Humphrey Appleby

Always possible to find out regardless of whether they're willing to divulge.

Oh please! Of course it's in the interests of the paying public to know how much or little Sky are paying, even out of curiosity. If I pick up a World Soccer it's full of information on much this deal or that deal is worth, not to mention how much all the various characters are taking for their cut. It'll all leak out eventually anyway, because promoters can't resist telling someone. And the reticence to tell anyone officially would suggest the deal isn't that wonderful...

At one time numbers were only for race horses... BTW - how much race horse merchandise do you see... The irony of course, is you can hardly see the numbers on F1 cars these days, even if you know where to look. They're only there reluctantly and put in obscure places so they don't take away space from the sponsors...

The Romanians were on our side in WWI, but I don't think the Scots are on our side these days are they...?

Other media outlets would just go ahead and print what they know, regardless of any official announcement. Appreciate the interview itself may have been given with certain provisios, but that doesn't mean that information sourced elsewhere couldn't be mentioned. What's the big suspense anyway? Are Sky getting cold feet about the deal?

I think that the percentage of those in Australia who are ethnically non-British or Irish now exceeds those who are. So they're 'bloody Europeans' if they come to the UK directly from 'Europe' but automatically our good friends if they go via Australia... In fact, a lot if the problem with work permits and the like is because fewer Australians have British patriality these days.

A lot of immigrants are temporary workers, and I'm sure many on the other thread would advocate pulling up the drawbridge on them too.

All this is the practical reality of 'pulling up the drawbridge' as plenty advocate on another thread. If immigration is supposed to be made more difficult, then there's no real reason why speedway should be exempt.

Would it get ever get printed though? This week's lead letter was an appallingly sycophantic affair thanking BSI for 'rescuing' the SGP. Quite aside from what are they rescuing it from, but do people really believe they're doing it out of love?

I think you're taking things too seriously. I guess you missed the smiley at the end...

It doesn't have to be - you can find out all sort of things on the Internet in a matter of hours. Such as the Speedway Star's official circulation that was supposedly confidential even though it could easily be found on a public website with a small amount of effort. There isn't necessarily any corruption, but it would still be interesting to know where the money is flowing from and to, who owns which riders, how much are commercial rights worth to the SGP and BSPA, what's happening to Go-Speed, and who are the mysterious backers of the Speedway Star ;-) It will no doubt be argued that the great unwashed have no right to know this sort of thing. I disagree - people interested in the sport have every right to know, and in many cases the information isn't secret if you wish to find it anyway. I agree you don't want to fill the whole magazine with such things, but the occasional spread would be interesting.

I think the reality nowadays is that speedway is of zero interest to the mainstream public, so anything unearthed by the industry journal is unlikely to be read by anyone outside of the sport. To some extent I can see why the Star can't go around upsetting too many of the 'powers-that-be' so it still gets access to information, but then what's the point in having that information if you can't use it? Moreover, in the days of the Internet, it should still be possible to get the 'inside track' from a network of contacts. I'd agree that in a small close-knit sport that you should be a bit restrained about what's said, but in general I'd say the Star is far too uncritical about certain aspects of the running of speedway.

The old days of controlled output are gone and media outlets need to be quick with the news (or rumour) otherwise it'll be around the Internet anyway, and probably in an even more unsubstantiated format. Yes, sometimes letting the cat out if the bag early can be detrimental, but frankly you have to blame whoever in the know who couldn't keep quiet.

I don't think anyone's asking for a scandal mag, but a bit of in-depth questioning of things like television deals, the SGP arrangements, what Go-Speed do, and so on... The type of thing the press used to do.

The definition of legal tender is that it must be accepted in settlement of a debt. In fact, even legal tender is not legal tender in certain circumstances, such as if you decide to pay in a thousand one pence pieces. In answer to TWK, I think Scottish banks are allowed to issue notes up to certain amount they have deposited with the Bank of England. I think this is approximately equal to how many Scots pounds that were in circulation at the time of the Union, so the total value of notes has actually declined in real terms over the years,

Scotland would likely join the EU or at the very least have reciprocal working arrangements with the UK in the same way that the Republic of Ireland always did. It might affect work permit riders though, as the right of a non-EU/EEA national to work in the UK doesn't extend to other countries. With respect to border controls, that's an interesting one. Scotland would likely want to remain in the Common Travel Area (currently the UK, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man) which doesn't require passports, but one of the requirements of joining the EU as a new member is to join Schengen. It Scotland had to do that and the rest of the UK (and Ireland) remained outside the Schengen zone, they they'd be obliged to impose border controls with England. One reason the Republic of Ireland opted out of Schengen is they didn't want to have border controls with Northern Ireland. They were able to do that as they were already in the EU when Schengen came in, but Scotland may not have that option. It just demonstrates how ill-thought out SNP policy is. I'm not sure the UK could actually stop him. There are a number of countries (e.g. Ecuador and Montenegro) that use the US dollars or euros as their currency, so provided the Scottish government could secure enough pounds and Scottish businesses were prepared to accept them, then I can't see how you'd stop them circulating.

