Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Interesting, I'm sure an argument could be made for all four. This will get interesting now.
Should we offer them a ground share?
Pitch should take the games as we do not use the middle bit and they were good to us when we really needed it.
It would help with the ground safety issues until these can be sorted properly and they could bounce all these issues back to the politicians. Obviously they will have to give us two picks from their first team squad to help facilitate things, but I am sure they already know how these things are done.
Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Interesting, I'm sure an argument could be made for all four. This will get interesting now.
Unfortunately this isnt the route.
Maybe some will recall that my great OS adventure started with a State Aid complaint. But in the end the EC did not go with an investigation because the State money does not flow directly to West Ham's balance sheet.
They did tell the BBC that they would be interested to hear directly from "competitors", i.e. Other clubs. But by the time a club grows enough balls to hire Mishcon de Reya to makemamcomplaint ( Mishcon are ready and waiting, it seems) we will have left the EU anyway.
Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Interesting, I'm sure an argument could be made for all four. This will get interesting now.
Unfortunately this isnt the route.
Maybe some will recall that my great OS adventure started with a State Aid complaint. But in the end the EC did not go with an investigation because the State money does not flow directly to West Ham's balance sheet.
They did tell the BBC that they would be interested to hear directly from "competitors", i.e. Other clubs. But by the time a club grows enough balls to hire Mishcon de Reya to makemamcomplaint ( Mishcon are ready and waiting, it seems) we will have left the EU anyway.
Hi Prague, maybe a bit dim about all this and although we are due to leave the EEC I did not think that football in England can ignore what is said as surely clubs will simply be denied the opportunity to play in the European competitions so I think a ruling would be relevant? Can you outline how it will be that they do not now need to worry about this. Thanks.
Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Interesting, I'm sure an argument could be made for all four. This will get interesting now.
Unfortunately this isnt the route.
Maybe some will recall that my great OS adventure started with a State Aid complaint. But in the end the EC did not go with an investigation because the State money does not flow directly to West Ham's balance sheet.
They did tell the BBC that they would be interested to hear directly from "competitors", i.e. Other clubs. But by the time a club grows enough balls to hire Mishcon de Reya to makemamcomplaint ( Mishcon are ready and waiting, it seems) we will have left the EU anyway.
Fair enough but, at this stage, the only option is via the EU.
Is there not an option under English Law that we can use? Competition, State Aid post-brexit, unfair contractual bias?
Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Interesting, I'm sure an argument could be made for all four. This will get interesting now.
Unfortunately this isnt the route.
Maybe some will recall that my great OS adventure started with a State Aid complaint. But in the end the EC did not go with an investigation because the State money does not flow directly to West Ham's balance sheet.
They did tell the BBC that they would be interested to hear directly from "competitors", i.e. Other clubs. But by the time a club grows enough balls to hire Mishcon de Reya to makemamcomplaint ( Mishcon are ready and waiting, it seems) we will have left the EU anyway.
Hi Prague, maybe a bit dim about all this and although we are due to leave the EEC I did not think that football in England can ignore what is said as surely clubs will simply be denied the opportunity to play in the European competitions so I think a ruling would be relevant? Can you outline how it will be that they do not now need to worry about this. Thanks.
State aid is allowed if it is offered to any business to take up within the EU on an open tender basis. Its against the rules of it is a sweet deal only available to a particular business and not publicly advertised by open tender throughout the EU.
West Ham say they were the only club that took up the offer and anyone else could have done the deal. Aspects have been approved by the UK court - that it was an open tender - and, allegedly, by the EU, but exactly what the EU were told and what they actually approved is not in the public domain.
Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Interesting, I'm sure an argument could be made for all four. This will get interesting now.
Unfortunately this isnt the route.
Maybe some will recall that my great OS adventure started with a State Aid complaint. But in the end the EC did not go with an investigation because the State money does not flow directly to West Ham's balance sheet.
They did tell the BBC that they would be interested to hear directly from "competitors", i.e. Other clubs. But by the time a club grows enough balls to hire Mishcon de Reya to makemamcomplaint ( Mishcon are ready and waiting, it seems) we will have left the EU anyway.
Hi Prague, maybe a bit dim about all this and although we are due to leave the EEC I did not think that football in England can ignore what is said as surely clubs will simply be denied the opportunity to play in the European competitions so I think a ruling would be relevant? Can you outline how it will be that they do not now need to worry about this. Thanks.
State aid is allowed if it is offered to any business to take up within the EU on an open tender basis. Its against the rules of it is a sweet deal only available to a particular business and not publicly advertised by open tender throughout the EU.
