Jackets for Goal Posts. Nectar Points for Stadia.

[Cllr Cook's appalling misrepresentation of developments in the Ashton Vale Town Green Saga, and the failure so far of the professional media to report it, won't be covered here. Other blogs (try Anthony Butcher, the Ashton Gate Blogger and Bristol Indymedia for instance, or even, I'm told, on the OTIB boards) have been filling the void left by journalists and city lawyers very well without my help. Here, I'll stick to this more reflective piece about stadiamania. There may well be more.... ]

My own upbringing in the exhilaration, and more often the frustration, of supporting a football club started at Grainger Road (greyhound) stadium, then at Roots Hall, successive homes of Southend United. During that time, I must have seen both Rovers and City on their travels.  A lasting memory is the strains of 'Goodnight Irene' from the stands, and I came across this lovely
Pathe report of the 1952 United - Rovers cup match
 I was there. Probably!
Away games were a rare excursion and although we made it to Bath and to Torquay for the cup, we never reached Bristol.

 Later, Middlesbrough became my home side, and for a long while Ayresome Park was a Saturday afternoon destination of choice. But once the game had priced itself out of reach, the only time I saw the inside of the north-east's spanking new stadia, was as a guest of Her Majesty when her civil servants hired the venues for conferences. But after forty years, the Boro habit got pretty ingrained, and it's always their result I check first.

So far as I know, Sainsbury's played no part at all in Boro's move to the Riverside Stadium; that was down an ambitious club owner and the public money poured into the regeneration of the largely derelict Ironmasters District, along with a the promise – still unfulfilled – that it would trigger squillions of new private inward investment. The artwork – and the stadium – look nice, though!

Meanwhile, back in both Southend and Bristol, it's Sainsburys commercial ambitions that are being relentlessly pursued on the back of fans' passion and owners expanding egos. Whilst the Sainsbury's interest in the City and Rovers relocation, freeing them up to build megastores on the old club sites, are familiar enough, it's interesting to see how a similar strategy is being followed over in Southend.

Roots Hall is within a comfortable walk of the town centre, but well detached from its amenities. A park, some pubs, and a suburban station are close, and plenty of buses go by too. The site is is in multiple ownership, and Sainsburys want the lot to accommodate a 7,000sq.m (net) megastore with parking below and offices above (at Ashton Gate they're going for 9,300sq.m). There are 270 homes too. The minor independent owners, are ready to sell if the price is right.

The club itself is owned by a property developer, Ron Martin, through his company Martin Dawn. But the ground itself, bought largely by those fifties fans, no longer belongs to the club; it had to be sold back in 1999 to clear debts, with very little of the capital left to use for the club itself. The new ground owner, Roots Hall Ltd., is simply another corporate embodiment of Ron Martin. So Roots Hall Ltd leases the ground back to Southend United (owner, Ron Martin, as Martin Dawn) for £400,000 a year – creating such a drain on its accounts that it couldn't possibly survive without further support. OK, it's actually much more complicated than that.

 Enter Sainsburys.

They reckon Roots Hall would make a great supermarket + filling station. To get hold of it, they've provided United's life support machine for years, paying off the tax bills in last minute court deals and allowing the team and the club to survive – just. Regularly. On credit, of course.

And down on Fossetts Farm – that idyllic sounding edge-of town greenfield location where SUFC believe their destiny lies, it's Sainsburys who've offered to pay for construction of three of the four stands. I say four, though the fourth one seems to have been dropped because of the financial pressures. Just like the Ashton Vale project, the big deal isn't the stadium itself but the linked greenfield developments; a retail park, including a giant B&Q, a big hotel, and the usual outlets. There was to be a casino, too; but the sea front operators managed to stop that one. There'll be more money spinning at the Roots Hall supermarket and the value of the 'released' Sainsbury store floorspace in the town centre.

So it's not really about sport – even the professional game has only a tiny part in the big project.

The council in Southend has always backed the scheme, but without going to such expensive lengths as Bristol Council has backed City's Ashton Vale bid. In Essex, no-one's successfully gone cap-in-hand to the Civic Centre to ask for special planning concessions; normal standards apply. If meetings have been fixed and councillors' have been threatened, the evidence in Southend  is very hard to find. No public land has been sold to the applicants below its true value. The council has, however, agreed to bring a Compulsory Purchase Order to secure any land at Roots Hall that can't be secured by negotiation. That's about it.

