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Levy Steps In & Signs A Winner

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Afternoon boys.

A busier schedule ahead of me in one day I cannot recall. A haircut has to be bought. A rack of ribs needs to be procured and the Meat Museum closes early on a Saturday. I’m out of garlic salt for the marinade. And I need to work out the Sky box to order The Fight.

See what I did there?  The point I’m making is everyday we all have to multitask. For some it’s reading a newspaper without missing their stop on the underground. For others, it’s the control dashboard on a space rocket. Most of us fall somewhere between being punctual and being a decent astronaut – on the sliding scale of multitasking.

So I’m confused as to why people think that the Chairman of a football club somehow can’t multitask. If  he’s spending a few grand on barristers does it really damage our chances of being able to afford to buy The Striker Of Our Dreams™? Of course it doesn’t, it’s nonsense.

I see Levy & Co have drawn criticism for ‘wasting time’ on the OS. And the Judicial Review. It would be great if those sneering actually understood what it was they were passing comment upon.

The NDP is a minefield. And most minefields can be negotiated, but not by lurking at their edge sneering.

The news has come out that THFC have applied for public funding via the Regional Growth Fund. This could be a masterstroke. The application as far as I can see at this stage would very obviously tick a lot of boxes with the RGF and almost more importantly …swerve interfering chancers like Boris, Lord Coe and people employed at the OPLC who are also employed by West Ham Football Club.

This would be a great time for We Are N17 to announce they are disbanding. I have struggled to work out what they ever contributed to all this that was remotely positive in the first place.

Their whole mantra of it’s a sh*thole, but it’s our sh*thole alienated anyone with half a brain. We never needed a group to instigate a bed sheet being held up outside the ground by half a dozen scruffs. What we need is intelligence and guile.

If we aren’t arming ourselves in this manner then we are no better than the tubby Porn Baron who threatened civil disorder on the streets. The only black shirt I wear has a Comme de Garçons label in the back of its neck.

The NDP was only ever put on hold as it reached a point where to finance it ourselves we would, ‘overnight’ become shackled with colossal debts and defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. We would be unable to advance at all. But some real wise guys are already calling this wrong.

The insanity of pursuing the NDP as it stands would grant your average imbecilic No To Stratford/We Are N17 member their utopia. A swanky new stadium at WHL with a team largely comprised of youth players as we’d lose all our stars and be unable to afford to replace them. But it would be our white elephant!

There is case for the improvement of the area. A genuine one. But this has to be a byproduct of a sound business strategy. There are ways of helping ordinary folk advancing in life. Hand outs aren’t the way forward. The government and indeed the locals in Haringey need to embrace the long term benefits of having a stable multimillion pound business as a neighbour. Picking that neighbour’s pocket will ultimately result in the phrase, ‘There used to be a football club over there’ become a harrowing reality.

It’s time for the overwhelming majority of supporters to take in just what the Board are seeking to achieve here and for the noisy minority? Time for the  sneering at Levy & Co to cease.

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145 comments

  • 39er39er39er says:

    Let’s get this show on the road…
    Start hiring the very best of Eastern European and Chinese construction workers (cos lets face it the average Haringey worker would find the work a little beyond them)I am very impatient to see the towers of mighty cranes hovering over the Tottenham skyline.
    Get in there we cant waste any more time.

  • gilbo says:

    I love Levy.

    I’d love the fight online for free… anyone?

  • Blackrat1299 says:

    What masterstoke? The RGF has been available for years. Why has it taken so long to apply, we couls have saved a few million istead of poncing about with the OS, Do you honestly think that by all the goings on with the OS and NPD we have had the upper hand and dictated the fact that we need money so someone will eventually put their hands up and say OK! This development has always been about regeneration, of Spurs, to accomodate more fans, and of Tottenham, to build house, supermarkets infrastructure. All this should have staretd 10 years ago.

    • Harry Hotspur says:

      Mr Rat, a private sector businesses, generally speaking does not wander around looking for handouts.

      This situation because of some people looking to cash in has demanded this action. So yes it is potentially a masterstroke or would you really like us to move to Norfolk?

      As for your ten years ago comment…

      • Blackrat1299 says:

        The flats, supermarket, infrastructure is for the benefit of Tottenham and its people, being built by Spurs etc, and you are wrong RGF is for business’s that will support and provide for the local community.

        • Roland Rat says:

          Well actually all these types of funds are not just for businesses.

          For instance any non-profit organisation (charity or community group for instance) can apply for these type of funds for regeneration projects of all sizes, be it education of the disadvantaged, be it cleaning and putting up gates for alleyways to make the community safer, or large scale projects.

          There are masses of European funds available for regeneration of areas which government determine are in need of it. Councils can apply, why have Harringay not applied?

          Pull the club, the council, MP, Mayor, community groups, Jobcentre, Spurs Foundation etc all together and put in bids to the many different funds available. Yes it involves work but when you do pull something together, gain funding for it and deliver on it, I can assure you it’s a satisfying feeling.

