E I Addio

Starman banned ? Wow, never saw that coming !

Not sure what or who that comment is aimed at but it seems to me the only ones getting worked up are the ones who think they are the ones who should be the arbiters of how forum rules are interpreted. Someone gets a two week suspension in the close season. Hardly the end of the world whether it be fair or unfair. It's Phils site so Phil makes the decisions whether we agree with them or not. That's what we all signed up to when joined the forum. Those who don't like it have their remedy.

A common sense post that stands out amongst some of the idiotic comments that have been made. Comments made on social media or forums are still subject to the laws of libel . It doesn't matter if the comment was meant as a joke or not to be taken seriously, it can in some circumstances only need one person to take it seriously to establish a libellous case. Some of the windbags on here would do well to bear that in mind. In any event, abuse is always a poor substitute for debate.

Entitled ? That really is a bizarre view, if I may say so. Speedway is a product like any other. You pay your admission money, you get the product -15 heats of racing- and that is the end of your entitlement. There is no ongoing obligation to anything beyond that, and I am frankly astonished that some seem to think there is. Its rather like the equally facile argument that Tai Woffinden has some kind of obligation to ride in GB now because someone paid to watch him years ago. Of course, there is an argument that it makes good business sense to keep your customers informed of what's going on but that is not an entitlement .that exists as an automatic right. Fans a will be able to access the rules of the sport before the season starts but even the ACU , ie, the governing body of motor cycle sport in this country have yet to publish their 2016 handbook (unless it has been put on line in the last few days), so its an exaggeration to say fans are not being made aware of the rules of the sport. Are you seriously claiming the fans want to know the reasoning behind every rule ? As yet there is no rule book. Nobody is prejudiced because the season is still a long way from starting. And who are the "fans" ? Do you mean members of the BSF because they are not one and the same. Plenty of the most vociferous complainants on the BSF rarely, if ever go to a speedway meeting, some haven't been for years but they still come on whingeing and whining. In fact the person who started this thread is always proclaiming how rarely he goes except to Cardiff . Many clubs such as Wolves, Poole, Lakeside and |Coventry have fans forums or similar meetings during the winter (usually to push season ticket sales) when fans can put their questions and concern s to the promotion and get the answers straight from the horses mouth well before the season starts. What it really boils down to is that hardly is anyone is getting hot and bothered about rule changes in general, the matter of concern is the heat-leader list.. I can understand that. I am interested in that myself, but maybe because I have worked in an administrative job most of my life I do understand that you cant always drop everything to concentrate on one. It would make more sense to have a target or roll out date set in advance so the public know when the information will be available and the BSPA are lacking in their general admin in this respect. I still keep coming back to the point that Skidder1 has twice asked what to my mind was a very good question on the proper heat-leader list thread (this one being the Abuse Jon Cook Thread ) and nobody has yet attempted to answer it. If they did answer it in measured terms it might move the discussion in a productive direction, although a productive discussion is the last thing that some on here (not you) want.

I totally agree. I've never understood why some get quite orgasmic about the t/r or the t/s ride. I can just about see something of merit in the t/r if the rider in question goes off 15 metres but otherwise I can't see the point. A good race is a good race whatever the helmet colour.

The BBC in general is rather a disgrace these days I regret to say.

The vast majority of posts on here seem to go along broadly with that sentiment, albeit with differing degrees of emphasis.So to that extent I am not sure what your point is. As far as Jon Cook is concerned what has been said , has been said. Nothing is going to change it and however many times people go on about it nothing is going to change what has been said. There really is very little if anything new to add to the thread. As far as SCB is concerned, he was not the first one to spot the point. Someone else had posted it several hours before on the heatleader list thread where it should be and where there had already been grown up comment. SCB hadn't even read the article, all he did was to start a fresh thread regurgitating the same point in more abusive terms which he presumably thought would make him look important or impressive but actually put him in the same or lower bracket than the object of his bile The criticism was a valid in substance the choice of language reminded me of Eric Hoffers famous quote that " Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength" . The point could have been made much more effectively using indoor language.

