The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
'Sue Gray is keen, I'm told, that the inquiry is published in its entirety with no summary, or redactions which could blur or mask some of its more pointed information.'
Sue Gray hates email, and has a pretty much 100% record for refusing Freedom of Information requests.
She is the very opposite of what good governance should be,
If Government were completely transparent, then it would be considerably weakened and ineffective. Dave Eggers fictional works (the circle and the every) are quite good at exploring this issue, I recommend them.
As someone who has worked in the government, I would say that any written correspondence (ie emails) should serve a definitive purpose in relation to a written record as to why and how decisions were taken. Everything else should be destroyed immediately, teams messages etc should be 'burned' immediately after they have been read.
I am not against FOI, but the 'policy making' exemptions make it virtually meaningless, and just a waste of administrative resource in its current form. Rather than making government more transparent and open, it makes people more suspicious of it.
Cloud not quite as thick this morning, and no rain. OKC is going to a party this afternoon which should be making him a merry old soul, but isn't. Yet anyway.
No, if you are committed to attend Church regularly with your children then you are entitled to choose a school which selects similarly mainly Christian children.
If you disagree, you are no great loss to the Church of England anyway
Rather like being insufficiently Conservative? In another era, you'd have had a great career in the Spanish Inquisition, seeking out the insufficiently fervent with awesome dedication.
The Spanish Inquisition was one thing we got rid of by creating the Church of England . Though technically it existed in Spain, a far off country a long way away.
Though I think Hyufd here is somewhat underplaying the traditional CofE view that there is a pastoral responsibility to all inhabitants of the parish .
HYUFD is the sort of person who would be a loyal defender of any despotic right wing regime. There are always supplicant defenders of the elite.
Godwin’s Law effectively protects nascent despotism. We should not flinch at pointing out the threat posed by even tin-pot dictators. Real Conservatives, to their credit, ridicule Franco’s Tank Commander.
No, if you are committed to attend Church regularly with your children then you are entitled to choose a school which selects similarly mainly Christian children.
If you disagree, you are no great loss to the Church of England anyway
Rather like being insufficiently Conservative? In another era, you'd have had a great career in the Spanish Inquisition, seeking out the insufficiently fervent with awesome dedication.
The Spanish Inquisition was one thing we got rid of by creating the Church of England . Though technically it existed in Spain, a far off country a long way away.
Though I think Hyufd here is somewhat underplaying the traditional CofE view that there is a pastoral responsibility to all inhabitants of the parish .
'The Inquisition' didn't know national boundaries. For example, there were Austrian inquisitions in the fourteenth century. Galileo was convicted by the Roman inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition is particularly famous because Spain was an enemy of England and as a result English Protestants used its (frequently invented) excesses to justify war with it.
The last defence of the far right: try to trivialise breaches of lockdown rules that were broken by the very people who imposed them on the nation.
Sorry but we've seen through this one and most of the other efforts at obfuscating the painful truth.
I'm not sure it's the presence of the birthday cake that is the issue. The meeting should have been on Zoom rather than in the Cabinet room. The No 10 Covid risk assessment seems woeful. We are still having staff meetings on Teams despite everyone being back in the office.
No, if you are committed to attend Church regularly with your children then you are entitled to choose a school which selects similarly mainly Christian children.
If you disagree, you are no great loss to the Church of England anyway
Rather like being insufficiently Conservative? In another era, you'd have had a great career in the Spanish Inquisition, seeking out the insufficiently fervent with awesome dedication.
The Spanish Inquisition was one thing we got rid of by creating the Church of England . Though technically it existed in Spain, a far off country a long way away.
Though I think Hyufd here is somewhat underplaying the traditional CofE view that there is a pastoral responsibility to all inhabitants of the parish .
HYUFD is the sort of person who would be a loyal defender of any despotic right wing regime. There are always supplicant defenders of the elite.
Godwin’s Law effectively protects nascent despotism. We should not flinch at pointing out the threat posed by even tin-pot dictators. Real Conservatives, to their credit, ridicule Franco’s Tank Commander.
I sometimes wonder whether my fellow Essex resident is, in fact, the ultimate wind-up merchant.
Cloud not quite as thick this morning, and no rain. OKC is going to a party this afternoon which should be making him a merry old soul, but isn't. Yet anyway.
Will Johnson be there, or is he managing his own party?
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
No, if you are committed to attend Church regularly with your children then you are entitled to choose a school which selects similarly mainly Christian children.
If you disagree, you are no great loss to the Church of England anyway
Rather like being insufficiently Conservative? In another era, you'd have had a great career in the Spanish Inquisition, seeking out the insufficiently fervent with awesome dedication.
The Spanish Inquisition was one thing we got rid of by creating the Church of England . Though technically it existed in Spain, a far off country a long way away.
Though I think Hyufd here is somewhat underplaying the traditional CofE view that there is a pastoral responsibility to all inhabitants of the parish .
HYUFD is the sort of person who would be a loyal defender of any despotic right wing regime. There are always supplicant defenders of the elite.
Godwin’s Law effectively protects nascent despotism. We should not flinch at pointing out the threat posed by even tin-pot dictators. Real Conservatives, to their credit, ridicule Franco’s Tank Commander.
I sometimes wonder whether my fellow Essex resident is, in fact, the ultimate wind-up merchant.
It has crossed my mind. SeanT?
Or how about tim? He was wily enough, wicked enough and astute enough to create the ultimate Donkey With a Blue Rosette. He *loved* running rings round The Herd.
Cloud not quite as thick this morning, and no rain. OKC is going to a party this afternoon which should be making him a merry old soul, but isn't. Yet anyway.
Will Johnson be there, or is he managing his own party?
We each have to contribute food and/or drink so he'd probably not want to come. Even if we wanted him!
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
'Sue Gray is keen, I'm told, that the inquiry is published in its entirety with no summary, or redactions which could blur or mask some of its more pointed information.'
Sue Gray hates email, and has a pretty much 100% record for refusing Freedom of Information requests.
