Small football club

Anyone else seen the article about small football clubs like Southampton and Stoke being hit by hike in business rates. Saints are supposed to pay 51% more because they are only a football club with no hotels, retail parks etc attached. Sounds back to front to me. If you are a small football club then you pay less. If Saints are a small club, Pompey must be microscopic

 

This business rates thing is nonsense. The simple answer is you quadruple the business rates for fast food outlets and by so doing you will rid the nation of the disgraceful litter problem at a stroke as they will all close down and if they don't you can use the extra revenue to hire an army of litter police trained to chop the balls of anyone dropping their big mac wrapper on the street outside my house.

 

Proper football clubs offer a retail experience apparently. No shopping village/ dining facilities, no tax relief. Stop playing football and get some fast food franchises set up! Call yourself a football club!

 

OldStockton - did you get a ticket in the end?

 

I didn't know that the Saints Mega Store was for trade only.!

 

Southampton FC could become a sports club and set up basketball and handball sides. Lots of clubs in Espana are sports clubs - Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao, Valencia to name but a few. If anyone here has been to the Bernabeau, the stadium complex houses a variety of outlets. Same with the soon to be made redundant, Calderon. I am sure SFC could expand their businesses in some shape or form to become more than just a mere football club.

 

Isn't this simply an extension of the maxim "If you're poor we'll kick your arse; if you're rich we'll kiss it" so loved by all governments since about the 1950's?

 

We are already "more than just a mere football club"..... we are my football club, my soul mate, my lifelong partner. Ok we've had some rows, fallen out several times, made mistakes, cheated on each other (yes, I 'attended' games along the south coast, but the club cheated me at two FA Cup semi-finals and three league cup quarter finals and it sold Steve Williams!), broken each other's hearts, but it's been there all my life. Longer than any girl friend, wife, current wife or future wife.

It's far more than just a mere football club!

 

Are you lost Lambo?

 

Always, mate. But I hope you get my point. There is an absurd logic in the idea that if you are "only" a football club you pay a higher % of business rate. I'm sure that these are the rules, but as is so often the case rules can have unexpected consequences. At least I hope they are unexpected, and that it is not a conspiracy!

In the same way, there are a number of tax rules, for example, that clearly favour the better off in society and disadvantage the most vulnerable. That's me point, FLT me lad!

 

Is you wife aware of this future wife? Still holding out for Kylie?

 

I love the personification. I have also fallen out of love and fallen in love with Southampton. It must be the red and white that does it for me, or memories of Terry Paine crossing the ball for Ron Davies to leap like a salmon to head the ball into the net. It was all so simple.

 

I posed that Just in case she reads this. Keep her on her toes.


*on a side note, I noticed whilst the kids were 'marking up' their Sunday paper round, that the Mirror carried a front page story with the title, "Kylie ready to love again." The kids weren't impressed when I put my arms around their shoulders and said, "Listen guys, don't worry, I'm not going anywhere despite what you may read in the papers today."

"Shut up Dad," was all I got

 

Absolutely. Trying to get this message to people who are not so madly in love with their clubs, but are merely "fans", is very difficult. All this loyalty stuff passes me by. It is SFC I have loved and always will!

I can still fall asleep seeing Terry Paine slamming a penalty past the Nottm Forest keeper to ensure our safety in the last game of the 66/67 season. I was in my twenties, stood among a bunch of mega-hard Southampton dockers and cried. I felt very vulnerable until I realised I was not alone! Win on Sunday and I'll be blubbing all the way home!

 

Seemingly SMS rates are going up from £515,000 to £2,040,000 (which may have already been discussed elsewhere)

 

Quite right. Treat you with the contempt you've deserved! I was looking at one of those spoof Ladybird books on The Dad. There's one with a girl looking adoringly at her dad. The text read that the girl saw her dad as her hero. Soon she'd hit teenage and think him a complete bell-end. True?

 

Whilst that is a massive rise, I'm reserving my true sympathies for smaller businesses/football clubs than us. Saints will just shuffle a few things....bish, bosh...paid.

 

Les will be in a cold sweat, he'll be breaking the news soon to JWP that he's on the transfer list as a result of this

 

Not as bad as that....he will only have to sell his right leg.

 

Indeed - this has been a ticking time bomb for ages and what with all the other mental stuff going on nationally and globally I think very few people realise what effect it is going to have on the economy. I imagine there's going to be a hell of a lot of coverage in the next few months on small businesses being forced to shut down. Empty high streets, subsequent drops in trade, and so on. Aside from the independent retailers there is a lot of concern up here about pubs in particular - which traditionally operate on very fine margins.

It's not going to be pretty...