A interesting survey is out today from the BBC. Investigating the prices of football and going to a match in this day and age.
Only 11 out of the 104 clubs in England and Scotland will offer adults the chance to enjoy a day at the football for less than £20 during the new season.
A survey by the BBC Sport website of every club in the four English divisions and Scottish Premier League showed that fans in the north west have some of the cheapest deals available for matchday tickets.
THE highlightsContinue reading the main story Eight clubs offer tickets for a tenner: Blackburn, Watford, Rochdale, Preston, MK Dons, Rotherham, Torquay, Plymouth
Arsenal's pie is the country's most expensive at £4
Leeds have the most expensive programme at £4, St Johnstone have the cheapest at £1
The cheapest cup of tea in the country is at Crawley 50p. Hereford is 80p
Pies in the south west are generally more expensive (Cheltenham £3.50, Bristol City £3.40, Plymouth £2.90, Bristol Rovers £2.85, Yeovil £3)
Inverness Caledonian Thistle offer the cheapest day out in the SPL - £21.90
Clubs were asked for their cheapest and most expensive possible matchday adult tickets, as well as the prices for a cup of tea, a programme, and a pie in order to work out the price of enjoying a day at the football for fans without season tickets.
In the Premier League Blackburn Rovers offered the best deal at £17.50, while Watford's £17.30 represented the best deal in the Championship. Rochdale and Preston in League One and Rotherham and Torquay in League Two also came in cheapest in their divisions, while Inverness are the best value for money in the Scottish Premier League.
This weekend sees the start of the Football League season in England - a competition which attracted more than 16m fans across its three divisions last season.
John Nagle, head of communications at the Football League, said: "Football League clubs are working extremely hard to attract the next generation of fans through a variety of innovative marketing initiatives. As a result, crowds in recent seasons have been at their highest levels for 50 years."
"Much of the focus is on improving the matchday experience for supporters, particularly families. This has seen the League introduce a programme of 'mystery shopper' visits to matches in order to assess the experience and the introduction of the Family Excellence Award, to reward those clubs that are offering a particularly outstanding day out."
Despite the high attendance figures - an average of 352,260 fans attended Football League fixtures each weekend last season - the chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation Malcolm Clarke says clubs must work harder to ensure football does not become too expensive for ordinary fans.
"This is an industry that has more money going into it at the top of the game through media rights than it's ever had before," said Clarke.
"It's important that football continues to be attractive to the whole cross-section of society, so it doesn't just become something only middle-class and upper-class families can afford."
But despite the prices demand remains strong. Arsenal have the most expensive ticket in domestic football at £100 for one of five category A games for the new season - representing just 1% of tickets available. More than 60,000 fans turned out to watch them draw 2-2 with Boca Juniors in a friendly at the Emirates Stadium last weekend.
And a spokesman for the Premier League pointed out that fans are not being turned off by the expense.
HOW FOOTBALL COMPARES - CHEAPEST DAYS AT LIVE EVENTSContinue reading the main story Iron Maiden at the MEN Arena: £43.10
Hull FC Super League match: £27
England v India at Trent Bridge: £41.10
Nottinghamshire CCC: £21.60
Mamma Mia, Prince of Wales Theatre: £29
"With Premier League grounds over 92% full on average in each of the last three seasons, fans are clearly enjoying the football, and the overall matchday experiences, that are on offer," said a Premier League statement.
"It is also worth taking into account that fans want to watch games featuring top talent in safe stadia; our clubs have invested more than £2bn in facilities and continue to invest heavily in developing and acquiring the best possible players to make the whole fan experience as good as possible."
So is the game still accessible for the working class's. I would suggest yes to a degree but many are finding it harder to get to as many games. Certainly more are taking to support a lower league side and going less often. When the rise of living costs rising all the time people are having to be more selective if and when they go.
Football fans are being treated more and more as customers and clients that need selling to.
This was not the original idea of fans who would traditionally support their local club and at the end of a long hard working week in teh factories could enjoy a time at the football.