She is the very opposite of what good governance should be,
100% is certainly not the case. I agree you could say she was combative when in charge of FoI at the Cabinet Office, but she and her team took their responsibilities very seriously. Believe me there were certainly those in the CO and elsewhere who were discomfited by the requests she agreed to answer.
Truss on the Beeb now. Worth winding back and watching. She looks like she went to a Downing St suitcase party last night while suffering from Omicron.
Wonder how late the Americans made her stay up last night
Survived making my breakfast following a surprise encounter with a feisty French Fancy lying in wait with a tooled up sponge finger in the kitchen . We live in dangerous times people; dangerous times. Take care out there! https://twitter.com/Simon4NDorset/status/1486234030764871680
Nicola Sturgeon was right to say English covid rate 20% higher than Scotland, rules stats chief - The First Minister was accused of having “seriously twisted” the Covid figures by the Lib Dems.
Nicola Sturgeon was correct when she said England’s coronavirus infection rate was more than 20 per cent higher than in Scotland, the statistics watchdog has confirmed.
“How we are faring relative to England or anywhere else is not, in my view, the key comparison. But, given that others have sought to draw that comparison – inaccurately – in an attempt to undermine confidence in the Scottish Government’s decisions, I hope all members will now accept the conclusion of the chair of the UK statistics authority that the data I cited was, indeed, accurate.”
Truss on the Beeb now. Worth winding back and watching. She looks like she went to a Downing St suitcase party last night while suffering from Omicron.
Wonder how late the Americans made her stay up last night
She was up late partying, as a fellow Republican she was up celebrating Jacob Rees-Mogg insulting the Queen.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Would certainly explain why so many around here don’t seem to have the faintest clue about the electorate.
Posters like Mr Palmer ex-MP, who have deep experience of actual voter-contact, are valuable exceptions to the rule.
The biggest mistake on PB is grossly overestimating the traction that minuscule political stories have in the real world, while simultaneously failing to spot the bull in the chinashop.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Time zones. Sandpit is 4 hours ahead of Scotland, and Stuart 1 hour ahead. Leon, who can keep up?
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Retired and now, sadly, with considerably reduced mobility. Which is isolating! That's my excuse!
Morning all! Seems to be some confusion about whether the Gray report is coming out today or not - a mooted 3pm grilling for Peppa now looks less likely than before.
As for some of the late evening stuff on here, there is a reason I left the Church of England. Holier-than-thou sanctimonious hypocrites who endlessly whine on about the splinters in the eyes of everyone else whilst ignoring the Massive Plank in their own eye. The type who claim to be not only good moral people but Far Better than the likes of you and me whilst backing the very worst amoral unkind cruel things when not in church.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Retired and now, sadly, with considerably reduced mobility. Which is isolating! That's my excuse!
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Retired and now, sadly, with considerably reduced mobility. Which is isolating! That's my excuse!
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Retired and now, sadly, with considerably reduced mobility. Which is isolating! That's my excuse!
Enjoy your cake!
One of our members has gone retro, and is bringing a cheese & pineapple hedgehog. Someone else is bringing a pizza. So ..........
On the Rees-Mogg "we have a presidential style system now" comment, its genuinely a mark of how low the man has fallen. On the back benches he was always happy to invoke Bagehot and make some wonderfully precise and obscure observation about the mechanics of parliament.
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Could just be vii) finds PB more diverting than watching telly
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
The other thing about this is that the further you get from the times when a normal functioning adult productively occupied with education, employment or training should be available to post, the better the quality is.
I’m told that in a meeting with Govt special advisors today No 10 chief of staff Dan Rosenfield told them not to worry about police probe into No 10 parties.
It's not the fines or police they need to worry about - after Boris has finished firing everyone he needs to to protect himself they biggest concern come Thursday will be finding a new job.
Again I say: students got £10k fines for house parties. That was the organizers presumably rather than every one of the attendees.
So - someone in Drowning Street organized these parties. Not all of them will get a speeding fine.
Did any students actually pay a £10k fine or is that a myth?
Morning all! Seems to be some confusion about whether the Gray report is coming out today or not - a mooted 3pm grilling for Peppa now looks less likely than before.
As for some of the late evening stuff on here, there is a reason I left the Church of England. Holier-than-thou sanctimonious hypocrites who endlessly whine on about the splinters in the eyes of everyone else whilst ignoring the Massive Plank in their own eye. The type who claim to be not only good moral people but Far Better than the likes of you and me whilst backing the very worst amoral unkind cruel things when not in church.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Could just be vii) finds PB more diverting than watching telly
Good addition. I was reading in Dominic Sandbrooks book that people were watching TV for about 5 hours per day in the 1950s. In many ways the internet is just a replacement for TV.
On the Rees-Mogg "we have a presidential style system now" comment, its genuinely a mark of how low the man has fallen. On the back benches he was always happy to invoke Bagehot and make some wonderfully precise and obscure observation about the mechanics of parliament.
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
I think it started with a Speaker trying to assert the rights of the Commons against those of a Government, which did not command a majority, in what he perceived as an attempt to undo his wettest of dreams. After that, JRM became less interested in the ancient rights of the Commons and became a cheerleader of executive authority.
So you get more Grammar schools, sinking those who fail the exam on the day into a live of reduced advantages.
I take it you didn't go to a Grammar school and were privately educated?
Most of the pressure for extra grammar school places is in existing grammar areas, especially Kent.
That's fair enough, the secondary moderns (for that is what they are, even if they rebrand themselves) in 11+ areas have an insanely difficult task, which they struggle with massively. If there were a risk of my children ending up in them, that would be a big worry for me.
But by adding more GS places in selective areas, you end up making the grammar schools (a bit) more comprehensive. Ironic, really.
Meanwhile, in areas where there aren't secondary modern schools, there really isn't pressure to create grammar schools.
La Thatch knew what she was doing.
As I pointed out below the issue in areas with comprehensive schools is that you end up with 1 or 2 great comprehensives that are often in the expensive part of town away from the council estates.
Now most council estate children and parents won't want their children to go to that school but the parents that do should be granted the first places available rather than being rejected on distance grounds.
