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Day: 16 April 2012

Football is good entertainment but bad business

There are certain trends in modern football that we have been accustomed to, with administration being the latest.  Questions about football club finances are being raised after Port Vale, Portsmouth and Rangers have all gone into administration during the past four weeks.

Rangers have an unpaid tax bill of over £9m, whilst Portsmouth went into administration for the second time in two seasons over an unpaid tax bill of £1.6bn.  Whilst in administration, these clubs can be perceived to be in a safe haven; their debts are frozen and are temporarily protected from creditors looking to recoup their funds from the club.  Business advisory firm PKF have been appointed by Portsmouth as the administrators to run the club, making them responsible for preserving the value of the business and reaching a compromise with creditors.  As expected, this is a process that is never straightforward.

One of the main reasons why payment to creditors becomes a heated affair is due to the football creditors’ rule of the English league governing body, which states that all players and clubs that are owed money by the insolvent club are to be paid in full.  The implementation of this rule creates a hostile feeling by ‘ordinary’ creditors towards the football community.  Tax authorities, local businesses and other non-football bodies are only paid a fraction of their bills whilst football clubs are reimbursed in full.

HMRC have spoken out against this rule, labelling it as unfair and unlawful.  However, the Premier league and football league have defended the rule, arguing that it is important in preventing a domino effect that would see multiple clubs enter administration.  Whilst this argument holds, other creditors have their own debts to pay and will struggle to do so they are crossing assets owed to them by administered outfits off their own balance sheet.  The domino effect is simply being taken out of football and installed into other industries.

After the fire sale of their assets during their first spell in administration, Portsmouth does not have many assets left to rely on to improve their liquidity. This left Portsmouth facing the risk of being the first English club to go out of business since Aldershot in 1992, but the Football League has stepped in and given the championship club a £200,000 cash injection.  Although it is on a much smaller scale, the football industry is beginning to mirror the Northern Rock crisis in 2008.

HMRC used to let football clubs off the hook for this sort of behaviour because of their importance to local communities, but now that some clubs do not have the funds to pay back their communities they may be doing more harm than good. Football governing bodies need to work towards making football clubs stop adopting risky business models and teach them to be less reckless spenders.

Interview: Tommy Fish – Next year’s Activities and Development Officer

The university campus was yet again blanketed in banners before Easter, with brave candidates proclaiming the arrival of the Student Elections and vying for your votes. Whether or not you noticed the bedazzled bed sheets strung up outside the library or the ubiquitous chalkings decorating the pavement; whether or not you exercised your right to representation via student portal; votes were cast and victors were proclaimed. From the fraught results night emerged a shiny new Executive Committee, ready and willing to sell their souls to the union to make your student experience the best it can be. Or something like that.

I caught up with Tommy Fish, the university’s new Activities and Development Officer, to find out about his priorities for societies and his plans to resurrect Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G.

 

Which societies have you been most involved with while you’ve been at university?

I’m not going to try and deceive you. I haven’t been heavily involved in any societies. I’ve been fully focused on getting a 2:1, running events to pay my bills and playing football for the university. Before I came I thought I’d be heavily involved in societies but alas, it wasn’t to be. Training twice a week with a game or two a week takes it out of you, and with the events I organised I barely had to time for my Spanish degree which is why I’m here!

 

What do you think are the biggest issues facing society organisers, and how are you planning on making things easier for them?

I think their reach (or lack of) is a big problem. The Freshers fair is overcrowded, daunting and pretty hot! I get hot and bothered at the best of times, so I always bounced in and out of there like a yo-yo, and then it was as if there was no further opportunity to get involved. I will help societies put on some wicked events beyond Welcome Week and make them more appealing to both the people that think they’re too cool for them and the other students that got too intimidated in that inferno. On top of that I’ll ensure that they gain maximum exposure through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Due to my lack of experience with societies, my main role over the initial weeks will be to arrange individual meetings with each and every society chair so they can air their concerns to me, put across their requests, or indeed vent their spleens. That way I can do what they really want and I can go back to the drawing board to try and make it happen.

 

What experience do you have to bring to the role to make you a fantastic activities and development officer?

I’ve got a wealth experience in events and activities and I put my heart and soul into them. I set up and run Take The Whole Cake with my irreplaceable partners. We’ve run 4,000-person capacity events, work with a number of festivals and we’ve got some of the most eclectic lineups in the UK. On top of this we build innovative lighting constructions and transform venues with imaginative décor, which I can apply in a much bigger way to Pangaea. I’m going to go all out!