I don't think you can really say that the heat leader list was anymore secret than anything else the BSPA or any other similar body do. They make decisions at the AGM on a whole range of matters governing team building, e.g EL/PL conversion rates , points limits etc. As they are not elected by the public I am not sure why the public are entitled to know the ins and outs of every decision.. The only thing unusual about the heatleader list was that it took a while to be made public. None of us know why it was kept secret at first. There may be a good reason for that or there may be a bad reason, but until someone asks them we won't know. Normally there would be some kind of business reason for this, maybe something to do with rider negotiations, I don't know and I am not in a position to speculate. I can't off-hand think of any other sports with the so called transparency of decision making you are proposing, but I doubt there are many.

Its not ignorant, just a statement of fact. The subject has not even been mentioned on the Lakeside forum which suggests nobody is all that bothered , rightly or wrongly. As has already been said, those protesting now had precious little to say when Lakeside were struggling under the EDR scheme last year when the team were having to put out NL riders and PL reserves while the likes of Newman and Garrity were getting double figures so the howls of protest have a hollow ring to them now. I think the Lakeside fans have had more than enough other things to worry about this year. Cook was right. Some people are thick and this forum has for years attested to the fact that many more are biased. It wasn't a good idea to let that comment come out in print, and it would probably have been better unsaid, but that doesn't make it any less true. The genie is out of the bottle now and all the huffing and puffing wont put it back It will blow over when the season starts.

Well , I'll be blowed. You would have thought Yer Ropes would have mentioned that instead of just saying HO HO HO and mentioning some other Heartbreakers song. Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers . Who'd have thought it ? (Sorry, can't get my smiley faces to stay on)

Stuart undoubtedly saved the club by ploughing in a lot of money when Ronnie Russell pulled out. According to Jon Cooks programme notes he made a financial input initially that can never be repaid. From what I understand the club was more or less balancing the books each year once Stuart put it back on its feet . When I said Jon Cook saved the club I was thinking of the effort he put in to gather support from the local council, local MP, and other sources when closure looked on the cards last season. To give Cook his due, he resigned his position on the MC to focus on keeping the place from closure, and as he now admitted in Speedwáy Star the off track matters caused him to take his eye off the ball as far as team performances were concerned. That is probably why he will be TM himself next year with support from Kelvin Tatum. As far as I know the threat of closure still hangs in the air but there is now some breathing space compared to a year ago. Efforts to find a new site are continuing. Stuart has been straight with the fans from day one in that he wants the club to balance the books as far as possible rather than him simply being a benefactor that picks up the bills come what may. If you want people to part with their hard earned money there are lots of things you need to do, like sticking to the rules and running a slick presentation , but they frequently don't happen in Speedwáy. If they were to concentrate on getting those things right the crowds would be healthier and what someone says or doesn't say in an interview pales into insignificance by comparison.

Er ..... I think Orion rumbled me , if you look at his post above.

Yeah, it's not like the old days when we all used to have so much good natured banter on here. No wonder members are leaving in their droves !

I like that .... Anyone who doesn't get that must be thick , biased or have no taste. . So Sad.

I loved them doing "American Girl " and "Free Fallin' "

Well you could have bought Speedwáy Star ! Big Well Done to Alan Jones I think it was who first brought it to our attention. I wouldn't have bothered with SS otherwise. All SCB did was read Alan's Post and then went into one without reading the article himself. Big well done to Jon Cook Says I for saving Lakeside for at least another year, big well done to Starman for doin his best to keep sales of Speedwáy Star going, big well done to you and Grachan for being so reasonable in your posts....er.. that's it I am afraid. P.S. Neasden won 1-0 today.

Or just maybe he subscribes to the fairly widely held opinion that there is no such thing as bad publicity. We have a thread now running to 15 pages about an article might well have not even had a thread if the last 3 lines had not been added. Not a single one has said " Jon Cooks remarks have upset me so I won't go anymore" . Plenty of given other reasons for not going anymore. So who knows ? Except that he didn't highlight it. Another poster on another thread raised it and it was the subject of proper discussion for sometime until SCB decided that abuse and name calling was the way forward and decided to start another thread.

No, never saw him. He died about 100 years ago didn't he? Anyway it's a good job he didn't call them thick or biased or some of them would really have thrown their toys out of the pram ! I hope someone reported him to the IPCC for talking to suspects like that, especially if there were racist undertones.

Douchebags? Well, there's not many words that have me beat but I had to google that one. I thought it might be a small town on the Dutch coast or some sort of EU porter or messenger , but no, it is apparently a rather obscure piece of equipment that men need not concern themselves with, or, in North American slang a contemptible person. Well I never knew that. You learn something every day on the forum. After the fight on the pitch at Neasden last week I'd say that little squirt of a manager Paddy O'Dawes is a douchebag, On the forum I think Jon Cook had it more accurate when he limited it to some being thick and biased. Just an opinion of course. My goodness you must lead a sheltered life.