West Ham say they were the only club that took up the offer and anyone else could have done the deal. Aspects have been approved by the UK court - that it was an open tender - and, allegedly, by the EU, but exactly what the EU were told and what they actually approved is not in the public domain.
Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Interesting, I'm sure an argument could be made for all four. This will get interesting now.
Unfortunately this isnt the route.
Maybe some will recall that my great OS adventure started with a State Aid complaint. But in the end the EC did not go with an investigation because the State money does not flow directly to West Ham's balance sheet.
They did tell the BBC that they would be interested to hear directly from "competitors", i.e. Other clubs. But by the time a club grows enough balls to hire Mishcon de Reya to makemamcomplaint ( Mishcon are ready and waiting, it seems) we will have left the EU anyway.
Fair enough but, at this stage, the only option is via the EU.
Is there not an option under English Law that we can use? Competition, State Aid post-brexit, unfair contractual bias?
Well the equivalent body is the Competition and Markets Authority, and @Pedro45 in particular was encouraging us to follow that route. However this body does not particularly welcome complaints from private citizens (unlike the EC, I must point out). They basically say that if you send in a complaint and they don't think it measures up to their criteria, they will not even reply. Which frankly is fucking disgraceful. So I didn't bother. But I have always maintained that EU State Aid law is not the only mechanism by which UK citizens can examine whether State funds are being misused. If the CMA is not going to help us, we go directly to politicians. Basically, Sadiq Khan has now taken up this issue in the way we have always wanted a politician to do.
This would be the CMA that told the big 6 energy suppliers to start offering competitive prices about a year ago with no action to date apart from rumours of price INCREASES?
Whilst this is a terrible deal for everyone and the way the taxpayer is being fleeced is certainly disgraceful. This issue has nothing on the way we are still being fleeced for all those private finance initiatives Blairs labour used to fund new schools and hospitals.
Those deals were more like us paying a developer £150-200 million over the next 50-70 years for a hospital worth 30-40 million. And of course they would need significant updating work long before we'd have finished paying the initial bill. And there are literally hundreds of them across the country. Crippling the public finances..
Without meaning to derail the thread, when Lewisham A&E was due to be closed - wasn't it due to a PFI financed hospital elsewhere in the Trust? The Queen Elizabeth IIRC? If so, there was a bit on the BBC Breakfast News this morning about The QE - with patients having to wear incontinence pads, and some going for 2 months without a hair wash, due to staff shortages. I did question then - "..and how much is the PFI scheme fleecing from The Trust?".
I hadn't considered the parallel before, but it just shows how the taxpayer is little more than giant payday for many companies.
Yeah 100% agree. Many companies see a public organisation and think how can we get more out of them.
I read recently that a hospital trust got a full revamp of its computers and systems. What they got was a few versions old technology (not necessarily a bad thing) but the price they were paying off bulk buy this was more than if you'd have walked into PC world and brought the lot individually. Joke.
On PFI I personally think the man responsible for brokering the deals and who signed off on 95% of them should be done for crimes against this country rather than being considered a candidate for the labour leadership last time round.
I believe that completely: NHS tech is a notorious money pit.
When I was working for a healthcare software company, we provided services to companies like Bupa - specifically bespoke software packages. Ultimately the aim was to try and bring our product in to the market to the NHS; it would've been cost effective as it was already developed and running in hospitals, proven stable and secure, and ultimately would've saved a fair amount of cash and automated a lot of manual processes.
Unfortunately, when one of the big 4 consultancy firms entered discussions and provided advice, they suggested "adding a zero on to your fees"; in essence charge the NHS 10x our usual pricing structure. In comparison, private healthcare companies would've been paying 10% what the state would be charged..
Another cracking example of the NHS being milked dry is their secure broadband network, N3, which I think is operated and maintained by BT. When we had the required installation to our premises the costs were absolutely disgusting, alas - you're locked in.
Or there's the police radios, which used to be operated partly by o2 via "TETRA". O2 flogged their shareholding off to hedge fund(??!?!), which introduced a prohibitively expensive pricing structure - licensed per user - without really doing much to improve performance or modernise as far as I can see. This means there's currently confusion over what the the emergency services are going to do for their comms in the next year or so.
Sadly it's all too easy to go on; SERCO and G4S operating prisons and getting their grubby mitts on anything that's up for tender, whilst their track records both spell out failure.
Still.. Austerity, cuts, and reduced manpower - that's how we fix this mess apparently. God forbid the government learn to play hardball and negotiate like a private enterprise would. It makes me angry, and I fear what we're seeing here at the Olympic Stadium is just the tip of the iceberg - primarily because it's visible, but also because of the work of hardworking football fans like Prague. It's a crazy situation.
Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Interesting, I'm sure an argument could be made for all four. This will get interesting now.
Unfortunately this isnt the route.
Maybe some will recall that my great OS adventure started with a State Aid complaint. But in the end the EC did not go with an investigation because the State money does not flow directly to West Ham's balance sheet.
They did tell the BBC that they would be interested to hear directly from "competitors", i.e. Other clubs. But by the time a club grows enough balls to hire Mishcon de Reya to makemamcomplaint ( Mishcon are ready and waiting, it seems) we will have left the EU anyway.
Fair enough but, at this stage, the only option is via the EU.
Is there not an option under English Law that we can use? Competition, State Aid post-brexit, unfair contractual bias?
Well the equivalent body is the Competition and Markets Authority, and @Pedro45 in particular was encouraging us to follow that route. However this body does not particularly welcome complaints from private citizens (unlike the EC, I must point out). They basically say that if you send in a complaint and they don't think it measures up to their criteria, they will not even reply. Which frankly is fucking disgraceful. So I didn't bother. But I have always maintained that EU State Aid law is not the only mechanism by which UK citizens can examine whether State funds are being misused. If the CMA is not going to help us, we go directly to politicians. Basically, Sadiq Khan has now taken up this issue in the way we have always wanted a politician to do.
I sent a complaint to the CMA about price fixing in the musical instruments industry a couple of years back, and got some replies, though they did take their time with them. In my case they eventually stated that they are on a tight budget and whilst they could see the problem clearly, there were bigger projects they'd rather pursue. It could be a worthwhile exercise. My issue was relatively small and low key compared to something like this.
The Chairman of LLDC, David Edmunds, has resigned. Dan Crawford, our Fulham guy who is also a local councillor, says more of them are thinking of following...
It's autumn 89, all over again :-)))))))))
Heard this on 5 LIve whilst eating breakfast & nearly choked on my granola !
The can of worms has been well & truly opened ...
Each to their own. I just chuck on a few strawberries.
We had a chat this afternoon. The Coalition had no inkling of the seating story and at first I thought Owen has to have that wrong, it must be a one off £8M; not £8m every year. But a journalist of his calibre checks his facts, and he is sure. This is quite gobsmacking. We know the Amsterdam Arena has a hydraulic retractable system. Given what we know about the overall costs, it seems the entire system cost less than that, and we taxpayers are going to pay this every year???
Together with the loss of the naming rights, this means the stadium will make an operating loss for the foreseeable future, unless of course West Ham are prevailed upon to pay their fair share.
All of a sudden, it all becomes very simple...
I do hope Khan isn't just going to hand the keys over to West Ham at the end of this.
One of the most shocking lines in all of this for me is this: "The soaring cost of the retractable seating, always considered a prerequisite by West Ham if the stadium was to be suitable for football, will now be one of the major focuses for the wide-ranging inquiry ordered by Khan."
This line in itself proves the state aid bit in my view. That's £8m a year just to accommodate West Ham's 'prerequisite' on a £2.5m rental contract. Absolutely astonishing - they wouldn't release it, but the business case for that - which I understand is required for any major stadium works - would surely be explosive.
What about premier league rules or FA Laws, is there anything written into those do you think? 3rd party ownership of players seems to be a contentious issue and there may be something in there to say you can't get an advantage this way?
Thank you for all the suggestions guys, I will cover several points in one answer.
1. Yes to sending messages of support to Khan. It always helps to tell a politician that you support action he or she has taken.
2. The CMA...well I remain sceptical. I would have to look it up but there were some remarks on their website that really put me off.
3. State Aid to the EC. Well, the situation is still that the £8m for the seats does not flow directly to West Ham. I do not know how I would reformulate a complaint that would address the reasons why they ultimately turned down my original complaint. However, the architect Steve Lawrence has continued his work on State Aid. The Coalition agreed that we would leave that side to him. He is as passionate about State Aid as I am about FOI. We are going together to a University with a sport management faculty at Wembley in November to talk to their students on the topic. They invited us because they are already studying it. I'm hoping that some bright students might point the way forward to us.