That isn't a problem round here as the best local comprehensive games the system to get them in.
So you are still selecting unless you force all council estate children to go to that school and all middle class parents to go there too in equal proportions.
You may as well force every shopper to go to Tesco and ban Waitrose, M and S, Asda and Lidl. Same socialist answer to everything, end choice, dictate and force everyone to only have one service they are allowed to use
Once again read what I posted and think - because you haven't read it.
There is a choice (which in your world doesn't exist at all) and most people take the easy option but it's available to all who want it. There is no selection involved here at all, parents choice the school and the school pulls the tricks it can to get the disadvantaged children into that school.
And as I said wait until you have children (God forbid) and enter the world of School Admissions where you will probably discover that due to admission criteria you have a chance of admission into 1 school and it won't be the one you want.
Wrong, I attend church every week and we have an outstanding church school nearby which selects based on church attendance.
There are grammar schools in Chelmsford. I am all for as much choice as possible
So have gamed the system and are "all right Jack"
You really do sum up why I left the Church of England.
No, if you are committed to attend Church regularly with your children then you are entitled to choose a school which selects similarly mainly Christian children.
If you disagree, you are no great loss to the Church of England anyway
You may be a member of the Church of England but I don't think you are a christian in any way shape or form.
Heck I struggle at times to grasp if you are a human being because I've seen Lions with more compassion.
You are a wet, left liberal, socialist, exactly the type of person I consider my political enemy.
I could not care less what you think of me
Yet I could pick up my phone tomorrow morning and have a 5 minute chat with the Chancellor or the Business Secretary (nature of the job I'm currently doing which is fixing a problem that costs the Chancellor about £300m in tax avoidance).
I somehow doubt you could.
I spoke to the Chancellor via Zoom only last year.
However I could not care whether you are a billionaire or on UC, ideologically based on your views you are still my political enemy
I am SHOCKED by this, utterly shocked to my core that this has happened, did anyone predict this?
One of sport’s biggest cryptocurrency-based fan platforms has gone into liquidation, leaving thousands of supporters with tokens that are now virtually worthless.
IQONIQ, which had deals with La Liga in Spain, the McLaren Formula One team and several leading European football clubs, has collapsed in Monaco. It was in effect a social media engagement platform for fans of the sports it sponsored and it sold its own cryptocurrency tokens.
The liquidation of the platform leaves clubs, sports organisations and fans potentially out of pocket. Its chief executive said that “millions” of IQONIQ tokens or coins had been bought and admitted that they were now worth almost nothing. However, he insisted that the value could bounce back. The Spanish club Real Sociedad have said that they are owed €820,000 (about £685,000) by IQONIQ. Crystal Palace have begun legal action over missed payments.
More seriously, on PB; it is just a good place to get information about what is going on in the world, acting as a kind of filter. I've read it on and off since 2015 and use it now as I quit all social media and even news websites, because there was too much provocative ideology posing as 'news'. The standard of debate is high, and I've found posting on PB is improving my written communication skills, so it isn't wasted time. I also think that it is anonymous and obscure enough to avoid unwanted public attention. That all said, I think I may have been able to get a story on the front page of a newspaper by posting on here, presumably due to the actions of other posters, or because of lurking journalists. It is a great resource.
On the Rees-Mogg "we have a presidential style system now" comment, its genuinely a mark of how low the man has fallen. On the back benches he was always happy to invoke Bagehot and make some wonderfully precise and obscure observation about the mechanics of parliament.
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
I think it started with a Speaker trying to assert the rights of the Commons against those of a Government, which did not command a majority, in what he perceived as an attempt to undo his wettest of dreams. After that, JRM became less interested in the ancient rights of the Commons and became a cheerleader of executive authority.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is not entirely wrong, though, is he? 2019 was, certainly according to many on here, though perhaps some doth protest too much about why they voted as they did, a battle not between Labour and Conservative but between Boris and Jeremy Corbyn. And although it is not true that changing Prime Minister mid-term leads immediately to a general election, recent experience is that it brings one closer, with both Boris and Theresa May seeking to exploit poll bounces to obtain new, personal mandates.
On the Rees-Mogg "we have a presidential style system now" comment, its genuinely a mark of how low the man has fallen. On the back benches he was always happy to invoke Bagehot and make some wonderfully precise and obscure observation about the mechanics of parliament.
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
I think it started with a Speaker trying to assert the rights of the Commons against those of a Government, which did not command a majority, in what he perceived as an attempt to undo his wettest of dreams. After that, JRM became less interested in the ancient rights of the Commons and became a cheerleader of executive authority.
'Sue Gray is keen, I'm told, that the inquiry is published in its entirety with no summary, or redactions which could blur or mask some of its more pointed information.'
Sue Gray hates email, and has a pretty much 100% record for refusing Freedom of Information requests.
She is the very opposite of what good governance should be,
100% is certainly not the case. I agree you could say she was combative when in charge of FoI at the Cabinet Office, but she and her team took their responsibilities very seriously. Believe me there were certainly those in the CO and elsewhere who were discomfited by the requests she agreed to answer.
Essex County Cricket Club, McLaren F1, and various not proper rugby teams such as Wigan Warriors, who had their shirts sponsored by IQONIQ last season and had been due to continue with the branding this season are owed money.
I’m told that in a meeting with Govt special advisors today No 10 chief of staff Dan Rosenfield told them not to worry about police probe into No 10 parties.
It's not the fines or police they need to worry about - after Boris has finished firing everyone he needs to to protect himself they biggest concern come Thursday will be finding a new job.
Again I say: students got £10k fines for house parties. That was the organizers presumably rather than every one of the attendees.
So - someone in Drowning Street organized these parties. Not all of them will get a speeding fine.
Did any students actually pay a £10k fine or is that a myth?
I thought they were threatened then cancelled?
A student in Nottingham died while evading a police raid on his house party.
The Australians have been a lot more ruthless about deposing political leaders who are liabilities in recent years. Perhaps a lesson for the Tory party this Australia Day.