I know what you mean in the sense that I have had endless trouble over the years by bucking office procedures and doing things my own way, but when the money starts rolling in and my bonus was as big as the rest of the department put together they suddenly realised I knew what I was doing and I wasnt just bring awkward. Moral of the story: keep it simple if you can but don't pre-judge till you know how well it works. As I always say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Bottom line is it will be judged on how it works in practice.

You should know, its your thread, about Jon Cook. Personally I don't think its the format itself that was wrong but more to do with the drafts and the draft pick, but I cant get too exercised about it in the close season. Fine if that's what you think there is already a separate heatleader list thread where you can air your views with anyone who wants to listen . No point in duplicating them on here

Your opinion . Others have said watt for example watt should be on the list. whichever way you prepare the list there will always be anomalies. The list stands or falls by its success or failure in practice, not on personal opinions of those not in possession of a crystal ball. (I was going to say crystal balls but there have been enough innuendos already. That's a different argument nothing to do with Cooks article so I won't go down that road unless you want to start a separate thread.

You must have read a different article to me because in the one I read the word stupid doesn't appear at all. Then again look at Blazeaway's post above this and it seems maybe Cook was not too far off the mark

CLANG ! ! ! That's my fault ! The actual wording is "why "Jacob Thorssell isn't a heatleader while some Wolverhampton team mates who finished on lower averages are. When Karlsson was mentioned later on I took it that he was on the list which of course he isn't ! Makes no difference overall though,

Well, I have at last managed to purloin a copy of SS from Dave Spartt over lunch and having now become one of the very few on here that has actually read the article I am beginning to wonder what all the fuss is about. After all the huffing and puffing from SCB and the rest who hadn't read the thing, I was expecting something outrageous, but to be honest it was a bit of an anti-climax. As I hinted in an earlier post I thought I was going to go into one of my tirades about sloppy journalism at SS but having read it I have to say I think that Peter Oakes has done a really good job with an article that is well prepared, well written, clearly explained and concise so credit where its due and well done to him. In fact if you removed the last three lines that caused all the fuss I doubt if anyone in their right minds could fault it on any level. So to Jon cooks comments. Contrary to what some on here have implied the BSPA have looked at the statistics of the riders concerned in their roles as heatleaders and as second strings. Cook uses Jacob Thorssell and Peter Karlsson to explain why the one with the lower average is a HL and the one on the higher average is a SS. He quotes the number of matches ridden in each role and averages attained at each level, in fact much the same as SCB has already done. However it was difficult, says Cook to get down to a hard a hard and fast formula because of inconsistencies. Of the 19 riders looked at over half scored 25% more as a SS, 7 had amore marginal difference and 2 actually scored more in the HL role than they did as a SS. So for that reason they had to weigh in different factors and look at the situation first as clubs then as a body. That is basically it in summary form although you'll have to buy SS for the whole picture, but I doubt whether anyone other then the usual handful of malcontents on here who will always say the BSPA are wrong, can really find a substantial criticism of the methodology. More particularly its very difficult, I think, to lay claims of manipulation at Matt Fords door although no doubt those who haven't read the article will continue to do so. So we come to Cooks concluding remarks and the reason for them. Loose language perhaps or an injudicious choice of words maybe ? Of course the last three lines about people being thick or biased would have been better unsaid, but lets look at the article as a whole and look at the context. I think you have to look at the second paragraph and then look at the last one. The second paragraph is Peter Oakes referring to critics of the scheme (in other words the keyboard warriors who went into melt down before the method of composing the list had even been explained) from the third paragraph it is Cook explaining what was done, then in the final paragraph he comes back and answers the critics (who apparently don't like being answered). So was Cook wrong ? Shouldn't have said it but it is true. Anyone who didn't understand the method after Peter Oakes set it all down so clearly must be a bit thick and anyone who jumps in with criticism without waiting for an explanation must be a bit biased. Skidder 1 has made two good posts on the subject which nobody has been able to properly contradict if he is wrong So, all in all a storm in a tea cup. The acid test will be whether it results in good racing and avoids too many 70-20 type wins, which Cook says is the objective.