4. FAPL or FA. Hmm. I think we are all sceptical about those two enforcing the rules they already have. But you are touching on a wider problem we have. It's the other clubs that ought to be leading the protests. Man U and Man C each pay £1m per year to police.. They are the ones who should be leading State Aid protests and talking to the two football bodies. Why don't they? Because the clubs do need each other to provide the "product" we call football. They are very reluctant to attack one of their own. And of course they can argue that West Ham didn't do wrong, in getting the best deal they can. However when they see just how favourable the deal is, and they also see how West Ham have bullied the LLDC (Brady threatens them with legal action seemingly on a weekly basis if they don't agree to a specific negotiation stance), then they might break ranks. Because we have the fans' coalition, we hope that at the right time, our member Trusts will go back to their clubs and say, time to blow the whistle. Thank you for reminding me of this aspect though, (the power of the other clubs) I will remind the others.
Out of interest - do we know how much revenue West Ham get from the £8m a year retractable! seats. And can't it be argued that that money is flowing to them?
Would it be a bad thing for the taxpayer if we did give the stadium to West Ham on the proviso that it makes it available as an athletics arena every summer ? Let West Ham have it and pay for the upkeep. We were never going to get our money back anyway and it has served its purpose for the olympics. All the time it's owned by the taxpayer it's going to be a drain on the public purse. Knocking it down or giving it away are probably the only two viable options.
We had a chat this afternoon. The Coalition had no inkling of the seating story and at first I thought Owen has to have that wrong, it must be a one off £8M; not £8m every year. But a journalist of his calibre checks his facts, and he is sure. This is quite gobsmacking. We know the Amsterdam Arena has a hydraulic retractable system. Given what we know about the overall costs, it seems the entire system cost less than that, and we taxpayers are going to pay this every year???
Together with the loss of the naming rights, this means the stadium will make an operating loss for the foreseeable future, unless of course West Ham are prevailed upon to pay their fair share.
All of a sudden, it all becomes very simple...
I do hope Khan isn't just going to hand the keys over to West Ham at the end of this.
One of the most shocking lines in all of this for me is this: "The soaring cost of the retractable seating, always considered a prerequisite by West Ham if the stadium was to be suitable for football, will now be one of the major focuses for the wide-ranging inquiry ordered by Khan."
This line in itself proves the state aid bit in my view. That's £8m a year just to accommodate West Ham's 'prerequisite' on a £2.5m rental contract. Absolutely astonishing - they wouldn't release it, but the business case for that - which I understand is required for any major stadium works - would surely be explosive.
It might actually be quite difficult to withhold a business case for the retractable seating (provided there is one) if asked for under FOI/EIR - always assuming that LLDC follow the rules.
It would be interesting to see LLDC attempt to make a case for either commercial confidentiality, with the cost in the public domain already, or that the issue remains live. Nor, as the business case is separate from the decision making process, would it be easy to make a coherent claim that safe space/chilling effect arguments to protect that process would come into play.
Of course, it would take time, and the involvement of the ICO, if history is anything to go by.
Too much tax payers money has been spent for it to just be given to them. They should be ordered to purchase it and at least some money would come back.
Would it be a bad thing for the taxpayer if we did give the stadium to West Ham on the proviso that it makes it available as an athletics arena every summer ? Let West Ham have it and pay for the upkeep. We were never going to get our money back anyway and it has served its purpose for the olympics. All the time it's owned by the taxpayer it's going to be a drain on the public purse. Knocking it down or giving it away are probably the only two viable options.
This sounds like the best solution to me!
West Ham 'own' and run the stadium but the LLDC pays 2.5 million per year to rent a clean stadium for 10 weeks a year (and keeps all ticket revenue during that period).
Sure but how much has been spent building and then converting the stadium? Do West Ham have a spare few hundred million knocking around? I'm fairly sure that's why they didn't offer to buy it first time around, they are nowhere near being able to actually afford it
if it's costing 8m a year to remove/replace the retractable seating and that happens for say the next 25 years, a total cost of 200m in total then why bother with it. just spend the 200m now on a purpose built athletics stadium. after 25 years we'd be in profit.
Comments
Am I readng this correctly? If you answer yes to the four questions, it is considered state aid?
Pitch should take the games as we do not use the middle bit and they were good to us when we really needed it.
It would help with the ground safety issues until these can be sorted properly and they could bounce all these issues back to the politicians. Obviously they will have to give us two picks from their first team squad to help facilitate things, but I am sure they already know how these things are done.
Maybe some will recall that my great OS adventure started with a State Aid complaint. But in the end the EC did not go with an investigation because the State money does not flow directly to West Ham's balance sheet.
They did tell the BBC that they would be interested to hear directly from "competitors", i.e. Other clubs. But by the time a club grows enough balls to hire Mishcon de Reya to makemamcomplaint ( Mishcon are ready and waiting, it seems) we will have left the EU anyway.
Is there not an option under English Law that we can use? Competition, State Aid post-brexit, unfair contractual bias?
