arthur cross

It is the show jumping that's the problem rather than the tennis. The tennis from 6.00-to-8.15 is a recording for Europe-wide viewing of that afternoon's semi-finals of Germany's biggest grass-court tournament in the run-up to Wimbledon. But the show jumping preview show from 8.15 and live coverage from the French resort of Cannes from 8.30 clashes with the SGP's schedule for heats 17-to-20, the semis and the final, never mind any catching-up of heats 13-to-16 if there have been earlier crashes or rain delays ... the live show jumping runs until 10.00 so it's the first-third of that coverage that would be overlapping the scheduled last half-hour of speedway. While show jumping doesn't have a large audience numerically, the wealthy background of so many of its participants and spectators means it does attract several really lucrative sponsorship and advertising deals that Eurosport won't want to offend.

Rotherham United FC - a well-known sports team in a relatively run-down urban area who had been based for 101 years in the ever-increasingly decrepit Millmoor until they fell out once and for all with that ground's owner. So they finished playing at Millmoor in May 2008 and announced their aim to find and purchase a new site in the town while renting the Don Valley Stadium (two-thirds of the way from Rotherham into Sheffield) in the meantime. In January 2010 they bought the site of a former steelworks foundry within Rotherham ... in November 2010, outline planning permission was granted ... and in June 2011, construction was started on the 12,000 seater New York Stadium comprising of 4 separate stands holding about 2,000 at each end and about 4,000 along each side (it's in a district of Rotherham called New York). Prince Edward formally opened it in March 2012 but Rotherham United completed the 4th full season of their spell at Don Valley before kicking-off at New York with a July 2012 pre-season friendly against South Yorkshire neighbours Barnsley. Therefore it took them just over 4 years from needing a permanent solution having fallen-out with the Millmoor owner to playing in their new home ground ... it could've been less than 4 years if they'd snapped their Don Valley residency in mid-season. It's sparked a tremendous revival in their fortunes because they've been promoted in both their first 2 seasons at New York as well as being given the honour of hosting an England youth-international. Since 2011 in terms of public statements (but well before that privately), the Belle Vue Aces have been aiming for a permanent 6,000 capacity (plus easy options for temporary stands towards a total 15,000 capacity) so they're going to be take quite a bit longer than Rotherham's example for your timescale of "idea to completion". Chesterfield FC first became aware of a former glassworks' availability in the autumn of 2004 and began playing there in summer 2010 with the biggest delay to that project being the full demolition of the old glassworks rather anything to do with the new football ground. Salford rugby league were provisionally allocated their new site by their local council in 2005 and would've begun playing there as soon as 2009 (rather than the actual 2012) if the original development company on that project hadn't gone into administration in 2008. Hopefully that answers your question rather accurately.

Glasgow wanted to honour the end of James Grieves's career with a tribute meeting that could be boosted by a few of Berwick's GP-qualifier line-up, hence the scheduling of Grievesy's meeting this afternoon once the GP-qualifier was re-located from Austria. But since then Glasgow have had a stack of rain-offs, making it harder to justify burning up another week in their fixture list just for a tribute meeting regardless of the lengthy and great service Grievesy's given to the Tigers ... remember they still haven't completed any leg of their KO Cup 1st-round tie with Rye House because both those meetings are re-arranged for what should've been next weekend's quarter-final against Newcastle. Hence tomorrow's catching-up of a League Cup group meeting which has no impact on that competition's knockout stages but still needs getting out of the way with the bonus that it's being done before the counter-attraction of World Cup football during many of the longest-daylight evenings of the year. It's not too big a logistical problem, just needing one Berwick representative to have a one-off registration for the night as team manager if Ian Rae and George Hepburn both now need to remain at Shielfield Park ... alternatively in these circumstances, some agreement might be struck for another club's manager to stand-in as the Bandits boss.