It is getting increasingly more expensive and as said in the article it will in future probably only be something which the upper class's (bourgeoisie ) this is a great shame and i feel the game is dying out sadly.
I would recommend any football fan to have a read of this great pamphlett by John Reid a QPR fan who is a socialist party member who has wrote a reclaim the game pamphlett. it is well worth a read to any football fan who cares about the great game.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/ReclaimTheGame/ReclaimtheGame.htm
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Showing posts with label BBc reports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBc reports. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Child povety in Condem Britain as cuts begin to hit
Last Monday on BBc 1 there was a documentary shown called Poor Kids. these documentaries dont come on that often as we are distracted from the real reallities of what really goes on in parts of Britain today as the working class people realise the tories are back at the helm. Documentaries like this one shown last week are shown not because the ruling class wants the mass's to see such things but they are obliged to keep their state funding to show these sorts of programmes to remain somewhat balanced.
The programme was good and underneath i've placed the review of the documantary from our paper this week- the socialist which you can read more at www.socialistparty.org.uk
Three and a half million children in Britain live in poverty. The gap between rich and poor has never been greater. BBC One's "Poor Kids" filmed children in their homes and neighbourhoods and let them talk. What a sad, sickening picture of life in one of the richest countries in the world.
We're told we all have to tighten our belts; that we've all been profligate and now wasteful public spending has to be reined in.
We saw a boy who was bullied for wearing hand-me-down school clothes from his older sister, and a girl who had never had a holiday apart from a school trip to Scarborough. All the children filmed occasionally went without meals, and all of them were cold in the winter because their parents couldn't afford to properly heat their homes.
I normally hate programmes like this. we are very aware that our own children and many of their friends are in the poverty statistics, and I dread programmes that claim to show what it's really like. Aside from the fact that inevitably editorial decisions distort what we see, they also lift people out of their context. With very little commentary we are largely left to draw our own conclusions, and it would be very easy for some viewers to see these children's lives as the product of individual problem parents.
But that is clearly not the case. The statistics injected at various points in the programme showed that these children simply illustrate general conditions. When children talked about their asthma and eczema problems, we were told that poor children are two and a half times more likely to suffer chronic illnesses and 85% of children living in damp conditions suffer breathing problems.
What linked all the families shown was long-term unemployment. One was a single father, struggling to find work that would fit around childcare, while in his city five people chase every job. Officially, the poverty line for a family his size is £1,000 a month after housing costs. This family lived on £420 a month. The father explained that when he was in work their income was that amount a week.
Massive public sector cuts are going to make these conditions far worse. If the government realises its plans, job prospects are going to get much worse, benefits will fall, housing conditions worsen and access to decent children's services, limited as it already is, will be slashed. The happy ending for one child in the programme, when her damp block of flats was knocked down and her family was rehoused, is unlikely to be repeated for many children in this age of austerity.
In fact the people in the programme are the target of Con-Dem attacks. These are the 'scroungers' allegedly living in luxury at the expense of hard-working taxpayers.
The final statistics in the programme were probably the most devastating. On measures of child poverty, Britain comes 18 out of 22 European countries, with only Slovenia, Poland, Hungary and Italy worse. And child poverty is set to rise 11% over the next three years.
Of course the programme offered no solutions. It is up to the Socialist to provide that - to end the horrors of child poverty we must organise to defeat the cuts, and fight for a programme of full employment, and investment in decent housing and public services.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this issue
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fighting the cuts
Strike 30 June
Workers tur
The programme was good and underneath i've placed the review of the documantary from our paper this week- the socialist which you can read more at www.socialistparty.org.uk
Three and a half million children in Britain live in poverty. The gap between rich and poor has never been greater. BBC One's "Poor Kids" filmed children in their homes and neighbourhoods and let them talk. What a sad, sickening picture of life in one of the richest countries in the world.
We're told we all have to tighten our belts; that we've all been profligate and now wasteful public spending has to be reined in.
