Humphrey Appleby

My English comprehension is excellent and my interpretation is that the regulations are not clear. Lawyers of course always see the opportunity for conflict, but if you really have consulted two that claim it's black-and-white, then they're certainly not lawyers that I'd employ. I also have to wonder how well lawyers in Portugal grasp the nuances of English grammar, even though they no doubt have a respectable level of English. It's not that I'm in disagreement there should be some sanction, but it ultimately doesn't matter what anyone other than the FIM decides the regulation says. If people disagree then take it to the CAS, but who really wants to waste their money on lawyers arguing the toss over who won a gong in a minor sport?

The regulations don't say that at all. They're poorly phrased but that would not be my interpretation of how to interpret them, regardless of what I think about Hancock's behaviour.

I think it's fair to say the wording of the rule is poor. If it simply said "Furthermore, he shall be considered as ineligible for the FIM Speedway Grand Prix World Championship" then it would be unambiguous. The qualifier 'for the remainder of the season' suggests it means ineligible for further rounds. There's no specific statement on dealing with points already scored in the championship, and then you get into specific issues with in-meeting rather than pre-meeting withdrawals. Unless a rider packs their things up and physically leaves the stadium, then there's always arguments to be made about injury, illness or mechanical difficulties that are difficult to prove. This is not to say there shouldn't be some penalty for that sort of behaviour.

But it's a familiar repeating and depressing pattern. How many times have we heard that IMG are 'raising the bar', 'taking the SGP to new venues' and 'improving the profile of the sport', and yet almost as soon as new venue gets put on the calendar, the process becomes about managing expectations and making excuses why crowds continue fall after the first GP. Then the recriminations start about the local venue/promoter, and it all ends in tears. Whether or not local promotion is the responsibility of the local promoter, how can it be for good IMG/BSI's product, image, and ultimately profitability if there's a repeating pattern of failure of GPs? Far less what this is doing for the sport as whole. Do you think Bernie Ecclestone just collects his staging fees and leaves host tracks to do their own thing? No, the staging promotions have to meet all sorts of requirements. Of course speedway is a hard sell nowadays, and of course it's less than ideal to be having the last GP in Australia. However, an Aussie GP should still be a sufficient novelty to build on what was a reasonable starting point last season, yet it's apparent little or no effort has been made and the same old blame game has begun. Well at least everyone will have a get out when the stadium changes hands shortly...

Which is still usually between 2 and 3% worse than the interbank rate.

The pound was as high as 1.42 only a year ago. It has progressively decreased against the euro (and dollar) ever since talk of a Brexit vote. That of course is the interbank rate. The reality for most people is they'll get a much worse exchange rate if they buy goods in euros or change money.

Except a reported 25,000 fans attended last year, so you might expect 25,000 to attend this season too. If the crowds drop by another 4,000 next year, will you still be saying the same thing? Are crowds going down really something that's expected, and are the series organisers happy with that state of affairs?

The MCG has a capacity of over 100,000, so it would be doing well to sell out. A T20 match managed to draw 80,000+ last year, and the State of Origin drew more than 91,000 despite Victoria not being a rugby playing state, so I don't think it's really the case that other sports don't sell well.

That always the excuse. Do BSI not think that constantly engaging promoters who little to actually promote the GPs, is actually good for the sport in the long term? All that happens is those promoters end-up 'doing a wedge', get their fingers burned, and then that venue is lost to the sport for good. Plus of course, the paying punters get a poor experience and never return (e.g. Finland). We're told that IMG is this successful global sports marketing agency, yet they can't swing some contacts in the local media to big up the event a bit? Just what are local promoters getting in return for the fees they pay?

It's a difficult one. If things are promoted right than potentially Melbourne might work, as after all, Cardiff isn't the most convenient location for the British speedway fanbase either. Admittedly it's no more than a couple of hundred miles for most, unlike Australia, but internal flights are cheap enough nowadays. I suspect though, there really aren't more than a few thousand speedway fans in the whole of Australia these days, so you really have to appeal to the casual spectator and that isn't going to happen if they just don't know about it. Of course, the Ethiad Stadium also isn't the most popular amongst Melbournites for various reasons, and there was some talk of the AFL moving away once its contract finishes. 20,000 isn't bad for a GP per se, but I imagine it's not enough to justify running a GP in a stadium like that, especially with all the costs of getting the riders to Australia. It'll be interesting to see if this one runs for the full 5 years.

It's a fairly common pattern for speedway GPs. The public are initially curious and make an effort to see it, then the novelty wears off. That combined with little or no local promotion, which is a common observation, and before you know it Phillippe will be on here blaming competition from a monster truck rally in Western Australia, the wrong shape of the stadium, or possibly rising tram fares in the Melbourne metropolitan area.