West Ham say they were the only club that took up the offer and anyone else could have done the deal. Aspects have been approved by the UK court - that it was an open tender - and, allegedly, by the EU, but exactly what the EU were told and what they actually approved is not in the public domain.
When I was working for a healthcare software company, we provided services to companies like Bupa - specifically bespoke software packages. Ultimately the aim was to try and bring our product in to the market to the NHS; it would've been cost effective as it was already developed and running in hospitals, proven stable and secure, and ultimately would've saved a fair amount of cash and automated a lot of manual processes.
Unfortunately, when one of the big 4 consultancy firms entered discussions and provided advice, they suggested "adding a zero on to your fees"; in essence charge the NHS 10x our usual pricing structure. In comparison, private healthcare companies would've been paying 10% what the state would be charged..
Another cracking example of the NHS being milked dry is their secure broadband network, N3, which I think is operated and maintained by BT. When we had the required installation to our premises the costs were absolutely disgusting, alas - you're locked in.
Or there's the police radios, which used to be operated partly by o2 via "TETRA". O2 flogged their shareholding off to hedge fund(??!?!), which introduced a prohibitively expensive pricing structure - licensed per user - without really doing much to improve performance or modernise as far as I can see. This means there's currently confusion over what the the emergency services are going to do for their comms in the next year or so.
Sadly it's all too easy to go on; SERCO and G4S operating prisons and getting their grubby mitts on anything that's up for tender, whilst their track records both spell out failure.
Still.. Austerity, cuts, and reduced manpower - that's how we fix this mess apparently. God forbid the government learn to play hardball and negotiate like a private enterprise would. It makes me angry, and I fear what we're seeing here at the Olympic Stadium is just the tip of the iceberg - primarily because it's visible, but also because of the work of hardworking football fans like Prague. It's a crazy situation.
One of the most shocking lines in all of this for me is this: "The soaring cost of the retractable seating, always considered a prerequisite by West Ham if the stadium was to be suitable for football, will now be one of the major focuses for the wide-ranging inquiry ordered by Khan."
This line in itself proves the state aid bit in my view. That's £8m a year just to accommodate West Ham's 'prerequisite' on a £2.5m rental contract. Absolutely astonishing - they wouldn't release it, but the business case for that - which I understand is required for any major stadium works - would surely be explosive.
1. Yes to sending messages of support to Khan. It always helps to tell a politician that you support action he or she has taken.
2. The CMA...well I remain sceptical. I would have to look it up but there were some remarks on their website that really put me off.
3. State Aid to the EC. Well, the situation is still that the £8m for the seats does not flow directly to West Ham. I do not know how I would reformulate a complaint that would address the reasons why they ultimately turned down my original complaint. However, the architect Steve Lawrence has continued his work on State Aid. The Coalition agreed that we would leave that side to him. He is as passionate about State Aid as I am about FOI. We are going together to a University with a sport management faculty at Wembley in November to talk to their students on the topic. They invited us because they are already studying it. I'm hoping that some bright students might point the way forward to us.
4. FAPL or FA. Hmm. I think we are all sceptical about those two enforcing the rules they already have. But you are touching on a wider problem we have. It's the other clubs that ought to be leading the protests. Man U and Man C each pay £1m per year to police.. They are the ones who should be leading State Aid protests and talking to the two football bodies. Why don't they? Because the clubs do need each other to provide the "product" we call football. They are very reluctant to attack one of their own. And of course they can argue that West Ham didn't do wrong, in getting the best deal they can. However when they see just how favourable the deal is, and they also see how West Ham have bullied the LLDC (Brady threatens them with legal action seemingly on a weekly basis if they don't agree to a specific negotiation stance), then they might break ranks. Because we have the fans' coalition, we hope that at the right time, our member Trusts will go back to their clubs and say, time to blow the whistle. Thank you for reminding me of this aspect though, (the power of the other clubs) I will remind the others.
It would be interesting to see LLDC attempt to make a case for either commercial confidentiality, with the cost in the public domain already, or that the issue remains live. Nor, as the business case is separate from the decision making process, would it be easy to make a coherent claim that safe space/chilling effect arguments to protect that process would come into play.
Of course, it would take time, and the involvement of the ICO, if history is anything to go by.
West Ham 'own' and run the stadium but the LLDC pays 2.5 million per year to rent a clean stadium for 10 weeks a year (and keeps all ticket revenue during that period).
Same as now but the other way round!
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/nov/03/olympic-stadium-chris-baker-ravi-sharma?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
BBC article on the situation. Some interesting comments including Ken Livingstone