We saw a boy who was bullied for wearing hand-me-down school clothes from his older sister, and a girl who had never had a holiday apart from a school trip to Scarborough. All the children filmed occasionally went without meals, and all of them were cold in the winter because their parents couldn't afford to properly heat their homes.
I normally hate programmes like this. we are very aware that our own children and many of their friends are in the poverty statistics, and I dread programmes that claim to show what it's really like. Aside from the fact that inevitably editorial decisions distort what we see, they also lift people out of their context. With very little commentary we are largely left to draw our own conclusions, and it would be very easy for some viewers to see these children's lives as the product of individual problem parents.
But that is clearly not the case. The statistics injected at various points in the programme showed that these children simply illustrate general conditions. When children talked about their asthma and eczema problems, we were told that poor children are two and a half times more likely to suffer chronic illnesses and 85% of children living in damp conditions suffer breathing problems.
What linked all the families shown was long-term unemployment. One was a single father, struggling to find work that would fit around childcare, while in his city five people chase every job. Officially, the poverty line for a family his size is £1,000 a month after housing costs. This family lived on £420 a month. The father explained that when he was in work their income was that amount a week.
Massive public sector cuts are going to make these conditions far worse. If the government realises its plans, job prospects are going to get much worse, benefits will fall, housing conditions worsen and access to decent children's services, limited as it already is, will be slashed. The happy ending for one child in the programme, when her damp block of flats was knocked down and her family was rehoused, is unlikely to be repeated for many children in this age of austerity.
In fact the people in the programme are the target of Con-Dem attacks. These are the 'scroungers' allegedly living in luxury at the expense of hard-working taxpayers.
The final statistics in the programme were probably the most devastating. On measures of child poverty, Britain comes 18 out of 22 European countries, with only Slovenia, Poland, Hungary and Italy worse. And child poverty is set to rise 11% over the next three years.
Of course the programme offered no solutions. It is up to the Socialist to provide that - to end the horrors of child poverty we must organise to defeat the cuts, and fight for a programme of full employment, and investment in decent housing and public services.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this issue
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fighting the cuts
Strike 30 June
Workers tur
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
China's influences around the world today
After just watching this excellent documentary on bbc 2 called the chinese are coming
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ykxg9/The_Chinese_Are_Coming_Episode_1/
i thought i'd do a blog about it.
What i witnessed in the documentary was very worrying i thought. From a human perspective the amount of human exploitation going on was scarey. Millions of Chinese capitalists/entrepreneurs are moving to the continent of Africa and the documentary visits Brazil next week where we get to find out waht the chinese influence is having there.
From the documentary they took you to places and examples of chinese involvement. From the chicken farmers in Zambia and the chinese chickens being sold incrediably cheap and mass produced virtually smashing the market for Zambians to even compete to the copper mines up in the Democratic Republic of Congo where there is terrible working conditions for workers there, African workers who work 11 + hours a day there in poor, cramped and often deadly conditions.
There has been protests about pay and conditions for working like anywhere around the world would have. But you hear on the documentary that chinese managers have ended up shooting protesters due to their refusal to work and get on with their jobs in awful conditions.
Right throughout the programme we are reminded how much power and buying power the new China has. What used to be a very insular so called commonist state is now becoming one of the biggest if not the biggest capitalist exploitators in the world.
China is fast over taking the USA and the rest of the world put together.
I havent read Gordon Browns the crash book at all yet but one of the best lines from it i have heard is that he estimates Chinas consumer power once at full capacity will be the equilavent to two United States of America's.
If we stop to think about that for one second, that is scarey and beyond comprehension. The damage that consumtion will have on the planet as a whole will surely drive it to its eventual destruction unless this is curbed.
But what can we do ? there is very little i feel now, China is growing at such a alarming rate and with other big developing countries such as India too the west is going to struggle to compete and keep its power in the global stage.
The documentary continueing next week will be visiting America to find out how scared they are that they will be over taken and pale into the distance with a ever growing China. This will be interesting to hear i think.