It's not really a difficult one. The sport has to be run according to what makes economic sense for the promoters, which in turn is what the fans turn-up to watch. It can't be run on the basis of what the riders prefer.

A lot of people seem to be selflessly doing it for their grandchildren. Maybe they should let their grandchildren make up their minds on the matter when the time comes?

Blind faith - when all else fails...

And there speaks the voice of the Brexit brigade - just resorting to calling people names who take a different perspective to them. This isn't about winning a football championship, which is pretty much forgotten about the following season when everyone starts again. And you can be sure that if the Brexiteers had lost the vote by the same margin, they wouldn't have accepted the result and would have demanded another referendum. The UK hasn't left the EU yet, although the falling pound is an indication of things to come however some want to dress it up.

You have no idea on which basis people voted to leave, or whether they fully understood all the implications, anymore than you're saying that assumptions can't be made about the 16 million who didn't. Calling people names doesn't change the fact that the country only voted to leave the EU by a small majority, and the vote has massively divided the country as well as age groups. A number of parts of the country voted overwhelming to stay in the EU, and that's particularly concerning where those parts were already agitating for independence. This is quite apart from the 1.5 million expat Britons in the EU who are now left in total limbo with respect to their lives. If you can't understand how this is an issue, whether you agree with those peoples' views or not, then it really sums up how selfish people have become in the UK. This is not like a general election where you can vote again in 5 years time and try to overturn the result. And as for who's lost, lets wait and see how the UK economy does in the coming years. The Uk government is already making soundings that it's going to have to continue to pay into the EU to keep access to certain markets, which is an indication that it's now coming to terms with the harsh realities of leaving the single market.

Peter Hitchens is a socially conservative right winger, regardless of what he once was in his youth or who he writes for. The vote didn't specify the manner of exit, so arguing for different options is perfectly valid. The Brexiteers constantly bang on about the will of the people, but it's not the will of 16 million+ people. A solution needs to be found to satisfy as many people as possible.

I simply don't understand the need for secrecy. It doesn't take a genius to work out that most speedway promotions/tracks live hand-to-mouth and in many cases have to be propped up with owner subsidies, and if this were clearer, there might be better understanding of the precarious existence of the sport when some call for the return of the 'top boys' etc.. In the days before the threshold for full accounts was raised, it was possible to get a better idea of speedway finances, and even then there weren't fortunes to be made. You could occasionally see some creative accounting (e.g. the owner's light aircraft listed as 'plant'), but it was all small beer really.

It's astonishing that people actually attribute the lack of top riders to race nights, far less being able to use more tyres. During the days of the British League, and even the early days of the British Elite League, virtually all of the top riders rode in Britain. There were more race nights and far more fixtures than now, yet riders mostly managed to turn up. Many riders also managed to do the Swedish leagues, Danish leagues and later Polish leagues when the Iron Curtain fell, and even make some time for some longtracking in Germany on a Sunday. If there was decent money to be made Britain, the riders would miraculously become less tired. Just as they became less tired when the Russian League was throwing money around for a while. They get four months off in the winter to recover anyway.

Possibly the nominal value of the rider assets if they were sold. They're often not included in balance sheets as human resources don't have a tangible value, but transferring riders would presumably raise some money.

Assuming they're limited companies. I think the BSPA is something like a unincorporated association which isn't required to file AFAIK.

As the anti-EU media never ceases of reminding everyone, many of the major economies in the EU also have higher levels of state debt. Again as the anti-EU media never ceases of reminding everyone, the ECB also authorised 600 billion of quantitative easing in the past couple of years, and the US Federal Reserve created an extra 3 trillion dollars. Yet pound has fallen to its lowest levels against euro in five years, and the lowest against the dollar for possibly 30 years. And strangely this all happened straight after the Brexit vote, and worsened further as news of a 'hard Brexit' was reported. Is Peter Hitchens an economist or does he have any experience in financial sectors? If not, then his opinion has no more validity than anyone else's, and he's also clearly writing for a particular audience.

It's not really big money though, and BSI's revenue has also declined significantly over the past four years when it was around 10 million. It's still better than making a loss, but indicates why GPs are being held at Teterow rather than Parken nowadays. Unfortunately shows that the sport just isn't very marketable, even with all the supposed resources of IMG.

Maybe people also shouldn't listen to EI Addio's who make statements about things people didn't say.

I was saying if tracks ran training programmes. I'd say that if so long as a promotion is willing to pay a rider at previously agreed rates for the duration of the contract, a rider should be bound by that. If not, then they should be free to seek another team. Of course, the standard BSPA contract is effectively zero hours in practice, so it's difficult to determine what's fair and reasonable.