uk_martin

Double Trouble now?

Not really. Where would Cradley go? All the others have some sort of stadium in some state of repair / disrepair, but still in existence, that form the basis of their hopes for the future. Cradley have had 10 years of trying, begging and pleading not only to their own local authority but neighbouring ones as well, and nobody wants to allow them to have a home. Sad but true. So, no, I'm not counting them in, quite deliberately. The same as I'm not counting all the other ghost teams that used to exist pretending to belong to Exeter, Milton Keynes etc etc.

Hopefully those people advocating a return to racing of Bradford, Somerset, Oxford, Swindon (& even Coventry) will have read this thread, and seen the difficulty that they would face in finding another 28, or even 35 riders needed for the "returning" teams to compete.

I have it on no authority at all that it was repossessed by IKEA and taken back to Sweden.

Didn't Weslake have a DOHC engine out in the 1980's? It never really caught on did it? From what I remember riders always thought that the SOHC was a step up in complexity from the pushrod 2-valve JAWA's and didn't want to take another quantum leap forward in complexity (& consequent cost) . I wonder how it will pan out this time.

Yes and no. When you see all the patents taken out by Apple, Samsung, Motorola etc it makes you realise that even the slightest changes CAN be patentable if they result new or significantly improved performance, or something different to what's gone on before. One mobile phone isn't significantly different from any other mobile phone, BUT one tiny aspect of the latest mobile phone can be significantly different from the others, just like one aspect of the 2021 GM motor could be significantly different to the 2020 (or the 2015 or the 2010 GM motor) and that's what could be re-patented. Finding, explaining the and acquiring the patents on those differences is where patent lawyers make their money. Unless of course GM don't want to pay...

Which year? So what does that say about Ray C's Swindon Advertiser article then? How can looking "same as it did in September 2019" be made to appear as looking "pretty good" other than it still looks like there's a stadium there as opposed to no stadium?

Exactly this. If there is a patent infringement, let the patent lawyers sort it out. If there is no patent on the GM designs and products, then more fool GM. OK so patents cost money, but if you don't have one you can be copied. Look at the computer mouse...nobody bothered patenting these, and now anyone can produce them. The price you pay for not paying the price.

You rightly quote a real world situation....but speedway lives in a parallel universe where promoters can't see beyond their own stadium's car park, let alone what's going on in foreign countries So does any of this actually surprise you?

And there's the next non-surprise, the voice of journalistic wing of the speedway circus sounding out support for the corrupt practises infesting the governing body. What a lovely mutual back scratching arrangement you had, or even still have. You get fed some nicey nicey press releases so that you get enough to publish, and in return you agree to abstain from any investigative journalism (Belle Vue, anyone?), and you publicly voice your support for their every deed and misdemeanour. Speedway Star became the official propaganda vehicle for the BSPA. Not since the Soviet Communist Party had such a symbiotic relationship with Pravda and Isvestia has such a contemptable relationship existed. "What conflict of interest" may actually be the most investigative question that you've asked in the past 25 years. Well done. Keep it up.

Only in speedway can such a blatant conflict of interest be heralded as some kind of heroism. And you wonder why the sport has gone down the pan.

Isn't it? Any idea how a NL team is supposed to afford the travelling expenses, work permits, customs clearances and all the other complications that travelling to Europe in a post-Brexit world will involve now? Not to mention the differences in lockdown restrictions (the French won't be fully vaccinated this year) and the constant threat of closed borders, farmers strikes blocking the motorways, fishermen's strikes blocking the ports and harbours, French air traffic controllers strikes snarling up airline travel....

Quite right! - so imagine my amusement at others on various other threads, hoping and praying that Bradford, Oxford, Swindon and Somerset join the league next year. Guests, double-ups, triple-ups and who knows what tricks will need to be performed to fill another 28 "Sits Vacant".

OK, so who has speedway got in high (or even better, in low) places that can help? Seriously though, there will be a department within the ministry, staffed by civil servants, none of whom will probably have the first clue as to what speedway is, and if you their job will be to sift through the applications, bin the ones that don't tick the boxes and advance those that do...so how many politically correct boxes do you think that an application made by the BSPZzzz is going to tick?

I'm assuming that the tax payers money isn't just going to be thrown around like confetti, and that to get any money off the Government, the sports governing bodies will have to present Full Business Cases for how much they want, why they deserve it, and what they will do with it, that will be to the greater good of the sport that the communities that benefit from the sport. Included in that will be an Equalities Impact Assessment (the Public Sector loves those) to ensure that everyone from as diverse a cross section of the community will benefit... SO... let's play a game... let''s pretend that it's YOUR job to write that Full Business Case to support a claim for financial assistance for speedway. How would it read? AND when you've had a go at doing it for yourself, ask yourself who at the BSPZzzz you would trust to present a Full Business Case on behalf of the whole sport without trousering 40% of the money awarded, like Terry Russell did, the last time some collective financial deal was struck (Sky TV, anyone?)

Just checked Perry Barr's COVID-19 infection rate...it's 65% higher than the national average. Every reason for a local lockdown to continue. Not holding my breath on a 17th May season start.

BSPZzzz motto these days - "our way or the highway". No room for renegade promotions that do things differently, that do a bit of forward thinking, that innovate, that aim to do well, or that actually "promote". You march in step or you ship out...and sadly IoW have shipped out.

Yeah good job that was Newport v Birmingham and not against Glasgow. If that had been against the Tigers then the Scots would have had Kyle Newman lynched from the nearest lamp post for fencing Richard Sweetman not only once but twice.

You'll love this one then...

Interesting contradiction going on there.... On the one hand an opposition to doubling up, which is forced upon the clubs by the lack of enough riders to go round, and yet wanting 3 new teams to join the fray, requiring 21 more riders to be discovered out of nowhere. OR do we go for "tripling up"? Or does speedway do what we used to do in primary school, get two team captains, and line everyone up against a wall and the captains take turns in picking the riders for who's going to be in their team this week?

What list? Where was it published? How long have they had to get that right? And still they get it wrong :-( For communication to work, it has to be "heard" and it has to be "right" - failures on both accounts here by the looks of it.

If you slow the video down you'll see a definite flick of the Tomicek's back wheel into Lyons which causes Lyons to career into the fence. It doesn't really matter how much room there is outside, if you are pushed from the inside you are going to suffer the consequences. All that room on the outside does is give you a longer route into the fence.

Vera Duckworth & Lennox Lewis. That pair probably know the square root of diddly squat about speedway, and that would probably be their biggest advantage.

I take it that listening to Dancing Queen by Abba on the stadium PA isn't your idea of "something" then?

That app already exists - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.krygiel.speedway.programme&hl=en_GB&gl=US And some people still have black & white televisions, but that's no excuse for not developing 4K, BluRay, 8K, cable, satellite, IPTV and other hi-tech solutions as technology advances. If fans want to come to speedway on horseback, and refill their quill pens with Quink before filling out their paper programmes, then they are welcome to do so, as far as I'm concerned, but they shouldn't be used as an excuse to prevent progress. That regressive mindset is what's held the sport back for too long.