As a socialist i am appauled at the rate and extent of China's exploitation around the world and in such poor continents like Africa. They do not see a chance to change Africa for the better they only see it as a vast market and a vast potential profit for their huge business's back home in China.
This in my view is capitalism at its very worst. Wher ea global super power is exploiting the poor in another continent and several countries for their own personal gain.
Sure dont get me wrong local Africans may have benifitted a little from the jobs the chinese have created. But alot of the jobs have gone to chinese workers who have been shipped over from mainland China as they are quicker and more efficient workers apparently. This again is not helping African countries at all. All of the profits and tax is going back to China. Some of the tax will be paid to the local governments in those countries of course but as we well know in this country tax avoidance is something the capitailists specialise in it seems.
Lastly waht also worried me a lot too was the fact that China is very closely linked now to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe who as we well know has a awful record on human rights and has had sanctions leveled at him by the west for decades.
Yet China feels it can do business with him and his awful regieme. One of the most corrupt and torrturers and awful dictators on the planet is cuddling up to one of the worlds super powers in the face of western condemnation is a very worrying thing indeed.
So i do reccomend if you can watch this documentary which is also on next week as it is a very interesting outlook of things to come for Africa, China and the rest of the world. Which will in turn affect all of us.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ykxg9/The_Chinese_Are_Coming_Episode_1/
i thought i'd do a blog about it.
What i witnessed in the documentary was very worrying i thought. From a human perspective the amount of human exploitation going on was scarey. Millions of Chinese capitalists/entrepreneurs are moving to the continent of Africa and the documentary visits Brazil next week where we get to find out waht the chinese influence is having there.
From the documentary they took you to places and examples of chinese involvement. From the chicken farmers in Zambia and the chinese chickens being sold incrediably cheap and mass produced virtually smashing the market for Zambians to even compete to the copper mines up in the Democratic Republic of Congo where there is terrible working conditions for workers there, African workers who work 11 + hours a day there in poor, cramped and often deadly conditions.
There has been protests about pay and conditions for working like anywhere around the world would have. But you hear on the documentary that chinese managers have ended up shooting protesters due to their refusal to work and get on with their jobs in awful conditions.
Right throughout the programme we are reminded how much power and buying power the new China has. What used to be a very insular so called commonist state is now becoming one of the biggest if not the biggest capitalist exploitators in the world.
China is fast over taking the USA and the rest of the world put together.
I havent read Gordon Browns the crash book at all yet but one of the best lines from it i have heard is that he estimates Chinas consumer power once at full capacity will be the equilavent to two United States of America's.
If we stop to think about that for one second, that is scarey and beyond comprehension. The damage that consumtion will have on the planet as a whole will surely drive it to its eventual destruction unless this is curbed.
But what can we do ? there is very little i feel now, China is growing at such a alarming rate and with other big developing countries such as India too the west is going to struggle to compete and keep its power in the global stage.
The documentary continueing next week will be visiting America to find out how scared they are that they will be over taken and pale into the distance with a ever growing China. This will be interesting to hear i think.
As a socialist i am appauled at the rate and extent of China's exploitation around the world and in such poor continents like Africa. They do not see a chance to change Africa for the better they only see it as a vast market and a vast potential profit for their huge business's back home in China.
This in my view is capitalism at its very worst. Wher ea global super power is exploiting the poor in another continent and several countries for their own personal gain.
Sure dont get me wrong local Africans may have benifitted a little from the jobs the chinese have created. But alot of the jobs have gone to chinese workers who have been shipped over from mainland China as they are quicker and more efficient workers apparently. This again is not helping African countries at all. All of the profits and tax is going back to China. Some of the tax will be paid to the local governments in those countries of course but as we well know in this country tax avoidance is something the capitailists specialise in it seems.
Lastly waht also worried me a lot too was the fact that China is very closely linked now to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe who as we well know has a awful record on human rights and has had sanctions leveled at him by the west for decades.
