Humphrey Appleby

The trend for attendances was downward for many years before the 'playoffs' were introduced, so I don't think that can realistically be attributed as the reason. If crowds have plummeted since, then it's far more down to different riders turning up (or not) each week, incoherent fixture lists and shambolic rules. More generally though, it's the image of an old fashioned sport that takes place in dirty rundown stadia that turns people away, and one that's not even particularly cheap entertainment anymore. Most sports employ playoffs these days as they provide a finale on a pre-determined date to conclude the season. It's one of the things introduced in speedway in recent years that I have no particular objection to, even though speedway isn't played and therefore the term 'playoffs' is ridiculous (but it's somehow typical of speedway to publicly demonstrate its illiteracy). They should be called the Championship Finals, Race-Offs or something like that.

Football is a far more popular sport, with far more money, and far more idiots willing to pour money into teams. Having pissing contests between Russian oligarchs and Arab Sheikhs is no sensible way to run a sport, and whilst it may seem to work in football, it would be disastrous for speedway.

Hardly revolutionary. Reserves were allowed for years in the past, and what's to stop a rider feigning injury to allow a reserve to ride? Why not just allow a reserve to ride for whatever reason?

An equal share assumes the starting gates are equal throughout, when in fact certain riding positions can be (dis)advantaged by their gate sequences. I used to be favour of fixed gate positions, but I feel in league matches the choice should be a tactical one. If a heat leader is better placed to control the race off the best gate, then I don't see any problem with that. Team riding has nearly died out in the fixed gate era, and I do think there's an argument for giving the heat leaders an advantage to create an aura around them. Maybe this is something where old ideas were better.

More than 100 years ahead. They had them in the 19th century.

It's a bit complicated. The 183 day rule makes you liable for UK taxes on your worldwide income, but other countries can and usually will also charge you tax for any income earned whilst working in their countries. However, the UK has double taxation treaties with most countries, so provided you pay local taxes on those earnings from elsewhere, then you're usually not liable to pay again in the UK. The residency rule can also determine where you make social security payments. Within the EU/EEA, you only pay them to your main country of residence and are then exempt from paying elsewhere. Yes, but I also undertake some work from the UK so in principle still pay taxes to HMRC. I've not actually got to bottom of whether NI contributions are still payable as the UK and Australia are supposed to have reciprocal agreements, but in practice do pay NI to ensure there will be no arguments about the state pension. The bottom line though, is that where you pay your taxes has nothing to do with nationality.

I pay Australian tax - it doesn't make me Australian. And I'd imagine Tai Woffinden should be paying tax in multiple jurisdictions.

Unfortunately it would. Too many people see things in black-and-white in an age when many people can have legitimate allegiances to more than one country.

Promotion and relegation is pointless unless there are more teams trying to get into the top level than there are places. It's generally bad for business planning anyway, but it works in football because there are plenty of teams to replace the fallen. In British speedway though, it's cloud cuckoo stuff.

Que? Opening a section means stewarding it, and also cleaning it up afterwards.

It would have to be opened and staffed. Presumably the stadium weren't expecting to need to use the capacity, so why bother?

I think the biggest reason for the demise of open and alternative format meetings because the top riders started to be allowed to miss them, and that devalued them in the eyes of spectator. John Berry said that it was in those sort of meetings you actually needed your best riders to be involved more than even league matches. I think the occasional open meeting added variety to the fixture list, and some of the more prestigious ones were often well attended. I think alternative formats like 4TTs and Pairs are actually preferable to riding the same teams over-and-over again in league matches if you need to pad out the fixture list, and in fact, something like a 4TT would be a better format for an inter-league cup. I doubt they're popular with promoters though, as they're probably more expensive to stage than league meetings as they'll have to pay more riders at full cost, plus with something like a 3TT or 4TT get fewer home meetings in relation to away ones.