      • mystic arbnold says:

        Yes please lets move to wells-next the sea

    • John White says:

      The Regional Growth Fund opened for business on 28th October 2010.
      http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/regional-growth-fund-opens-business
      The first tranche of funding only started in 2011.
      http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/economic-development/regional-growth-fund.
      The NPD scheme was always about an increased capacity stadium for Tottenham Hotspur. The only reason it included regeneration of the area was in an attempt to generate funds and to gain cooperation from the Local Authority in order to make the scheme feasible. Don’t you think that if the Club could have merely expanded the current stadium to 60,000 in an economically viable way, without having to buy up surrounding properties right left and centre and come up with a development to make money to try to make the scheme viable it would have done so?
      Frankly you show yourself to be ignorant of the facts and proud of it.

      • nicktheyid says:

        Only minus I can see going down this route is that a large percentage of any profit made on new flats built will now go to the rg people or the properties will go to the local council/ housing assoc?

      • Dan says:

        John, please run for mp? We need lammy out and someone with a brain in his place. Thanks xx

  • Iain says:

    Apart from sneering at those fans who, like me, want us to stay where we are I’m not sure what you want. Are you saying you don’t want a grant from the fund?

    • Blackrat1299 says:

      Im not sure who your comment refers to, if its mine, read it again, I want to stay N17 and yes I do want a grant, all I am saying if you read it properly the Grant has been available for years. Why have we wasted so much timwe and money.

      If it wasn’t for never mind It needed saying

      • Harry Hotspur says:

        Of course the grant has been available for years. My best guess is that the Board preferred the OS option for about 300 million reasons, all with the Queen’s head on.

        • cyril says:

          a quick internet search suggests that the regional growth fund is a 1.4 bill fund avaialble between 2011 and 2014. so maybe not avaialvle for any thing more than a few months
          how one applies and what the criteria are is beyond my ken. perhaps there is also an upper limit. i do not think it was 300 mill better in ols; rather i had read that the npd wd caost 450 mill and the os wd cost 250 mill plus another 50 mill for crystal palace. so thst wd be a saving of 15o mill. of course, on taop of that i am sure that levey is mondful that the os wd always generate bigger gate receipts as more corp money wd flow in due to the location. whether the rgf will bridge the gap i do not know, but it is encouraging that they are tryingt o find such things and that the useless mp is getting of his fat arse and starting to sound vaguely like someone who might just do his job, even if not terribly well

        • LMAO says:

          So according to blackrat1299, the RGF has been available for years followed by a srcastic attack on Levy. FYI “the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) is a £1.4bn fund operating across England from 2011 to 2014.”-Source the current government. I think I’ll give Levy the benefit of the doubt. It was a tricky one. Levy a successful businessman who is now a millionaire several times over or blackrat1299 (request for evidence of successful businesses and details of accumulation of wealth created pending. Perhaps Levy is using the OP fiasco and subsequent embarrassment of the revelatiuonb of a director it paid by West Ham FC as leverage. I’m sure he looked into the possibilities in just a modicum of extra depth to the poster. Ego??LMAO.-Comment is priceless, whoops I meant worthless.

      • Roland Rat says:

        All funds have an application period, there are often announcements made that funding will be available during xyz and when the time comes is not available or the goalposts change. Obtaining funding is very complex especially if money originates from Europe.

        When I was employed by a charity I raised £150,000 and increased our output by 40%.

        I haven’t looked into the details of this fund but putting together a bid of a large size is not an overnight job, council input and support is a very important element so if Lammy and the council have been dragging their feet, there is little Spurs could do.

        We can’t put a bid to build the ground so we have to bid for all the other associated projects and bundle them together in a cohesive regeneration plan. If you have ever had to deal with councils who often want the money for themselves you would know it can be problematic.

        The OS is an attempt to get our money back and rather than have an embarrassing court case you may find our objections are dropped with agreements quietly reached to assist our raising of funds.

    • Harry Hotspur says:

      Try reading what I actually wrote. I want us to stay but try engaging our brains to tackle the problem than sneering at moving, sneering at the Board.

      If you’re a We Are N17 supporter I don’t sneer at you. I simply want you disband and aid the cause, not dog it.

      • DaveYid says:

        Harry, why do you call disagreement with what was either a serious suicidal moment of madness by our chairman – or a very cruel bluff – ‘sneering’?

        Our main priority to move this club forward was to get a hot striker. You can’t move a club forward without winning games with good football and lots of goals, no matter where the stadium was to be located or how much bigger it was going to be.

        Levy totally distracted himself from getting a striker with this frankly ridiculous idea about bidding for the Olympic Stadium in Stratford and it quite rightly hasn’t gone unnoticed and uncriticised.

        Despite Levy doing much more good than bad with this club, he, like every other human being in this world should not be immune to criticism when it’s necessary and it has never been more necessary since he sacked Martin Jol via text message.

        • Roland Rat says:

          You failo to see Harry’s point and that is that a business can actually do more than one thing at once without affecting it, indeed if it didn’t it wouldn’t operate.

          Do Tesco only do one task at a time?

        • Striker? striker whats all this sudden call to arms for a striker? We have 4 strikers with 3 playing regular football. We played 4-5-1 for most of last season so you just wont see huge score lines im afraid. There is no panic for a striker, there will be if one of ours leaves but that hasent happened yet.

      • perrymann says:

        Got to say this is good common sense stuff HH.

  • gilbo says:

    oh and the ribs sound good.

    I’ve got an egg sandwich. :-(

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