It's a little known fact that Scottish notes are not legal tender, not even in Scotland. They are essentially promissory notes that are accepted at the discretion of the recipient in the way that credit cards are.

It's not entirely the case. The NFL is maybe the best balanced in that teams from any one division will all play the same opponents in 14 of the 16 matches, but there are still a couple of semi-random match-ups determined by finishing positions the previous season, plus one team may play a team in another division at home and whilst another would play them away. The MLB inter-league games are a bit weird in that whilst one division will roughly play another division the same year, but not every team the same number of times, plus they always play a defined rival in a 'local' derby every year. Except for 8 teams who have two defined local rivals who they alternate playing against...

Sure, but it's not so much that speedway needs to have been staged at a GP venue, but at an attractive stadium in a country where speedway is actively raced. Speedway was never staged at the Millennium Stadium before British GP arrived, but it's nonetheless been a reasonably successful event. Speedway needs to be consolidating its presence in existing speedway countries before broadening its horizons. New Zealand (and Australia) are perfectly valid choices in that respect, although the economics are still a issue. It's obviously better to have most of the GPs in countries with a professional speedway scene, but I don't see a fundamental problem taking the GP to places like Finland and New Zealand provided it's not at the expense of a GP in a major speedway country (as with no French GP in F1). I'd say New Zealand is as deserving of a GP as some countries that have had them, and had the added bonus of making the SGP more of world rather than European competition. Going to countries without any sort of speedway tradition is another story. If the sport was doing okay in core countries/region, then you can have the luxury of taking an event to somewhere new, but that's far from the case in speedway. I think they also had a speedway track at Marmande (not sure if it's still operational), although track racing is largely confined to a small region of France. Somewhere like the (revamped) Amsterdam Olympic Stadium would be perfect apart from there being no roof, but who locally would be willing to take the financial risk to promote it.

Good to see it's stacked in a scientifically designed pyramid shape, although I'm not sure in carefully monitored climate controlled conditions...

If it were held in Barcelona, then any local support would likely be the Catalan regional government, but they along with the Spanish government have had to institute huge cutbacks due to the financial situation. The UK and by extension the Welsh government that receives all its money from the UK, is much less affected by comparison. Regardless though, it would still require a local promoter and who'd take the financial risk of running in a country/city with virtually no speedway tradition during a poor economic climate. New Zealand is not really comparable because it has a long speedway tradition and solos were still actively being run there (albeit in reduced form) before the GP arrived. Of course it's very different. American football is a multi-million/billion pound industry watched around the world by millions, whereas speedway is not. Most people in the countries where professional speedway is actually staged have hardly heard of the sport, so what chance the Spanish or even holidaymakers turning out in their thousands?

If it was brilliant, it would undoubtedly have been trumpeted by now.

I'm not sure it's so straightforward, particularly with respect to gas bill. We've having to ship a lot of liquified gas from the Middle East now, which has required a lot of investment in new facilities. Many other European countries are getting their gas piped from Russia, with all the political dimensions involved with that.

Even that's not entirely correct. NS mainline passenger services may still be owned by the state, but freight services are run by Deutsche Bahn and there are a number of regional passenger franchises run by various French, German and British/German (Arriva) companies. I wasn't really arguing about the competition one way or another - I was pointing out there are foreign owned utilities in other countries. This said, nationalised industries in the UK were generally poorly run (whether they were or not elsewhere), successive governments were not prepared to capitalise them or charge realistic prices, and the result was years of under-investment and decline. Other companies were prepared to buy our services because they clearly better understood how to leverage the marketplace, and we had to sell because the existing infrastructure (particularly with respect to water) would eventually have broken at existing levels of investment. The one area where the UK was ahead though, was in the early deregulation of telecoms. I don't think it can be argued that it wasn't beneficial to the consumer over time, and it also made for some strong British telecoms companies (e.g. BT, Cable & Wireless, Vodafone) which have substantial global interests. And the numbers that race speedway are hardly likely to make a dent in immigration numbers. However, the point is that on the one hand people decry all the immigration and demand stricter controls, but when they get them (which is the reality of this bureaucracy), they somehow seem to think that speedway riders shouldn't have to jump through the same hoops as everyone else...

Not true. The Dutch telco is at least 50% owned by foreign organisations, whilst the postal service was privatised years ago and was being run by TNT which is Australian. There is also competition in the energy sector with a number of foreign companies competing with the domestic ones. In France and Germany, many if not all the utilities are privatised as well. Whilst most of the shareholders may still be indigenous because of the size of the economies, they are in principle open to foreign ownership. People really do need to get away from these nationalistic attitudes. It really doesn't matter who owns what in the grand scheme of things - that's what free markets are about - and in some areas like mobile telecoms, the UK is doing very well in other countries. Furthermore, domestic shareholders are just as likely as foreign ones to exploit weak regulation and rip off their customers. Conversely, years of UK public ownership resulted in gross under-investments in areas like energy and water supply which is one of the reasons why prices have gone up so much now. It's also one of the reasons why French companies were better placed to buy into the UK markets because they were in better shape than many of ours when privatisation came.