The German-based website www.speedway.org provides all the FIM supplementary regulations as part of its superb statistical coverage of the various world/international competitions. For those who don't know all the terms, the "supplementary regulations" are the specific local bits of information for each separate meeting like the practice and meeting schedule, hotel list, contacts for local organizers, etc, which complement the general FIM speedway rulebook. Therefore, for last night's meeting, it published the following link on Thurs-28-May (9 days before the meeting itself although any riders/officials probably received this document a bit earlier than that) ... http://www.fim-live.com/fileadmin/alfresco/501-01_SR_Berwick.pdf On the first page of this document it clearly shows both Sunday-8th and Monday-9th as rain-off dates while on the second page it clearly shows the price in pounds-per-gallon of the riders' fuel available at the track. If these pages were simply a careless re-print of the St Johann supplementary-regs with Sunday and Monday spare dates available there, surely the riders' fuel would still be priced in euro-per-litre !! ... so somewhere along the line there has been a breakdown in communication between Berwick's noise-restrictions and the FIM-paperwork. But where the FIM, not just at Berwick last night (or indeed just in this country), repeatedly frustrate local organizers is how often they seem unwilling to the point of bloody-mindedness to listen to those local officials when it comes to understanding local weather patterns and information, leaving those local officials to pick up the pieces afterwards from disillusioned spectators while the FIM moves on to alienate another local club elsewhere. For example, Berwick's officials knew within a few minutes last night that Newcastle's evening horse racing had been abandoned at 6.20 (the first race should have been at 6.15) with half of their parade paddock underwater, their track clearly unsafe and a widespread-downpour still in progress that was clearly heading in Berwick's general direction 60 miles away and, therefore, likely to hit Shielfield Park about 2-or-3-hours after drenching Newcastle. But try persuading FIM-folk to bear such useful information in mind !!

And how long did it take to run that Under-21 World Cup meeting at Rye House a couple of years ago, admittedly due to dustbowl conditions rather than any need for snorkels and flippers ? !!

And don't forget, this meeting wasn't meant to be at Berwick in the first place ... it was Austria's round of the GP-qualifiers when the 2014 FIM-calendar was published last autumn which St Johann Im Pongau handed back to the FIM for re-allocation a couple of months ago !!

Are you sure that if the meeting on any particular day is called off and set for a new day (even if it's just 24 or 48 hours later), that a practice session for what's turned out to be that day's non-event remains an official way of trapping its riders from any other action until the new date ? !! As far as I'm aware, anything connected with today is deemed not to have happened once the meeting itself is called off so that everyone makes a fresh start in terms of practice, scrutineering, etc on the new day. Where the rule you're thinking of has come into play is when practice is on the afternoon of one day with the meeting itself on the next afternoon or evening ... hence any rider involved in Cardiff's Friday afternoon-practice can't then nip off to ride in that evening's Premier League Pairs at Somerset. Meanwhile, Berwick have NEVER had noise-permission from their local council to race speedway bikes around Shielfield Park on a Sunday yet both tomorrow and Monday appear as rain-off dates in the FIM supplementary regulations for this meeting !! Berwick only have a degree of flexibility with the local council for weeknight meetings to allow for live television coverage or emergency catching-up of Bandits wash-outs ... however, within that limited flexibility, the council have always been helpful when necessary in recent years. Certainly the supplementary-regs for Berwick's FIM-debut with their 2012 GP-qualifier made it clear the rain-off jumped straight to Monday if that Saturday was abandoned ... I don't know whether it was the same case for their round of the 2013 World Under-21 series or why tomorrow's managed to appear in tonight's supplementary-regs. Thankfully, with Monday already being German-track Abensberg's traditional Bank Holiday date for an FIM-meeting which this year is another of these GP-quailfiers, there's only the Belle Vue v Lakeside meeting in the Elite League rather than a fuller schedule now being affected by Monday's action at Berwick where only Craig Cook in the main field, plus both reserves Richard Lawson and Lewis Bridger were expecting to be at Belle Vue instead ... also, there's a meaningless catch-up of a League Cup group meeting at Glasgow (Theo Pijper) against Berwick (Matej Kus).

Nottingham's all-year-round betting-shop weekly greyhound schedule of Monday-evenings, Tuesday-lunchtimes and Friday-evenings brings in about £1-million a year on its own for the tv-rights, never mind any profits from the trackside crowd. Speedway's track rent and catering profits would do well to bring in £100,000 a year based on the rent for 20 home meetings plus the food-&-drink demands of an average 1,000 crowd. Providing someone else is paying to install a speedway track into a greyhound stadium (or a new greyhound promoter inherits an existing speedway track when buying the stadium), then yes it's bonus profit for the greyhound promoter but only really in pocket-money terms rather than business-changing terms. But if the current greyhound promoter doesn't want the cost or the upheaval of introducing speedway, that's no surprise either.