The Australians still had playoffs even when the VFL was a Melbourne-based league, and the NSWRL/ARL was Sydney-based. In the The VFL at least, teams played home and away for many years. Given the relatively short season of the NFL, it's obviously impractical for every team to play each other even once, hence the need for playoffs between divisions even if the conference structure is largely a contrivance nowadays. In baseball, given the ridiculous number of games, every team in each league could conceivably play each other an equal number of times, which is what happened historically. However, there was always some form of 'playoff' even if it was just the World Series - although that's been extended to an absurd extent nowadays. I like the Australian system the best. A single league with the winners crowned 'Minor Premiers', then a playoff system giving more advantages the higher a team finishes.

Find it hard to believe that the speedway loses 13,000 seats given that it's already a big oval.

It used to be covered in the rule book. I believe the bond used to be returnable if a promotion completed the season and had settled any outstanding debts. If there any debts not covered by the bond, the promotion's rider assets can be sold by the BSPA.

It was a good edition last week.

Indeed, but why would the 'kids' of today not be interested in reading about and watching 1970s World Final on an iPad? I don't even own a DVD player anymore, having ripped my DVDs onto online media years ago. I was being slightly flippant, but it's a reason why the sport remains in the dark ages.

Unrelated question to Philipe, but will the Star Special Edition be available in an online edition as well? And if I can also take the opportunity to point out that kids don't do DVDs anymore.

Aren't federations that have hosted qualifying meetings also looked upon more favourably?

The way it increasingly is, is that international sportsmen and women adopt flags of convenience which is making international representative competition a farce.

Even if all of the non-voters had voted for independence, I still don't think the swing would have been enough. However, the fact remains that less than 38% of the electorate positively voted that way, and I think it's more probable that those who wanted independence actively voted rather than the other way around.

Actually less than 38% of the eligible electorate voted for independence. To be honest, I don't really think accidents of birth should really be the determining factor. You should really represent where you spent your formative years and learnt your sport. If Tai Woffinden is not an Australian citizen then he's not Australian full stop, but the question comes when a competitor takes a passport of convenience.

There's still time! It's not midnight in Hawaii for another 18 hours.

It's because it was a dastardly conspiracy of the Australian government to have one of their riders masquerade as a Brit (where's the evidence he was actually born in the UK - birth certificates can be faked you know) and win the world championship to bring down the British national anthem.

For all the apparently implausibilities there are plenty of plausible explanations as well, but conspiracy theorists don't want to hear those. What I think it comes down to in the end, was that the US government was extremely embarrassed about the failures in its defensive preparations and coordination during 9/11. The country with the biggest defensive budget in the world was successfully attacked in a low budget manner by amateurs, and of course there were people in the government who needed to cover their asses. However, there are plenty of explanations as to how it could happen. US defensive doctrine since WW2 was almost entirely based around being attacked by bombers and ICBMs over the North Pole, or latterly from SLBMs off their coast - astonishing as it is to believe, but the US had virtually no radar coverage to its south until apparently well into the 1980s, and only then because of the drug smuggling. In the 20th century they had never experienced land-based attacks, nor much in the way of aircraft hijackings or terrorism on home soil, so there was limited reason to have procedures or drills in the event of something like 9/11 happening. People ask how could a superpower have such major defensive failings, but the simple fact of the matter is that even superpowers prioritise their capabilities against the greatest perceived threats. The other factor is that 9/11 was a sneak attack without warning, so there was no reason for the military to be on high alert. In most conventional conflicts you see tensions building up in advance which gives the military some time to mobilise and drill for an impending attack. In a sneak attack scenario though, of course there's going to be confusion, lack of coordination, misinformation and people finding some bureaucrat somewhere has forgotten to pay the phone bill when they try to call the air force. I consider this not unusual or surprising at all given my interactions with military people. This could just as easily be attributed to confusion on the day - lots of garbled reports and rumours and someone trying to report on them under difficult conditions. I think it's unlikely that the reporter would have known which building was which, so I'm afraid I don't see this as evidence of a conspiracy. There are also eye witness reports that suggest WTC 7 was showing signs of imminent collapse - sagging in the middle for some hours due to loss of structural integrity - so it's quite easy to see how incorrect information may have been provided to the reporter. The question you really have to ask though, is why would the US government want to blow up WTC 7 some hours after the fact, or release the information early to a foreign news service (i.e. the BBC)? This is where the conspiracy theories fall down.