On the Rees-Mogg "we have a presidential style system now" comment, its genuinely a mark of how low the man has fallen. On the back benches he was always happy to invoke Bagehot and make some wonderfully precise and obscure observation about the mechanics of parliament.
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
I think it started with a Speaker trying to assert the rights of the Commons against those of a Government, which did not command a majority, in what he perceived as an attempt to undo his wettest of dreams. After that, JRM became less interested in the ancient rights of the Commons and became a cheerleader of executive authority.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is not entirely wrong, though, is he? 2019 was, certainly according to many on here, though perhaps some doth protest too much about why they voted as they did, a battle not between Labour and Conservative but between Boris and Jeremy Corbyn. And although it is not true that changing Prime Minister mid-term leads immediately to a general election, recent experience is that it brings one closer, with both Boris and Theresa May seeking to exploit poll bounces to obtain new, personal mandates.
The current electoral system is wholly stupid. It is absolutely the case that many many voters believe they are voting for Boris, or for the Conservatives, or that their vote counts nationally.
None of these things are true. We don't elect the PM, we don't elect parties, and there is no national election to tally votes against. Boris Johnson became PM without an election, so the idea that he uniquely carried a direct electoral mandate is absurd and young Jacob knows it. The aim is to sow more confusion and more disquiet, to bring our political system into further disrepute.
That latter point is why it is most unlike him. A stickler for preserving process and tradition he is now ruthlessly pursuing what is good for him and screw the system. I used to quite enjoy his habit of anchoring everything back to Bagehot. Less so recently.
I’m told that in a meeting with Govt special advisors today No 10 chief of staff Dan Rosenfield told them not to worry about police probe into No 10 parties.
It's not the fines or police they need to worry about - after Boris has finished firing everyone he needs to to protect himself they biggest concern come Thursday will be finding a new job.
Again I say: students got £10k fines for house parties. That was the organizers presumably rather than every one of the attendees.
So - someone in Drowning Street organized these parties. Not all of them will get a speeding fine.
Did any students actually pay a £10k fine or is that a myth?
I thought they were threatened then cancelled?
A student in Nottingham died while evading a police raid on his house party.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Could just be vii) finds PB more diverting than watching telly
Good addition. I was reading in Dominic Sandbrooks book that people were watching TV for about 5 hours per day in the 1950s. In many ways the internet is just a replacement for TV.
Essex County Cricket Club, McLaren F1, and various not proper rugby teams such as Wigan Warriors, who had their shirts sponsored by IQONIQ last season and had been due to continue with the branding this season are owed money.
They should be having their arses sued by their fans, for a lack of due diligence in allowing their names to be associated with such companies as IQONIQ in the first place.
I’m told that in a meeting with Govt special advisors today No 10 chief of staff Dan Rosenfield told them not to worry about police probe into No 10 parties.
It's not the fines or police they need to worry about - after Boris has finished firing everyone he needs to to protect himself they biggest concern come Thursday will be finding a new job.
Again I say: students got £10k fines for house parties. That was the organizers presumably rather than every one of the attendees.
So - someone in Drowning Street organized these parties. Not all of them will get a speeding fine.
Did any students actually pay a £10k fine or is that a myth?
I thought they were threatened then cancelled?
A student in Nottingham died while evading a police raid on his house party.
Though that didn't answer the question. And from the article the Police were responding to a noise complaint not giving out £10k fines. Utterly tragic either way.
'Sue Gray is keen, I'm told, that the inquiry is published in its entirety with no summary, or redactions which could blur or mask some of its more pointed information.'
Sue Gray hates email, and has a pretty much 100% record for refusing Freedom of Information requests.
She is the very opposite of what good governance should be,
100% is certainly not the case. I agree you could say she was combative when in charge of FoI at the Cabinet Office, but she and her team took their responsibilities very seriously. Believe me there were certainly those in the CO and elsewhere who were discomfited by the requests she agreed to answer.
That is an interesting article and chimes fairly well with what I know, but Sue Gray comes out of it better than the author intended, I suspect.
The author does show himself to be quite staggeringly naive in thinking that he could write a book called “Please Just F*** Off, It’s Our Turn”, send the invites to the launch out from a Cabinet Office ‘x’ secure email, and not expect any repercussions. Really?
On the Rees-Mogg "we have a presidential style system now" comment, its genuinely a mark of how low the man has fallen. On the back benches he was always happy to invoke Bagehot and make some wonderfully precise and obscure observation about the mechanics of parliament.
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
I think it started with a Speaker trying to assert the rights of the Commons against those of a Government, which did not command a majority, in what he perceived as an attempt to undo his wettest of dreams. After that, JRM became less interested in the ancient rights of the Commons and became a cheerleader of executive authority.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is not entirely wrong, though, is he? 2019 was, certainly according to many on here, though perhaps some doth protest too much about why they voted as they did, a battle not between Labour and Conservative but between Boris and Jeremy Corbyn. And although it is not true that changing Prime Minister mid-term leads immediately to a general election, recent experience is that it brings one closer, with both Boris and Theresa May seeking to exploit poll bounces to obtain new, personal mandates.
I agree that the personality at the top does move votes, but it does not do so universally. I know a number of people who see their vote as a vote for their local representative rather than for a Government. Personally, I prioritise the Government I would like to see above local concerns. My own thesis would be that the character of the local area may determine attitudes. If you're from an area with a tradition of localism, you're more likely to vote for a homegrown candidate, whereas if you live in a safer seat, and are more used to party candidates outwith the area, the character and quality of your local representative is less important.
I'm not a parliamentary historian, and so others might be better placed to comment, but who will become Prime Minister seems a fairly legitimate reason for which party to vote for, even in a Parliamentary system where you ostensibly elect a local representative. I suspect that has been the case for a very long time (much was made of Lloyd George as the man who won the war). That does not make the system Presidential, as the right to form a Government is based on Parliamentary support. I suspect JRM's argument that we now have such a system is because he fears that Parliamentary support is falling away.
