering if those redacted clauses set new standards for ludicrous? (And also what was the justification for not making them public.)
Did you play professionally? Genuinely interested ... one of my favourite books is the autobiography of Fred Eyre...it's called kicked into touch. Was interested if you had to work a "real job" (for the want of a better term) while you played or if you earned enough from the game to do it full time until you stopped playing.
Shame. I was beginning to look forward to knocking United out of the EL. Now we'll just have to make do with Celtic.
Man Utd intent on making us look not so bad and taking all the headlines. Ibrahimovic, Mkhitaryn,Pogba=£117m Janssen, Wanyama, Sissoko=£58m
With everything else that's been going on, haven't we missed commenting on the rather lenient "punishment" handed out to Maureen? It seems that he's got exactly the same punishment as Moyes who did vaguely the same thing. The difference being that Maureen is a serial offender and has been punished multiple times in the past. But in this one they've used some kind of new principle by making the latest punishment less than the last one. I have probably missed something, but I thought that punishment usually increases if you keep misbehaving! The charge was also considered simultaneously with his previous one about commenting on refs which has for unexplained reasons not been considered until now, when it overlapped with this new one. You will recall it related to something before their match against Liverpool so goodness knows why it hasn't been dealt with until now. For that a few thousand extra £ were added - totally utterly pointless.