And an astonishing U-turn in comments from William Hill chief executive Ralph Topping in the space of 7 days !! Last Saturday, I posted his quotes from the Racing Post in this thread in which he was unsure whether William Hill could commit to this year's £200,000 first prize again because of the wider agenda for his company of savings needed to be made including shop closures. Now he's quoted (by the same reporter Jim Cremin), as saying: "We were delighted with the reaction to our £200,000 Derby, with a Wimbledon record entry, and one of the most competitive events ever." Cremin (always quick to crawl up to people if it keeps him on the gravy train), even has the nerve to write that this news is "making a nonsense of talk that the company appetite for sponsorship was waning" ... well, it was Cremin quoting Topping a week earlier that was the biggest aspect of such talk in the first place !! What's caused the U-turn ? ... going into last Saturday's final both the favourite and second-favourite were heavily-backed Irish challengers only for 16-to-1 outsider Salad Dodger (a 500-to-1 no-hoper at the start of the competition) to claim one of the Derby's all-time shock victories having been a totally average A3 runner at Romford as recently as Janaury (that's the 3rd-highest of Romford's 8 grades of local runners with any serious Derby contender usually well-established in its own track's top grade) ... Salad Dodger had actually been a beaten-favourite twice last November at Romford in A6 races !! Still wondering why William Hill suddenly feel they can afford to bump up their Derby sponsorship ? = = = = = = = = = Anyway, the whole story about the boosted Derby prize fund that "racers and royals" has already linked is understandably the Racing Post's main greyhound article today but there's not even a hint of anything on the front greyhound page about the Wimbledon Stadium planning report. Instead, tucked a couple of pages inside (and not yet on the RP website), there's the following ... "All to play for" at Wimbledon by Jonathan Kay ... Planning inspector Robert Yuile has done the expected and announced that both the Paschal Taggart proposal for the redevelopment of Wimbledon as a greyhound venue and the competing AFC/Galliard Homes football stadium scheme are suitable to enter the planning process. Yuile held a public meeting into the Merton Council's Sites & Policies Plan in January and ruled the Plough Lane site can be developed for "sporting intensification" with enabling housing. Diane McLean, of the We Want Wimbledon campaign group, said: "The inspector's report has brought no surprises for the greyhound fraternity. We knew it would be a hard battle to get greyhound retention language into the document given the council's support of AFC and Galliard's proposals. However, the inspector did point out that the Mayor's favoured option was the retention of a greyhound stadium but that if this was not viable then other stadia uses will be considered. "What any promotor who puts in a planning application needs to focus on is the local residents and the effect any large stadium with the resultant significant extra footfall will have on their lives. "We, Paschal and I, have been working with the residents for the past year and continue to do so to ensure that any application we make will meet with their approval and also with the approval of environment and transport agencies as well as the London and Merton plan." Quoted by the Wimbledon Guardian, Merton Council leader Stephen Alambritis said: "We are pleased the inspector has gone with us for the greyhound stadium - it is right for sporting intensification. Planning permission will be given for flats, the number of them is to be decided. It is all to play for, for any sport." If that sort of downbeat response to the inspector's report is the best that either the Racing Post or We Want Wimbledon can manage, no wonder AFC Wimbledon are getting their interpretation of the report across more enthusiastically to the general public.

AFC Wimbledon have consistently been miles ahead of either Paschal Taggart (prospective future greyhound operator) or the Greyhound Racing Association (current greyhound operator) in getting their slant across to the general public as well as their own sporting public. Probably because there's a Racing Post published every day, greyhound (and horse racing) fans become so used to what appears to them to be a significant media bubble because it covers all their fellow racing fans as well as themselves ... what they forget all too easily is that the vast majoirty of the public are nowhere near that bubble at all (or, at best, join it briefly for just a few days of the year like today's Derby at Epsom, April's Grand National or March's Cheltenham Festival). I've pointed out on this thread before that the We Want Wimbledon campaigners have drummed up remarkable support from all corners of the often-argumentative greyhound industry but seem to have made little impact within the wider media. On the other hand, AFC Wimbledon are too far down the football ladder to get daily coverage in any general media but their ups-&-downs and controversies over the past 30-plus years mean they will get attention when they've got any scrap of headline-info worth flagging up ... and that's certainly the case here with the inspector's report confirming the greyhounds won't be regarded as the automatic sporting aspect of any future use of the Wimbledon Stadium site. There's still enough in the inspector's report for the greyhounds to spin their own positive line that it gives them a chance of their own plan being acceptable ... for example, the report clearly states this site deserves a sports-based future as it's the best sporting site available in the London Borough of Merton and the inspector's admitted he's sitting on the fence at this stage regarding the merits of either the AFC Wimbledon or Taggart plan when he could easily have favoured one of them or slagged one of them. But whether the greyhound folk can get their message across to the wider public as well as AFC Wimbledon started doing within minutes of yesterday's report being published seems doubtful to me.