Covid update. Day 1 and 2 were like mild flu, bit of disorientation and dizziness. Day 3 - above has gone but have an emerging cough and cold.
Just really like a typical winter cold to be honest, although I haven't had one for two years. Been working my day job through it as I otherwise would have done. The reality is that, as a contractor, I wouldn't be paid if I don't work, I suppose I am lucky to have a job I can do whilst in self isolation.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 2m It's interesting the different strategies being employed by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to Partygate. Truss being the conspicuous loyalist. Rishi being conspicuous by his absence.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Could just be vii) finds PB more diverting than watching telly
Good addition. I was reading in Dominic Sandbrooks book that people were watching TV for about 5 hours per day in the 1950s. In many ways the internet is just a replacement for TV.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Could just be vii) finds PB more diverting than watching telly
Good addition. I was reading in Dominic Sandbrooks book that people were watching TV for about 5 hours per day in the 1950s. In many ways the internet is just a replacement for TV.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Could just be vii) finds PB more diverting than watching telly
Good addition. I was reading in Dominic Sandbrooks book that people were watching TV for about 5 hours per day in the 1950s. In many ways the internet is just a replacement for TV.
1950s?
I am sceptical.
70s and 80s - more likely.
That's what I thought when reading it. Beware of second hand uncited statistics recited from memory! But there is a lot in the idea that the internet is an evolution of TV.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Could just be vii) finds PB more diverting than watching telly
Good addition. I was reading in Dominic Sandbrooks book that people were watching TV for about 5 hours per day in the 1950s. In many ways the internet is just a replacement for TV.
That's what I was thinking. I seem to recall the coronation was an event that pushed tv ownership up a bit. But that may be one of the british myths.
Possibly TV was getting to the middle classes at the time, and got a blip upwards - and those are the classes who write the newspapers.
Alternatively it's the usual patriotic one country together phatic discourse. Like how the entire nation held street parties for X wedding or Y jubilee.
Covid update. Day 1 and 2 were like mild flu, bit of disorientation and dizziness. Day 3 - above has gone but have an emerging cough and cold.
Just really like a typical winter cold to be honest, although I haven't had one for two years. Been working my day job through it as I otherwise would have done. The reality is that, as a contractor, I wouldn't be paid if I don't work, I suppose I am lucky to have a job I can do whilst in self isolation.
Very much the same for me. Both in terms of circumstances and symptoms. Although in my case I also had one of those flu like aches in all my joints for a few days.
I am SHOCKED by this, utterly shocked to my core that this has happened, did anyone predict this?
One of sport’s biggest cryptocurrency-based fan platforms has gone into liquidation, leaving thousands of supporters with tokens that are now virtually worthless.
IQONIQ, which had deals with La Liga in Spain, the McLaren Formula One team and several leading European football clubs, has collapsed in Monaco. It was in effect a social media engagement platform for fans of the sports it sponsored and it sold its own cryptocurrency tokens.
The liquidation of the platform leaves clubs, sports organisations and fans potentially out of pocket. Its chief executive said that “millions” of IQONIQ tokens or coins had been bought and admitted that they were now worth almost nothing. However, he insisted that the value could bounce back. The Spanish club Real Sociedad have said that they are owed €820,000 (about £685,000) by IQONIQ. Crystal Palace have begun legal action over missed payments.
3. If I did attend the party, I did not realise it was a party
4. If I attended the party and realised it was a party, I did not know that parties were banned under the rules that I wrote.
🔷ADDENDUM DEFENCE STATEMENT🔷
5. Any party thrown in my honour to mark my birthday, at which I was photographed eating cake and surrounded by well wishers, was in fact a military ambush.
The Australians have been a lot more ruthless about deposing political leaders who are liabilities in recent years. Perhaps a lesson for the Tory party this Australia Day.
Not necessarily all to the good for the party concerned. The Australian Labor Party removed PM Rudd in 2010 and replaced him with Gillard, Gillard lost the ALP its majority later that year. It then replaced Gillard back with Rudd in 2013 and Rudd lost the election that year too.
The Australian Liberal Party then replaced PM Abbott with PM Turnbull in 2016, Turnbull then lost the Coalition its majority later that year. It then removed PM Turnbull after a spill in 2019 and his Treasurer Scott Morrison ended up PM in 2018 and won a narrow victory in 2019. So only one change proved successful.
Here too of recent changes of PM in power, replacing Blair with Brown in 2007 saw Labour lose its majority in 2010. Replacing Cameron with May as PM in 2016 saw the Tories lose their majority in 2017. Only replacing May with Boris in 2019 saw the Tories win a majority and can be said to have been successful.
Going back further, replacing Thatcher with Major worked too but it is a mixed bag
On the Rees-Mogg "we have a presidential style system now" comment, its genuinely a mark of how low the man has fallen. On the back benches he was always happy to invoke Bagehot and make some wonderfully precise and obscure observation about the mechanics of parliament.
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Could just be vii) finds PB more diverting than watching telly
Good addition. I was reading in Dominic Sandbrooks book that people were watching TV for about 5 hours per day in the 1950s. In many ways the internet is just a replacement for TV.
On the Rees-Mogg "we have a presidential style system now" comment, its genuinely a mark of how low the man has fallen. On the back benches he was always happy to invoke Bagehot and make some wonderfully precise and obscure observation about the mechanics of parliament.
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
I think it started with a Speaker trying to assert the rights of the Commons against those of a Government, which did not command a majority, in what he perceived as an attempt to undo his wettest of dreams. After that, JRM became less interested in the ancient rights of the Commons and became a cheerleader of executive authority.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is not entirely wrong, though, is he? 2019 was, certainly according to many on here, though perhaps some doth protest too much about why they voted as they did, a battle not between Labour and Conservative but between Boris and Jeremy Corbyn. And although it is not true that changing Prime Minister mid-term leads immediately to a general election, recent experience is that it brings one closer, with both Boris and Theresa May seeking to exploit poll bounces to obtain new, personal mandates.
He is entirely wrong to pretend that a possible de facto position must be acted on as if de jure.
The difference between presidential and 'effectively' presidential is massive for someone trying to state what actual rules are.
