Tuesday 17 June 2014

Skidder Shorts No. 13 - SMBC & The Baggies

West Bromwich Albion Group Limited have only filed one set or accounts - for 2012 - but these showed a small profit of £1.5m on a record turnover. Not too bad in the crazed world of football finances. When all said and done, however, it is a private enterprise and not one - surely- which should be receiving funds from allegedly cash-strapped Sandwell Council in these austere times? Further, it may come as a surprise to the political High Command that some people in Sandwell don't actually care for football. Whisper it softly, but there are even some who support Wolves (like the infamous "Ian Crow")!

The Baggies have also set up their own charity which does some very good work - The Albion Foundation. This also receives considerable sums from SMBC - nearly half a million pounds in the last 3 financial years and continuing (£476,719.27p to be exact plus another £17, 184.66 in the last two months). Whether they are better at providing services than other charities is subject to further investigation at this time as is the selection criteria applied by SMBC when doling-out this substantial funding.

Going back to the private enterprise that is the football club, my recent FoI request shows that in the last 3 years, and despite austerity and cuts, SMBC has forwarded them £50,593.50p of taxpayers' dosh plus another £2,000 last month. Of this, a small sum of  just £385 was in respect of some tickets for some disadvantaged folk (which apparently could not be provided by the Club itself) but that still leaves over £50K from you and I for what Ian Crow  used to call "the Tesco Bags". The Club has also directly benefited from the closure of The Public by SMBC in respect of additional conference bookings etc.

SMBC has also forked out at least £15k so far which was intended for s106 infrastructure spending on the, er,  proposed "Celebration Statue"......... (This is not a WBA project as such).

On the subject of the Baggies, enter Labour's moronic "leader", Darren Cooper aka "The Turdfinder-General". He has been a bit reticent on his allegedly "personal" twitter account recently but he has had a right strop on about WBA's choice of new manager and is even threatening to show up at the proposed demo at The Hawthorns and throw his toys about. In his envious little way he has had another go at the Chairman's wealth. He also retweeted this - potentially libellous - gem:

"The xxxx xxxx regime is corrupt! #wba is no longer a football club for the fans but a cash cow with the sole purpose of personal gain"

If this is not "an endorsement" of the tweet from #Turdy what does he mean? He has a reputation for not having the cojones to deliver attacks personally but to do so via retweets eg. the infamous Thatcher "rot in hell" attack. If he does believe it then why the hell is his Labour Council paying the "corrupt regime" over £50k of our money - just when he is culling a third of the SMBC workforce?

Finally, there was an interesting vignette arising from all this. The megalomaniac Turdy has his band of brown-nosers in the mainstream media who are prepared to do his bidding in respect of political "news" but when Alan Irvine was appointed he tweeted sports hack Steve Madeley at the Express and Star and ordered:

"Steve ring me for a quote I am so angry".

This resulted in the curious tweet from our Steve, "Sent you a DM".

Addendum 18/06: And so it came to pass - the grovellers at the E&S were quick to obey Their Master's Voice and give Turdy extensive coverage in an article published yesterday. It also appears that Cooper is using his Sandwell Council iphone (paid for by the taxpayer) for some of his twitter campaign against the WBA heirarchy and to organise a "peaceful demonstration" which I am sure you will agree is an excellent use of a public asset! Hope we don't have to pay for any policing of this "demo".

Back to original text:

Maybe, Turdy thinks that with SMBC paying WBA & the Foundation so much of (our) money this entitles him and his inflated ego to a greater say than other fans but at least this all shows there is at least one person in West Brom who is his own man and who is not beholden to the Pyongyang regime!

I write this looking at my much cherished Cyrille Regis autograph and, if you don't mind strong language, respectfully refer you to this brilliant You Tube clip showing another crazed leader's demented behaviour as he hears of the Irvine appointment and as he faces his downfall surrounded by sycophants.......




THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG

e  thesandwellskidder@gmail.com                 t  @bcrover (Vernon Grant)

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