Yesterday, we saw a call for a public inquiry from eight London supporters trusts. This petition and London coalition appears to be orchestrated by the Charlton Athletic’s Trust board member, Richard Hunt.
It was Mr Hunt who has made several complaints to European commission about state aid over the last two years only to have them rejected each time.
He is also the indivdual who filed the freedom of information request to have the confidential agreement between the LLDC and West Ham United disclosed in full. It was this request which ultimately led to Guardian journalist, Owen Gibson to write his article about state aid in April and this in turn spawned the BBC documentary by Dan Roan upon which Mr Hunt and myself appeared.
He certainly appears to have taken over the fruitless quest started by our old friend Barry Hearn when he was chairman of Leyton Orient. The new petition is supposedly backed by the supporters of Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs, QPR, Fulham, Leyton Orient, Palace and Charlton. Interestingly the Lions Trust from local rivals Millwall do not to appear to have backed the call for a public enquiry.
It should be noted that these supporters trusts have no official affiliation to the clubs whose supporters they represent and there is no suggestion that any London club has officially backed the call for a public enquiry into our occupancy of the stadium.
The petition currently stands just under 6,800 signatures, if it reaches 10,000, the government will respond and if it reaches 100,000 then the petition will be considered for debate in parliament.
This is somewhat pointless exercise as the issue has already been raised in House of Commons on 24th June this year. As for a public inquiry they start at £10 million for a simple inquiry without a judge but regularly run into the tens of millions. Do we really what to spend more tax payers money on this issue? Couldn’t the money be better spent?
Remember this is nothing new, West Ham’s initial winning bid collapsed in October 2011 when architect Steve Lawrence submitted a state aid complaint to the European commission. That followed a failed judicial reviews by Leyton Orient and a judicial review attempt by Spurs who later withdrew their appeal after negotiating terms for their new stadium with the London Mayor.
I understand, the LLDC employed top European lawyers and consulted with the European Commission to make sure the second tender process was legally water tight and designed to reduce the likelihood of future challenge. In March 2013 The Hammers were awarded the Stadium again for the second with completely different terms.
It is obvious that this story will not be going away quickly and maybe the best solution is just to publish a full and un-censored copy of the Olympic agreement and be done with it. I understand, West Ham could not do this unilaterally without the agreement of the LLDC.
Just one final point about Mr Hunt and the Charlton Athletic Supporters Trust. This is the same football club that were busing fans in from Medway Towns in Kent effecting Gillingham’s fan base in the past. At the time Gillingham chairman said “Charlton are roller-coasting through Kent trying to build their customer base.”
As the saying goes those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones!
And where was this rabble-rouser all along anyway. Did he not know what was happening in his backyard all the time? There should be a law that prescribes time limits for objections of this sort. What if another rabble-rouser decides to orchestrate another petition 5,or 15 or maybe 50 years after we have taken occupation of the OS.
Muckracker, I asked them on their forum, apparently this was all initiated a long time ago already and actually prompted the BBC documentary. So they have been trying for a long time. And they may be surprised how short the resulting debate in Parliament might turn out to be considering their lengthy effort to rewrite the terms of this deal.
I expect their petition to be successful insofar as there may well be another enquiry.
I also expect the result of the enquiry showing that the deal is legally watertight.
Cheers Double H. And good luck with the sale of the house. I post from Harare, Zimbabwe. Might consider taking the moniker HarareHammer lol
Those fans are bitter, jealous, angry and emotional about this and I don’t blame them. If the OS had been built in South London and the OS had been awarded to Charlton or Millwall (yeah, right!) Us West Ham fans would be in arms about it.
They see that there is no way they can prevent West Ham from moving into the OS, that ship has now sailed, so all they try to do is protect their own interests, get the terms of the deal changed so West Ham have to pay more upfront and presumably cannot offer quite so many cheap or free tickets which might keep people frpm watching Fulham, Charlton or Orient instead. Again, I can understand that view.
Thing is: Real life and business are not always about what you want, my brother and I are in the process of selling my deceased mom’s house.
We have an idea what kind of amount we’d like to sell for, but that doesn’t say the market will agree. The house will be worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it.
It’s the same with the tender process for the OS: It doesn’t matter how much it cost to build the OS for the Olympics or how dear the conversion costs are or what needs to be spent to maintain, police and steward the OS:
The only thing that matters how much someone (West Ham or any other club) is willing to pay for the privilege of playing there 25-30 times a year without owning it.
All it takes for the LLDC is to come out and say West Ham’s bid were the best and the terms of the deal were also the best compromise that could have been negotiated without West Ham walking away.
It’d been entirely possible for the government to refuse the deal under the circumstances and decide on a smaller scale athletics-only future use, they didn’t and went along with the West Ham deal. What does that tell us ?
Does it tell us that West Ham boardmembers or employess bribed politicians for a deal the consequences of which will affect the next governments for 99 years ?
Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Would West Ham have enough money to pay high enough bribes to turn a decision of this magnitude in their favour ? I doubt it.
It’s much more likely that the LLDC sat down with a calculator, estimated costs and income and found that over 99 years the taxpayer would make enough money out of West Ham moving there to make this deal work.
Could West Ham have paid more ? Probably. But that is not the point.
As long as the LLDC simply couldn’t negotiate a better deal and no dodgy bribes were involved to make the LLDC sign the deal there is nothing really that could force the LLDC and West Ham ro change the terms of the deal.
(Sorry, wasn’t supposed to get this long, but this petition gives me the hump.)
The bottom line is this, without West Ham the stadium would have resulted in £537m loss to the tax payers, it would still have needed to be converted to a smaller seating capacity because outside of an Olympics it would never be full which would have cost numerous millions. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the fact that every other week during the football the shops and business outside the ground will generate income. Upton Park will be regenerated, lots of additional work will go into those surrounding communities as part of the agreement and the Olympic park won’t become some overgrown ghost town to be shown among nearly every other countries post Olympic sites. Sorry to ramble on I know I am preaching to the converted…
I for one am glad to see my tax money going to a good cause,money poors out of England for so much business that give nothing back to the community,
Yes it is a small amount of people but with other sports and hobbies,using the stadium the rest of the year many people gain from our usage,
How much of our tax money do we see doing good to us personally
As an expat with interests in Engaland I do still pay a lot of tax each year,
This lot love to jump on the waste of tax payers money bandwagon don’t they? Probably the same crowd that want to get rid of the royal family. Probably on benefits their whole lives. The new ‘London’ branding is going to really rub salt in their wounds. Let’s hope so. After all there is only one club in London.