Yet China feels it can do business with him and his awful regieme. One of the most corrupt and torrturers and awful dictators on the planet is cuddling up to one of the worlds super powers in the face of western condemnation is a very worrying thing indeed.
So i do reccomend if you can watch this documentary which is also on next week as it is a very interesting outlook of things to come for Africa, China and the rest of the world. Which will in turn affect all of us.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
The extreme weather of late
So i just read on the bbc news that 800 people are known to have died in Brazil with a further 400 presumed dead or missing. With just last month and still now there have been some terrible floods in Queensland in Austrlia where they have had droughts for years and years now under huge amounts of water.
In brazilThe Brazilian government has said it will set up an early warning system to alert communities of impending danger.
The flooding is considered the worst natural disaster Brazil has ever experienced.
According to figures compiled by the newspaper O Globo, a third of all victims were under age.
The youngest fatality was a five-day-old baby buried in a mudslide in Nova Friburgo, the worst affected town with 324 dead.
Continuing danger
The number of missing has been declining as forensic experts identify more bodies, but rescue workers fear the full extent of the disaster is not yet known, with some remote communities still only reachable by helicopter.
Funeral workers said some dogs were guarding their owners' graves for days Emergency workers say their priority is to make sure no new deaths occur.
They are warning of the risks of contaminated water.
Three people are known to have contracted leptospirosis, an infectious bacterial disease, which is caused by exposure to water contaminated with rats' urine.
In Teresopolis, doctors have been administering thousands of tetanus vaccines.
In Sao Jose do Vale, workers were erecting more than a hundred tents sent from the UK to house those whose homes were swept away or flooded.
Volunteers in Rio de Janeiro held an adoption fair in the hope of re-homing some of the 5,000 animals left without owners as a result of the disaster.
The government has allocated $240m (£150m) in emergency reconstruction money for the area.
Two points really one is are these more frequent natural disasters a natural problem that we cant do much about or is this another consequence of global warming affecting us now. As my blogpost earlier detailed the affect of capitalism and industralisation is having such a huge impact on our planet and i still dont think we have seen the true consequences of all this.
The trouble is alot of these disasters that mostly the west and now China now are creating due to excessive pollution into the earth's atmosphere over a number of years most of the natural disasters are happening to 3rd world or developing countries who have little infrustructure to deal with large scale disaster. From teh article from the bbc i just posted above the small fund the brazilian government can give to disasters like this is low compared to if this kind of disaster happened in the western world. I do conceed that when America and New orleans faced wide spread flooding and destruction after hurricane Katrina they to were slow to react but i partly think that was down to them not being ready or prepared properly not lack of funds.
But my second point is that howcomes disasters in the 3rd and developing worlds recieve such little attention in our news these days ? Our news seems very biased towards western based news stories and rarely make a big deal of disasters like this i have just posted. Why is this do we think ?
link to bbc article on brazilian floods :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12263166?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
In brazilThe Brazilian government has said it will set up an early warning system to alert communities of impending danger.
The flooding is considered the worst natural disaster Brazil has ever experienced.
According to figures compiled by the newspaper O Globo, a third of all victims were under age.
The youngest fatality was a five-day-old baby buried in a mudslide in Nova Friburgo, the worst affected town with 324 dead.
Continuing danger
The number of missing has been declining as forensic experts identify more bodies, but rescue workers fear the full extent of the disaster is not yet known, with some remote communities still only reachable by helicopter.
Funeral workers said some dogs were guarding their owners' graves for days Emergency workers say their priority is to make sure no new deaths occur.
They are warning of the risks of contaminated water.
Three people are known to have contracted leptospirosis, an infectious bacterial disease, which is caused by exposure to water contaminated with rats' urine.
In Teresopolis, doctors have been administering thousands of tetanus vaccines.
In Sao Jose do Vale, workers were erecting more than a hundred tents sent from the UK to house those whose homes were swept away or flooded.
Volunteers in Rio de Janeiro held an adoption fair in the hope of re-homing some of the 5,000 animals left without owners as a result of the disaster.