The web link I mentioned a few posts ago now includes the much-anticipated report that was published today by the planning inspector following the January hearings ... once you've clicked onto that report, the key paragraphs about Wimbledon Stadium are paragraphs 74-to-84 on pages 16-&-17 ... http://www.merton.go...und_stadium.htm The inspector reckons it's not his duty at this stage to favour either Galliard's AFC Wimbledon football proposal or Paschal Taggart's greyhound proposal. However, the inspector has noted Boris Johnson's muddled comments as the Mayor of London which have sometimes indicated the Mayor wants greyhound racing to be retained for cultural as well as sporting reasons (it's now the only dog track left with a London postcode rather than a suburban postcode like Crayford or Romford), only for the Mayor to also say at a later date that another financially-viable sporting use could also be acceptable. Hence what's being understandably celebrated over at AFC Wimbledon is the inspector's view that he doesn't consider it necessary to specify that greyhound racing must be retained on the site. The one big thing that seems to be missing from this inspector's report is any guideline as to what happens next (or when) !! AFC Wimbledon have clearly interpreted this report as a good impetus towards presenting their full planning application for the site. It looks to me as if nobody's a complete winner yet from this report but it's forcing greyhound racing deeper into a battle with AFC Wimbledon while also taking a swipe at Boris Johnson's inconsistent comments.

More than 20 years' experience of various sorts of media work (print and broadcast) including coverage of a couple of very successful stadium developments. Last spring's farcical postponement of the Belle Vue v Poole meeting probably qualifies Dave Gordon and Chris Morton for "clown" status on its own but on top of that, there were also two separate occasions a few years apart (and involving different riders) that I was involved in that highlighted their incompetence. By the way, I grasped a long time ago (though not from any information from Belle Vue's end), how much the National Speedway Stadium's wrapped up in a wider development of its proposed site ... that wider angle still isn't anywhere near a good enough reason for me to explain Belle Vue's sluggish and poorly-presented progress.

Dear, oh dear, oh dear ... for the 3rd time in less than 24 hours !! As I explained earlier this morning on this thread, although no local team currently calls it their home, the Ricoh Arena isn't "vacant". Instead, its current financial status and its future use are right at the heart of a High Court judicial review in just 4 days' time that's a 3-way tussle between its owner, its city council and the football club that used to rent it !! Good luck knocking on Birmingham High Court's door to ask if a speedway team can move into a venue that's wrapped up in such heavy legal circumstances !! While this judicial review is hanging over the Ricoh Arena, it's immaterial how many noisy events it's already held well before becoming bogged down in this current legal struggle. Any future regular use of it, for speedway, football, rock concerts, tiddlywinks or anything else is totally dependent on what happens in Birmingham High Court from next Tuesday onwards. Far from the Ricoh Arena not having "any of the faff Belle Vue have been dealing with for the past few years", it's actually one of the very few sporting venues in this country that's still having MORE faff than Belle Vue are trudging through so slowly !! !!

On this thread as well as previous ones relating to this project, I've consistently stated that I support the idea of a National Speedway Stadium, especially if it's to be situated in a city with as much speedway heritage as Manchester. However, I've also consistently stated I've no confidence whatsoever in the ability of Dave Gordon or Chris Morton to oversee this project's development or be involved heavily in its successful operation should it ever be built. You may think that's a "cowardly and negative stance" ... I reckon it's a realistic view of where the project's reached (or more often, not reached) so far along with information I've weighed up from various angles. We'll gradually find out who's right and who's wrong ... what's more, I won't be afraid to congratulate everyone if it turns out we're enjoying an English Grand Prix or a World Cup Final at this stadium in a few years' time. Right now, and based overwhelmingly on the evidence I've seen so far, I don't expect to be making such congratulations.

