http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17660363

Do you think that's right? My gut reaction is it's a police rip-off, since they're already getting money while presumably working alongside the clubs to curtail any nonsense

And seeing a match for free!

It's an ACPO cash grab. Wherever they set the boundary, next year they'll be back saying anything that happens just outside it is the responsibility of the clubs as well. Why should the club have to pay for the policing of a pub that's 20 minutes walk away from the ground? The clubs pay for policing of the ground and the environs immediately around it. That seems a perfectly reasonable limit to me.

Plus, it seems to me, it has a whiff of being the thin end of the wedge for privatised policing. Right now it's the football clubs. By the same logic, surely nightclubs and pubs should have to pay for the trouble that happens outside at closing time yes? And so on and so on, until eventually, well, all that stuff in your house is yours, so surely you should have to pay for the people who make sure nobody breaks in and takes it all? I mean, that's only fair, right?

Jon

I don't see the problem. In the film industry, if you want a road closing or something similar, then you pay for the closure and the police presence. It's been that way for years; I'm actually a little surprised the clubs haven't had to put their hands in their pockets before this.

In this case, it's the equivalent of the police saying you have to also pay for the police attendance to a traffic accident that happened five streets along that involved someone who went down that street because the road you were using was closed.

Most recent football thread I could see

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18064904

Those figures are shocking if true

Kelly Sotherton (who is never one to mince her words) has been tweeting a lot about this since the story broke. She claims that in her, what, 15 year athletic career she never took part in a major championship where she wasn't using painkillers to reduce the impact of some injury or other. In the process she's pretty much destroyed a couple of disks in her spine which is why she finally had to quit.

It's not a football thing, its a sports thing. At the highest level winning the next event, the next race has become so important that pain is seen not as an indicator of future problems, but as an impediment that must be erased.

Jon

In principle it's only fair they pay the costs.
In practice I think the policing costs should come out of the TV money before it's split between the leagues/clubs. That way smaller clubs (which a vital to a functioning league system) aren't disproportionally hit.

The costs of what? That's the most pertinent question. If two blokes in a pub five miles away from the ground watching a football match start a fight and the police have to be called, should the clubs playing the game have to pay for that? If fans go into town after the game and start a fracas in a nightclub at 2AM, should the clubs have to pay for that? if a car is parked on double yellow lines and it has a club sticker in the back window, will the club have to pay for it's removal?

Police budgets are being cut and ACPO are looking for as many alternative sources of income as they can get their hands on. They will push for any possible bill to be paid by someone else if they can even vaguely link it to someone else and football clubs are first in line because they are seen as a convenient and plentiful source of income. But believe me, they are very far from being the last in line. There is absolutely no basis in law for holding somebody legally or financially responsible for things that don't happen on their property which they have no overt participation in. None.


It would make no difference at all. Most clubs these days (until you get down to below league 2 level) TV revenue, small though it may be, is a major part of their income. Taking it direct from Sky & ESPN would hit the clubs just as hard because the TV companies would just negotiate down the TV payments to offset their extra expense. And given it's the premier league clubs that actually gets the subscribers in (and therefore have a better bargaining hand), the lower leagues would be hit with a more than proportional share of the costs. And if the clubs go out of business because the TV money has been reduced to pay policing costs and people lose their jobs and communities lose a focal point is that better or worse for everyone?


Yeeeesss... are you familiar with the way the English Premier League is run at all? Premier League PPP mean anything to you? Sufficed to say, the big clubs do not at all agree with your philosophy. And they will leave the lower leagues in the lurch given half a chance.

Jon

Couldn't the footballers all have a whip round?
I gather they're all minted, and I'm certain they'd like to support the community that supports them.

My point was (re costs) that more should be taken from the premiership TV rights, effectively subsidising the police costs of the lower leagues. That would help pay the costs and redress the massive imbalance in the way football revenues are split.
It might sound unfair to the big clubs, but they need the smaller clubs to survive to the leagues to continue. Yes their greed would allow them to go bust, but their greed shouldn't be allowed to destroy that national game.

The majority of footballers are dullards. Asking them to consider an issue of even minor complexity is like asking Mount Rushmore to do the lambada. There are any number of memoirs of managers contains stories of the futility of getting footballers get involved in the community in any sense more than doing the odd hospital visit. There are several exceptions, thank god - and it's a bizarre paradox that the players who are the most dislikable arses on the pitch are often the ones with the greatest sense of philanthropy off it - but in general getting a premiership footballer to think about anything that isn't either capable of 200 MPH or wearing a short skirt is a practical impossibility.

Jon

So why do they get paid so much then?
Drop them a few grand, pay off the cops, jobs a good'un.

A valiant notion but never likely to happen I'm afraid. Since it's inception the Premier League has done everything it possibly can to minimise the contribution it makes to the lower leagues and maximise the amount of money it keeps to itself. You could talk about the EPPP and how the premier league blackmailed the football league clubs into slowly cutting their own throat. Or how the premier league has withdrawn it's £3m a year funding for Supporters Direct (an organisation whose function is to assist groups of supporters trying to arrange collective buyouts of clubs that go bankrupt to keep them in the league) 'because they couldn't afford it' while spending £2.5b a year on wages. The Premier league gives not one single toss for anyone who isn't in the premier league. Never has, never will.


I'm sorry, but this is a startlingly naive statement. The Premier league would pull up the drawbridge and leave the football league to rot in a second if they thought they could get away with it but they know it's the one thing that would actually convince a government to institute proper financial regulation and a mandated proper share-out of the money if they tried.

Jon

Because it is a sadly imperfect world.