Beyond events, I have had two stints of 3 months and 8 months volunteering in Costa Rica as an English and PE teacher and football coach so I’m well aware of the need to for cultural sensibilities and care for the community at the grass roots level. I will be working closely with Student Action and RAG to branch out into the Manchester community and burst the Oxford Road bubble, and I’m going to set up some big charitable initiatives.

 

What would you say is the worst thing about our students union at the moment?

The sheer lack of appeal to the wider student community, and the building itself is not the prettiest…

 

And what’s the best thing about the union?

The broad range of societies it offers, the fact it runs a festival on university grounds amidst pressure from the police licensing unit, and the fact it will fight tooth and nail for students that turn it.

 

People are generally split on the idea of more Union club nights. Some are for it, citing the success of club nights at other university Unions but others say there’s enough on offer already in Manchester. What’s your position?

I think the union could do with one more Pangaea in Freshers week to balance it out, one in each term! More club-nights in the union may devalue Pangaea, and would be hard to implement in an already ridiculously saturated market where pretty much every angle is covered by the Manchester clubs. Regarding other unions, such as Leeds, they may have successful club nights throughout the year in their union, but that’s because they have the layout for it and they don’t have their own festival. It’s one or the other I’m afraid. However, I do think we could fuse the club night idea with some charity events.

 

In your manifesto you highlighted the importance of alcohol free events – what sorts of non-alcohol events would you plan on running, and how would you help societies deal with the issue of exclusion of non-drinkers at their events?

For the more relaxed of you we can do anything from chess tournaments to a trip to the Lowry museum or even visiting some of Manchester’s best parks such as Dunham Massey. For the thrill seekers we can do anything from rock climbing to blasting paintballs at each other. Fear not, I will provide a range of activities to choose from wider than the Andes.

Societies will naturally have certain events more suited to drinkers, but I will work tirelessly to ensure that there are plenty of alcohol free events and fun to be had without drinking.

 

A question from Manchester Labour Students – What role do you think party political societies should play in the wider Union/University dynamic?

I think it’s great that political parties play a role in the University dynamic. Many students feel unrepresented by this country’s less than diverse parties, so the greater the interaction the better. I would like to invite the Greens to come and help us address our profligacy with energy. However, I for one am very disillusioned by the current state of politics in this country, and I am quite frankly more likely to abstain or vote for a farce like the Monster Raving Loonies or Tempa T in the next election.

 

The Activities Officer role now includes ‘development’, which is all about leading projects that enhance student employability. What have you got in mind to get students on track to employment?

Definitely bigger student job fairs. The new General Secretary, Nick Pringle, had in his manifesto the idea of a part time jobs fair, which is an excellent idea. Relevant experience is currently just as important, if not more so, than a degree. I will be forging links with lots of employers over the summer months to facilitate this. And if all else fails there are always oilrigs or the mines in Australia. £50-£100k per year I hear, and great holidays too!

 

What are your plans for Pangaea? Any hints at what themes you’re planning?

Pimps and hoes, obviously. What better way to endear myself to female student population?

 

I’m sure Tabz (Women’s Officer) might have something to say about that…

Only kidding. On a serious note, there is absolutely no way I’m going to divulge the theme before I’ve even sat on my swivelly chair. I can assure you it will be universally accessible and trust me you will not be disappointed. Entering each room will be like transcending into a different world.

There will be entertainment far beyond the music itself and the lineup will be off the hook. It will be the first event of its kind in the city, and by far the most visually stimulating! Whether you drink or not, it will blow your senses into the next millennium.

By the way, I want to put together a dedicated creative team to help me make this happen so I will welcome any budding artists, Visual Jockeys, DJ’s, musicians to the office and we’ll set up our own workshop/gallery as our base for masterminding both festivals.

 

Who would be your dream booking for Pangaea?

Tupac and B.I.G : Back From The Dead Tour!

 

And finally… sum up your plan/aim for next year in less than 10 words

I will definitely make it a year to remember.

Creepy Children’s Books

One rainy April morn I plucked from some dim corridor of my mind memories of books I read as a wee bairn. Munching sweets and quaffing coke as I undoubtedly did while reading them, some of the more disturbing aspects didn’t quite manage to penetrate the mighty wall of sugar that spewed forth from my eyeballs. As a 21 year old bairn, they irk me somewhat.