Morning all! Seems to be some confusion about whether the Gray report is coming out today or not - a mooted 3pm grilling for Peppa now looks less likely than before.
As for some of the late evening stuff on here, there is a reason I left the Church of England. Holier-than-thou sanctimonious hypocrites who endlessly whine on about the splinters in the eyes of everyone else whilst ignoring the Massive Plank in their own eye. The type who claim to be not only good moral people but Far Better than the likes of you and me whilst backing the very worst amoral unkind cruel things when not in church.
I don't pretend to be a Saint, everybody sins but as Christians you can still use the Bible as a guide for your life. Obviously you are so left liberal even a relatively liberal Christian Church like the Anglican Church is not left liberal enough for you (you obviously would not even get past the door in a more conservative evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal Church or the more traditional Roman Catholic Church) so no worries you are gone
The Australians have been a lot more ruthless about deposing political leaders who are liabilities in recent years. Perhaps a lesson for the Tory party this Australia Day.
Its possible to go too far in the opposite direction, especially with 3 year cycles.
I know he won in 2019 but ffs tories: wake up! He won against an unelectable anti-semitic Marxist. He is NOT going to win in 2024. Instead, if your party doesn't have the courage to remove him, you will be taken to the cleaners.
You have one chance to staunch the wound and mitigate against losses and it's almost certainly now.
p.s. I write this as a leftie who love to see the tories trounced but I am also, genuinely, concerned about the welfare of this country if you leave Johnson in office for another two years.
Essex County Cricket Club, McLaren F1, and various not proper rugby teams such as Wigan Warriors, who had their shirts sponsored by IQONIQ last season and had been due to continue with the branding this season are owed money.
They should be having their arses sued by their fans, for a lack of due diligence in allowing their names to be associated with such companies as IQONIQ in the first place.
I'm an Essex member. Thanks for drawing this to my attention. I will be asking questions.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
This is true for most sports. Don’t forget sponsorship though. County cricketers etc get a car, free bats and kit etc. They will also expect to get a benefit season towards the end, useful for setting up the next stage of their lives. I note Brady has career earnings north of 1,000,000 dollars. Letting out the flat you don’t need while globe trotting is just sound business.
Cricketers getting free bats, while being paid £25k a year woophie. Its why so many have to have a second job of some sort (be it more cricket or other off season income). Also making it through 10 years of county cricket is far from a certainty. And its a pretty shitty life constantly on the road living out of budget hotels.
As for Broady, as explained, his expenses are vast and sponsorship small. I don't have the video link to hand, but he explains if he doesn't win a round at one of the grand slams in a year, he can't pay for his strength and conditioning coach. He spends £12k a year out of his own pocket on restring-ing his rackets alone. The constant travel for tennis is eye wateringly expensive, without the sort of income that say golf can provide.
I think he says from that $1m, he has made about $100k....in 10 years.
Professional touring sports are brutal at the lower levels, the costs of competing are enormous and the prize money often doesn’t cover the costs.
If you take tennis, golf and motor racing, there’s only a couple of hundred people in the world making a living competing in each of these sports full time, but there’s a couple of thousand more who are working day jobs to try and realise a dream. Many of them work as coaches when not competing or chasing sponsorship, to be able to afford to pay for their own coaches and trainers when they are!
Earnings of a million disappear really quickly, when you’re paying for two or three people to travel to a dozen international events every year.
Of course, for the top couple of dozen people in each of these sports, they are living the dream and earning millions. That’s what most of us watch on TV.
An old uni friend of mine was/is motorsport mad. He studied aeronautical engineering and got a minorish jib in tech. Last year, nearly thirty years later and in his late forties, he won a minor Nascar championship.
He has dedicated his life to motorsport, and seems to enjoy it.
Years ago Trans World Sport had an article on an American man who had retired from motorsport in his seventies. I'd not really heard of him, but he'd driven nearly everything going (including, I think, an F1 test in the 1970s). He made his living from being a journeyman racer - if someone needed a driver urgently (say because of illness in tintops) he'd jump in. Quite a life.
Good story. The people who do make money at motorsport, are the team managers and engineers who work the hours just like any other job. Lots of hours though, high pressure and little downtime or family life. F1 teams are now losing mechanics to Le Mans endurance series teams, who pay a little less money for a lot less work over the season.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
I struggle to understand how some PBers manage to hold down a job at all. Some of you must turn up at work absolutely knackered.
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
My explanations would be either i) retired ii) living off wealth; iii) long term unemployment, iv) disabled, v) gainfully employed but single, introverted, or with little social life in the real world, vi) extremely productive. Or some kind of combination of more than one of the above.
Retired and now, sadly, with considerably reduced mobility. Which is isolating! That's my excuse!
Gives you opportunity to run mental rings around us (semi) youthful folk.
And JRM's battle cry that removing him means a General Election is the most pathetic piece of dissembling ever to pass his lips.
Of course it means no such thing. The tories have a whopping majority and will govern until May 2024. There is no moral, ethical or political reason why they shouldn't even if they remove Johnson.
Yes, but for half the part of Roman history Emperors ran things Instead did they not (I know they still had consuls)? Much more than half if counting the east.
Morning all! Seems to be some confusion about whether the Gray report is coming out today or not - a mooted 3pm grilling for Peppa now looks less likely than before.
As for some of the late evening stuff on here, there is a reason I left the Church of England. Holier-than-thou sanctimonious hypocrites who endlessly whine on about the splinters in the eyes of everyone else whilst ignoring the Massive Plank in their own eye. The type who claim to be not only good moral people but Far Better than the likes of you and me whilst backing the very worst amoral unkind cruel things when not in church.
I don't pretend to be a Saint, everybody sins but as Christians you can still use the Bible as a guide for your life. Obviously you are so left liberal even a relatively liberal Christian Church like the Anglican Church is not left liberal enough for you (you obviously would not even get past the door in a more conservative evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal Church or the more traditional Roman Catholic Church) so no worries you are gone
@RochdalePioneers and I certainly don't share the same politics but I do find him to be one of the most honest and open on here about his what he thinks, even it might be deemed unacceptable to many.