And you're perfectly entitled to confirm such a belief. Mind you, the opening 4 paragraphs of the forum-thread you've quoted from mid-August 2013 are as follows ... BELLE Vue chief David Gordon has unveiled the stunning team of international business big-hitters who will play a major part in the club’s new era. He named an awesome consortium of top British businessmen who have invested in the club’s future and the new stadium at the new Belle Vue Sports Village. It was recently given the green light by Manchester City Council who have appointed international construction company ISG, who have a base on Salford Quays, to develop the site in Kirkmanshulme Lane, Gorton. ISG, who built the futuristic Velodrome for last year’s London Olympics, are now pursuing planning permission and hopes are high the Aces will race into their new home in 2014. Given we're already nearly halfway through 2014, are those hopes still high that the Aces will race into their new home this year ? !! There's a repeated theme here ... the MEN-article from Feb-2012 targeted the 2013 World Cup for the new stadium ... then the forum-thread and press release from Aug-2013 targeted 2014 for Belle Vue racing into their new homw ... now, on the first page of this thread in Jun-2014, we had "Phil The Ace" reporting that "Diggers won't be digging until next year at earliest." There's only so long you can credibly keep raising hopes for "next year" and then switch without any shame to another "next year" when the calendar moves on.

You seemed reasonably bothered about it 10 hours earlier !! 28-months (from the MEN-article I quoted back in February 2012 which headlined the hosting of the 2013 World Cup Final) to reach the "massive step forward" according to Dave Gordon yesterday of showing the stadium-skecthes to the locals doesn't fit many textbook descriptions of anyone who "CAN get things done".

I've spent plenty of time over the past 7 years looking into the National Speedway Stadium ever since it was first mooted by Belle Vue. I fully understand what's been going on in Manchester thanks to material available from Manchester City Council, the Manchester Evening News and other more unlikely sources like BBC-1's excellent feature on Football Focus a couple of months ago explaining the link-up between the council and Man City FC regarding the plans for community facilities near the Etihad Stadium. In comparison, I've also paid full attention to the pitifully poor amount of worthwhile information (rather than waffle) that's emerged from the Belle Vue Aces themselves over these past 7 years, culminating in yesterday's hopelessly low-key announcement of the stadium-sketches tour of local libraries and community halls. By the way, I notice you've made no effort to reply to my question about the Ricoh Arena after I'd made the effort to bring your ignorance neatly up-to-date with that current situation ... not very good at debating anything, are you ? !!

Dear, oh dear, oh dear ... again !! The Ricoh Arena is nowhere near being "on a plate" for the Coventry Bees to plonk down a speedway track to save their future. Instead, next Tuesday at Birmingham High Court there's a judicial review involving Coventry City Council, SISU (the owners of Coventry City FC who are so deeply unpopular with that club's fans) and the company called ACL who own the Ricoh Arena. Trying to sum up a few years of football controversy in one post on a speedway forum isn't easy but here goes ... When Coventry City decided it wasn't worth further upgrading their Highfield Road ground in the late 1990's, they were still on a run of more than 30 years in the top division. But that ended with relegation in May 2001 while delays in demolition work to clear the site for the Ricoh Arena meant it didn't finally open until 2005 and, by then, Coventry City's crowds had started dwindling with little sign of them being promoted back to the Premier League. Hence the late-1990's financial planning between the football club and their new stadium owners was utterly wrecked by the time Coventry City actually began playing in the Ricoh Arena. As Coventry's results (and crowds) sank even further, including relegation to the 3rd-level (League 1), the new controversial owners of the football club SISU fell out spectacularly with ACL over revising the stadium-rent to reflect the club's poorer circumstances with the result that Coventry City began borrowing Northampton Town's ground for home games last August. In the meantime, Coventry City Council (not wanting to see a relatively new venue risk becoming obsolete like the recently-demolished Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield) granted ACL a loan of £14.4million to prop up the stadium's finances. Tuesday's Birmingham High Court judicial review centres on SISU accusing Coventry City Council of giving ACL "illegal state aid" with that £14.4million loan so that ACL didn't need to drop their stadium-rent to a more realistic level for League-1 football that would have enabled SISU to keep their team in its own city instead of reluctantly borrowing another ground 35 miles away. Reading between the lines, it appears Coventry City Council and ACL both want to make life as difficult as possible for SISU so that SISU eventually sell their ownership of the football club ... then, the new football owners triumphantly bring their team back into the Ricoh Arena and everyone except SISU lives happily ever after. Do you still think the Ricoh is "on a plate" for the Coventry Bees ? !!

Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Where have I commented about whether this forum is a place for big stories ? !! All I was commenting upon was Mr Rising's ridiculously overhyped description of what turned out to be such routine information betraying his inability to accurately weigh up what's a big story (and what isn't) despite his role as a professional journalist. If his "positive and concrete" news had turned out to be significant new funding for the project (maybe a million quid injection) or confirmation of any dates for a planning hearing, I'd have agreed it was a big story in the overall scheme of creating a National Speedway Stadium. But, instead, Mr Rising's "positive and concrete" news turned out (by his own admission this evening) to be the dates for a tour of local libraries and community halls by the set of smart sketches of what the stadium might eventually look like. The housing estate in which I live is currently being expanded from its original 45 houses (built in 2001) with a further 190 new houses ... the builder's plans for this expansion went on display for a couple of evenings in our local arts centre but they didn't feel it necessary to hype-up such a routine part of the building process before putting leaflets through our doors inviting us to those viewing nights. Underwhelming doesn't start to do justice to how Belle Vue's actual news today matches up to its preview hype.

By confirming today's news about the display schedule for the stadium sketches was indeed the cue for your "positive and concrete" comments that kicked-off this thread, you've just also confirmed your frighteningly low level of journalistic skills regarding what's a big story and what isn't. If such a desperately routine development of this project counts as "positive and concrete", will you be able to cope with the excitement of any ground-breaking digging by either the Aces management or riders without having a quiet lie-down halfway through it ?

No Southern bias ... I grew up inside the M25 but have lived in a totally different part of the UK for more than 20 years. Based on dealings I've had within speedway with Dave Gordon and Chris Morton as the front men of Belle Vue (rather than Morton's distinguished career as a rider), I'd regard "clowns" as the best way of combining a description of them while also rightly remaining within any guidelines of decency on any internet forum.

The fun really starts if/when the stadium's finally built because then clowns like Gordon/Morton either have to run it successfully themselves or successfully find the right people to run it for them. Based on the way they've fumbled their way through the first 7 years of this project, don't hold your breath about them making the most of such an important development should it become a reality. As I've said plenty of times on this forum before, I'm fully supportive of the idea of a National Speedway Stadium being established in a city with a speedway heritage like Manchester. But I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever in the folk like Gordon/Morton currently being speedway's figureheads in this project and the overhyped trumpeting today of such a routine stage of the planning process by themselves and their lackeys utterly reinforces my opinion.

If you're wondering why there's some cynicism and negativity hanging around, have a look at the following article ... http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/other-sport/speedway/belle-vue-hoping-to-host-2013-681359 In other words, it's taken 28 months of "making substantial progress" according to Dave Gordon in that article from February 2012 just to reach the stage where he now reckons it's a "massive step forward" that the locals can have a quick squint at what it might eventually look like. Back in the 1990's, Durham cricket took only 5 years to go all the way from being a minor-county needing to build a suitable stadium to apply for first-class status (1990) ... to gaining that upgrade and becoming the 18th first-class county while still using club grounds for home matches (1992) ... to start playing home matches at their Riverside ground in Chester-le-Street (May 1995) that's gone on to host plenty of innternational matches including its first Ashes Test last year. Yet Belle Vue, despite already being at its sport's top domestic level, has already used up nearly half of that Durham timeline just to showcase its sketchpad. And you're still wondering why there's some cynicism and negativity hanging around ?

And expect very slick and dreadfully dusty conditions when it's "Scorchio"

Is today's press release from the Aces what you trailed as "positive news" ? Because if it is, this project has reached the giddy heights of regarding people being able to go along to their local library to see some sketches as "positive news" or as Dave Gordon refers to it, "a massive step forward". More accurately, one of the most basic steps within any planning process (letting the locals have a look at it) is going to take place in a few days' time. If the clowns that run Belle Vue are getting so excited about this basic step, no wonder they're going to be so far out of their depth if they ever have to actually run this project should it ever get completed.