Stig of the Dump

‘Fucking sweet as’, I thought as an eight year old: ‘a fucking caveman’. It sounded great: makin’ fire, catchin’ burglars, improvin’ dens, all with a new caveman friend. Never did it occur to me why there was a caveman in Barney’s dump. Never, in fact, does it occur to Barney. Had Stig travelled through time? Is Stig even real, or a figment of his imagination? The answer is either a screwed up kid or physics far too advanced for this age group. Eery.

Tom’s Midnight Garden

In Narnia-esque fashion, Tom is sent to a country house where he discovers a realm of unparalleled fantasy. In non-Narnia-esque fashion, it’s not utter shite. His loneliness is rectified when the clock strikes twelve and a magical garden materialises behind the house, a place where he regularly returns to meet the same girl at varying ages. As dark as it is nonchalant in its weaving of the tale of a ghost girl’s psychologically projected magical garden, it’s a disconcerting, ambiguous mystery, and one that’ll have you shifting in your seat. A really beautiful book, but unnerving.

A Dog So Small

How this is for kids baffles me. It is traumatising in no smaller degree than it is sad. An autistic boy desperately, desperately wants a dog, but it is disallowed because of his disability. He so wants a dog; he would really, really love a dog; it’s all he wants in the whole world. It’s the only thing that would make him happy. The punchline to this book: he doesn’t get a dog. It’s heartbreaking!

5 Children and It

It seems like there should be a morally-edifying-cautionary-tale aspect to this book, but it’s not entirely clear what it is. Released in 1902 this is to all extents and purposes Victorian, and they didn’t screw around. If they weren’t sending kids up chimneys they were drawing terrifying gargoyle creatures that give spookily clad children ‘wishes’. Again, it’s the lack of information that’s unsettling about this. What the hell is a ‘Psammead’, the ‘it’ of the title, and where did it come from? Creepy devil monsters prattling on about the Stone Age and almost getting kids scalped isn’t a line of narrative that would fly for the children’s publishers of 2012.

Watership Down

Containing Nazi allusions, warren destruction and a few shoulder-shrug rabbit deaths, this one never sat well with me. For anyone who read String Lug the Fox, it’s written with that same air of threat all the way through. Rabbits are vulnerable little things, and you can’t be certain they’re all going to be happy little hoppers by the end. It’s always possible they’ll happily hop their way under the wheels of truck or hippity-skip in front of the barrel of a shotgun. The blatant TV rip-off, The Animals of Farthing Wood, was equally harrowing.

Review: The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

In Ben Marcus’s first novel in a decade, language becomes toxic. The poison spreads slowly; at first it’s only children’s speech that causes mild symptoms of nausea, but soon all forms of writing, music, code, and sign language produce lethal effects. Even telling facial expressions can induce fits. With society crumbling, only children under the age of eighteen are left immune, corralled into city quarantines and guarded by the last few emaciated guards left alive.

It’s a bleak and thought-provoking set-up. It’s also deeply philosophical; it’s only once you realise that the toxicity is derived from the comprehension, not the existence, of language that the true scope of the author’s ambitions are revealed: how could humanity survive in a world where communication has become impossible? Is there anything besides language?

Unfortunately, this ambition also proves to be Marcus’s undoing. Instead of being a fluid vehicle for his ideas, Marcus treats his narrative as an annoyance that might just go away if he ignores it. Whole chapters are encumbered, plodding, obvious set pieces for the author to awkwardly hoist his grandiose linguistic insights on. Glaring plot holes, we assume, can be explained away as the insanely sane narrator’s fractured take on the disintegration of society. Without a proper in-world rationale however – and an absence of likeable characters – what results is a kind of humourless nihilism that the shaky plot does little to make up for. A laziness surrounds the many loose ends that is incongruous with the richness of themes on offer.

Kafka looms large over the novel, but Marcus’s gift for metaphor is infinitely more muddied. Allusions are either patronisingly transparent; as in the guilt represented by the narrator’s wife, or infuriatingly opaque; as in the Jewish element to the sickness. Middle ground, where forward momentum is married to clarifying representation, is painfully lacking. Later, when Marcus begins to borrow more liberally from Vonnegut, minus the charm, this literary form of self-harm comes across as puerile.

By the final chapters it’s clear that despite its brilliant premise, The Flame Alphabet is less than the sum of its influences. The resulting sickly hobble to the finish line offers neither closure, nor raises enough of the right questions to warrant much yearning for it. In the end, it becomes a mystery you find yourself wishing would just end, rather than be explained. And that, thankfully, the book can do.