I know he won in 2019 but ffs tories: wake up! He won against an unelectable anti-semitic Marxist. He is NOT going to win in 2024. Instead, if your party doesn't have the courage to remove him, you will be taken to the cleaners.
You have one chance to staunch the wound and mitigate against losses and it's almost certainly now.
p.s. I write this as a leftie who love to see the tories trounced but I am also, genuinely, concerned about the welfare of this country if you leave Johnson in office for another two years.
Latest polls give Labour about a 7% lead.
That is hung parliament territory not 1997 Labour landslide territory, especially after the boundary changes. Not one poll suggests any alternative Tory leader to Boris would win another Tory majority or even Tories most seats, even if Sunak might do fractionionally better.
The push for change is mainly from Labour, LD and SNP voters who still would not vote Tory even if Sunak was PM. If Labour was over 10% ahead in every poll ie pre 1997 territory, you might have a point, it is not
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 2m It's interesting the different strategies being employed by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to Partygate. Truss being the conspicuous loyalist. Rishi being conspicuous by his absence.
Comments
The only voting intention that matters right now is of Conservative MPs. We shall see whether they actually ever do anything.
There’s so many drivers out there, and apart from the top handful in F1, Indy and rallying, everyone is trying to find money to go racing. Many of them work as track experience instructors, hoping that one rich CEO customer will take a liking to them and put a company logo on a race car or join together in a pro-am team. Others will work for a car manufacturer or parts supplier doing boring test driving, or for film and TV companies doing stunts, again hoping that they can find a way to get a race seat or sponsorship deal. It’s a totally brutal industry, and I’m glad I never took it any further than racing karts as a teenager.
Today’s teenagers are now spending tens of thousands a season to race in national kart championships, the problem is getting a lot worse, and the end result is a bunch of very rich kids making it to the limited F1 seats, while those with the talent can’t make it. Even right at the top level, half the F1 field are paying for their drive!
I imagine the same goes on in many other sports too, we certainly hear of it a lot in tennis, with parents giving up their own lives and spending money on coaching for teenagers hoping they will make it as professionals.
Right, back to the boring IT manager day job - have backups to verify, next year’s upgrades budget to argue about, and an information security training training course to update.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz,_Duke_of_Bavaria
It is very hard to justify. You’d be using your time much better knocking doors and meeting prospective voters.
As someone who has worked in the government, I would say that any written correspondence (ie emails) should serve a definitive purpose in relation to a written record as to why and how decisions were taken. Everything else should be destroyed immediately, teams messages etc should be 'burned' immediately after they have been read.
I am not against FOI, but the 'policy making' exemptions make it virtually meaningless, and just a waste of administrative resource in its current form. Rather than making government more transparent and open, it makes people more suspicious of it.
The longer Con MPs prevaricate, the stronger the actual electorate becomes. And they are not happy bunnies.
Cloud not quite as thick this morning, and no rain. OKC is going to a party this afternoon which should be making him a merry old soul, but isn't.
Yet anyway.
Or is it Happy Sue Gray Eve?
KayBurley: Did you go to any parties?
Liz Truss: "I didn't."
Were you ever invited?
"No."
https://twitter.com/TSEofPB/status/1486239480646410244
Interestingly, Starmer's slightly edged out to 12.5 but Sunak's odds have lengthened a little too (still 2.84).
Or how about tim? He was wily enough, wicked enough and astute enough to create the ultimate Donkey With a Blue Rosette. He *loved* running rings round The Herd.
Even if we wanted him!
Wonder how late the Americans made her stay up last night
https://twitter.com/Simon4NDorset/status/1486234030764871680
- The First Minister was accused of having “seriously twisted” the Covid figures by the Lib Dems.
Nicola Sturgeon was correct when she said England’s coronavirus infection rate was more than 20 per cent higher than in Scotland, the statistics watchdog has confirmed.
“How we are faring relative to England or anywhere else is not, in my view, the key comparison. But, given that others have sought to draw that comparison – inaccurately – in an attempt to undermine confidence in the Scottish Government’s decisions, I hope all members will now accept the conclusion of the chair of the UK statistics authority that the data I cited was, indeed, accurate.”
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-right-use-20-26047354
At least Rennie is trying. Where’s his useless boss Cole-Hamilton?
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1486239164488110082/video/1
That is one weighty pause https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1486241469182746626/video/1
Posters like Mr Palmer ex-MP, who have deep experience of actual voter-contact, are valuable exceptions to the rule.
The biggest mistake on PB is grossly overestimating the traction that minuscule political stories have in the real world, while simultaneously failing to spot the bull in the chinashop.
You elevate your heart rate during the control questions and can do what you like for the rest of the interview.
[Also, lie detectors are fictional devices. Polygraphs just measure physiological responses and are wildly inaccurate. You may as well toss a coin.]
That's my excuse!
As for some of the late evening stuff on here, there is a reason I left the Church of England. Holier-than-thou sanctimonious hypocrites who endlessly whine on about the splinters in the eyes of everyone else whilst ignoring the Massive Plank in their own eye. The type who claim to be not only good moral people but Far Better than the likes of you and me whilst backing the very worst amoral unkind cruel things when not in church.
So ..........
Then into cabinet and he lies to the Queen, sprawls out on the Treasury Bench and now says Boris is President. Clearly he enjoys being in Cabinet and knows his time there is solely predicated on Boris being PM.
Its like the Jezbollah foamers on Twitter upset that the NEC refused to use their non-powers to direct the PLP to reinstate the Jeremy. Apparently the people of Islington North elected a Labour MP. When you point out that our electoral system doesn't work that way they get all upset. Do people generally just say what they want to be true rather than what is true despite all the evidence of their senses? I don't get it.
I thought they were threatened then cancelled?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-summary-of-the-2020-election-biden-wisconsin-trump-lawsuit-voting-rights-fraud-absentee-dropboxes-ballot-curing-big-lie-11642966744
Interesting what they say about the impact of Mark Zuckerberg’s organisation - they think it helped Biden by 8K votes in WI.