Progress in Southend is painfully slow, and wholly reliant on the continuing goodwill of the supermarket; who are now so deep in the club's affairs that it's hard to see them walking away. But, new ground or not, the long-suffering Southend fans do have some reason to be cheerful. On the pitch, they've come back from the dead and are riding high.

 It doesn't look as much fun as in 1952. But that doesn't matter to Sainsburys.

Prejudicial Interests

It's increasingly likely that that the PROWG committee may (understandably) duck out of making the decision on whether to accept or refuse the inspector's recommendation to register Ashton Vale as a Town Green, and instead refer it to full council so that it can be voted on there.
 
If this should happen, any councillors who have already expressed an opinion on the overriding need - or otherwise - for a stadium will obviously have to abstain.  Neil Harrison, a member of the PROWG committee, had the good sense to anticipate this, and explained why on his blog in August

So, for example, Cllr Simon Cook would have to abstain because he has already made statements both in support of the new stadium and against the Town Green recommendation. On the other side, Tess Green would be unable to vote because she's already welcomed the judgement of the independent inspector. Neither would go to the decision making meeting with an open mind.
 
The OTIB ("One Team In Bristol") City fans' web site has suddenly closed down access for new subscribers - but not before publishing posts revealing other councillors' prejudicial views on the Town Green.

For instance, our own Stockwood councillor David Morris seems to have ruled himself out of any vote by making his (and, apparently, his party's) views known to the City fan who posted this message on OTIB:
 
"Hello i am a first timer so please go easy,i have read on the forum about people writing to there councillors and mp without little feed back. I have written to Councillor Morris to voice my concerns about Ashton vale like the club have asked us to expecting nothing back when today i had a knock on my front door and this guy introduced imself as councillor morris and he would like to talk about Ashton vale ,he said that he was in total agreement that bristol city should have a new stadium and he and alot of his other councillors will be voting in favour off our new stadium , the only time i will be voting blue is in the next elections if Mr morris stands"

I have no idea whether David Morris reads this blog; he and Jay Jethwa always seem reluctant to risk any dialogue in public on local issues, so there's never been any comment from either of them to my posts. If he does get the opportunity to vote on what is over-simplistically described in the above post as a 'stadium v town green' decision, then he must first explain this OTIB post and reveal who 'a lot of his other councillors' are.

I'm sure David wouldn't want his Conservative colleagues to vote against accepting the Town Green recommendation, while pretending that they have no predetermined views and would be influenced only by the evidence.

Expurgated !

There's a letter of mine in the Evening Post today. Well, part of it, anyway. It's been edited down, which is fair enough (though it would be far more honest if they marked each letter that's been cut, so readers know they're not looking at the original). What's more, they always seem to cut the best lines!

Have blog, will publish. Here is the original; the bits in bold never made it past the BEP editors.

" It's disappointing to see Stockwood councillor Jay Jethwa (August 5) condemn those councillors who decided, on the evidence, that the Sainsbury's superstore should not be permitted at Ashton Gate.  There is no reason for her to imply that party pressure was put on those councillors; after all, the LibDems have been as transparently pro-stadium as Tony Blair was pro-war.  Presumably Jay writes because, like all councillors, she's been targetted by the club's campaign to get fans to put pressure on individual members.

Jay might have been better advised to challenge the Cabinet decision to hand the club £5 million of land in an unsecured deal, in exchange for 'community benefits' spread over 30 years. 

Members of all parties, including her own, who scrutinised the sale advised against such a high-risk comitment of public assets to a very shaky business.  Jay's Tory instincts should have warned her against such extravagance with the public purse. Above all, her commitment to her Stockwood ward should have alerted her to the fact that every handout to the club, whether as land, as planning concessions (that's another £3.2 million plus), or as an inappropriate planning permission, must be recouped by squeezing wards like hers even harder. 

The 'affordable housing' that Steve Lansdown won't now have to provide at Moorelands will have to go disproportionately somewhere else.  The cash that should have come to the council from the Ashton land sales will have to be found by selling off land, or cutting services, somewhere else. Stockwood seems especially vulnerable.  And the changed traffic and cash flows caused by such a big superstore would have repercussions throughout South Bristol and beyond.

In short, however much we'd like a new Bristol City stadium, there are limits to the public risks and sacrifices that should be made to get it, especially in a time of savage cuts. 

Pete Goodwin
Green Party, Stockwood "