Your enemies are on the benches behind you
One of sport’s biggest cryptocurrency-based fan platforms has gone into liquidation, leaving thousands of supporters with tokens that are now virtually worthless.
IQONIQ, which had deals with La Liga in Spain, the McLaren Formula One team and several leading European football clubs, has collapsed in Monaco. It was in effect a social media engagement platform for fans of the sports it sponsored and it sold its own cryptocurrency tokens.
The liquidation of the platform leaves clubs, sports organisations and fans potentially out of pocket. Its chief executive said that “millions” of IQONIQ tokens or coins had been bought and admitted that they were now worth almost nothing. However, he insisted that the value could bounce back. The Spanish club Real Sociedad have said that they are owed €820,000 (about £685,000) by IQONIQ. Crystal Palace have begun legal action over missed payments.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fans-face-big-cryptocurrency-losses-after-platform-goes-into-liquidation-czxpcwd60
BBC News - Tom Miller: Hiding student fell to death at illegal lockdown party
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-58070838
The Australians have been a lot more ruthless about deposing political leaders who are liabilities in recent years. Perhaps a lesson for the Tory party this Australia Day.
None of these things are true. We don't elect the PM, we don't elect parties, and there is no national election to tally votes against. Boris Johnson became PM without an election, so the idea that he uniquely carried a direct electoral mandate is absurd and young Jacob knows it. The aim is to sow more confusion and more disquiet, to bring our political system into further disrepute.
That latter point is why it is most unlike him. A stickler for preserving process and tradition he is now ruthlessly pursuing what is good for him and screw the system. I used to quite enjoy his habit of anchoring everything back to Bagehot. Less so recently.
for South Leicestershire.
I am sceptical.
70s and 80s - more likely.
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-summary-of-the-2020-election-biden-wisconsin-trump-lawsuit-voting-rights-fraud-absentee-dropboxes-ballot-curing-big-lie-11642966744
And this is the original document that the paywalled thing is summarizing:
https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021ElectionReviewStudy.pdf
Though that didn't answer the question. And from the article the Police were responding to a noise complaint not giving out £10k fines. Utterly tragic either way.
The author does show himself to be quite staggeringly naive in thinking that he could write a book called “Please Just F*** Off, It’s Our Turn”, send the invites to the launch out from a Cabinet Office ‘x’ secure email, and not expect any repercussions. Really?
I'm not a parliamentary historian, and so others might be better placed to comment, but who will become Prime Minister seems a fairly legitimate reason for which party to vote for, even in a Parliamentary system where you ostensibly elect a local representative. I suspect that has been the case for a very long time (much was made of Lloyd George as the man who won the war). That does not make the system Presidential, as the right to form a Government is based on Parliamentary support. I suspect JRM's argument that we now have such a system is because he fears that Parliamentary support is falling away.
Day 3 - above has gone but have an emerging cough and cold.
Just really like a typical winter cold to be honest, although I haven't had one for two years. Been working my day job through it as I otherwise would have done. The reality is that, as a contractor, I wouldn't be paid if I don't work, I suppose I am lucky to have a job I can do whilst in self isolation.
@DPJHodges
·
2m
It's interesting the different strategies being employed by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to Partygate. Truss being the conspicuous loyalist. Rishi being conspicuous by his absence.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1486254641130074115
https://www.retrowow.co.uk/television/television.html
upon the woman Gray, Sue..........
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0013jc5
Alternatively it's the usual patriotic one country together phatic discourse. Like how the entire nation held street parties for X wedding or Y jubilee.
1. There was no party
2. If there was a party, I did not attend
3. If I did attend the party, I did not realise it was a party
4. If I attended the party and realised it was a party, I did not know that parties were banned under the rules that I wrote.
🔷ADDENDUM DEFENCE STATEMENT🔷
5. Any party thrown in my honour to mark my birthday, at which I was photographed eating cake and surrounded by well wishers, was in fact a military ambush.
6. Reliance is placed upon the Who Cares (Everybody Breaks The Law) Amendment Act 2022. https://twitter.com/barristersecret/status/1483492997014691841
https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1486256698100797444
The Australian Liberal Party then replaced PM Abbott with PM Turnbull in 2016, Turnbull then lost the Coalition its majority later that year.
It then removed PM Turnbull after a spill in 2019 and his Treasurer Scott Morrison ended up PM in 2018 and won a narrow victory in 2019. So only one change proved successful.
Here too of recent changes of PM in power, replacing Blair with Brown in 2007 saw Labour lose its majority in 2010. Replacing Cameron with May as PM in 2016 saw the Tories lose their majority in 2017. Only replacing May with Boris in 2019 saw the Tories win a majority and can be said to have been successful.
Going back further, replacing Thatcher with Major worked too but it is a mixed bag
https://www.radiotimes.com/books/why-elizabeth-iis-1953-coronation-is-the-day-that-changed-television/
The difference between presidential and 'effectively' presidential is massive for someone trying to state what actual rules are.
I know he won in 2019 but ffs tories: wake up! He won against an unelectable anti-semitic Marxist. He is NOT going to win in 2024. Instead, if your party doesn't have the courage to remove him, you will be taken to the cleaners.
You have one chance to staunch the wound and mitigate against losses and it's almost certainly now.
p.s. I write this as a leftie who love to see the tories trounced but I am also, genuinely, concerned about the welfare of this country if you leave Johnson in office for another two years.
Of course it means no such thing. The tories have a whopping majority and will govern until May 2024. There is no moral, ethical or political reason why they shouldn't even if they remove Johnson.
That is hung parliament territory not 1997 Labour landslide territory, especially after the boundary changes. Not one poll suggests any alternative Tory leader to Boris would win another Tory majority or even Tories most seats, even if Sunak might do fractionionally better.
The push for change is mainly from Labour, LD and SNP voters who still would not vote Tory even if Sunak was PM. If Labour was over 10% ahead in every poll ie pre 1997 territory, you might have a point, it is not