The government has allocated $240m (£150m) in emergency reconstruction money for the area.
Two points really one is are these more frequent natural disasters a natural problem that we cant do much about or is this another consequence of global warming affecting us now. As my blogpost earlier detailed the affect of capitalism and industralisation is having such a huge impact on our planet and i still dont think we have seen the true consequences of all this.
The trouble is alot of these disasters that mostly the west and now China now are creating due to excessive pollution into the earth's atmosphere over a number of years most of the natural disasters are happening to 3rd world or developing countries who have little infrustructure to deal with large scale disaster. From teh article from the bbc i just posted above the small fund the brazilian government can give to disasters like this is low compared to if this kind of disaster happened in the western world. I do conceed that when America and New orleans faced wide spread flooding and destruction after hurricane Katrina they to were slow to react but i partly think that was down to them not being ready or prepared properly not lack of funds.
But my second point is that howcomes disasters in the 3rd and developing worlds recieve such little attention in our news these days ? Our news seems very biased towards western based news stories and rarely make a big deal of disasters like this i have just posted. Why is this do we think ?
link to bbc article on brazilian floods :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12263166?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
Police dragging disabled man from wheelchair during student protests
From this interview with Ben brown from the BBC news http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXNJ3MZ-AUo&feature=youtu.be
this had outraged me this morning. I feel the bbc was hugely unsensitive to this poor disabled man who repeatably told the intervewer that he posed no threat to police at all yet was dragged from his wheelchair twice and his over the head by a batton. I'm frankly disgusted with our police force this morning and the bbc for reporting this badly. Shame on them. I hope poor Jody Mcintyre makes a full recovery along with ALfie Meadows who ended up in hospital within a inch of his life with bleeding on the brain due to being struck over the head with a trunchen.
There has been many blogs and articles written on this news story but i'd like to add my thoughts and feelings to this dispicable act by our nations police force of which we are supposed to have such trust and faith in to protect us. What kind of protection is this if they are going after a poor innocent disabled man who has a long term permenant disability. It is just frankly a sad state of affairs that this country has turned this way. What makes matter worse is the sheer short sightedness of the BBC interviewer- Ben brown who asks the most ridiculous questions of a man who can hardly move. Totally disregarded his disability and treated him like he was a criminal and had started the violence. Really disapointing to see the BBC turn this way as almost a extension of the governments media department now.
I used to like the BBC but any more reporting like this i am afraid i will have to find my news somewhere else.
I hope a complete inestigation is carried out into this incident and the Alfie Meadows incident and official complaints are launched and the police who did this are brought to task for this.
Myself and this blog do not condone violence and would be condeming this just as much if a police officer got hurt dont get me wrong but i se no evidence of this so will stand on the side of the poor innocent students who could not defend themselves like the police could.
this had outraged me this morning. I feel the bbc was hugely unsensitive to this poor disabled man who repeatably told the intervewer that he posed no threat to police at all yet was dragged from his wheelchair twice and his over the head by a batton. I'm frankly disgusted with our police force this morning and the bbc for reporting this badly. Shame on them. I hope poor Jody Mcintyre makes a full recovery along with ALfie Meadows who ended up in hospital within a inch of his life with bleeding on the brain due to being struck over the head with a trunchen.
There has been many blogs and articles written on this news story but i'd like to add my thoughts and feelings to this dispicable act by our nations police force of which we are supposed to have such trust and faith in to protect us. What kind of protection is this if they are going after a poor innocent disabled man who has a long term permenant disability. It is just frankly a sad state of affairs that this country has turned this way. What makes matter worse is the sheer short sightedness of the BBC interviewer- Ben brown who asks the most ridiculous questions of a man who can hardly move. Totally disregarded his disability and treated him like he was a criminal and had started the violence. Really disapointing to see the BBC turn this way as almost a extension of the governments media department now.
I used to like the BBC but any more reporting like this i am afraid i will have to find my news somewhere else.
I hope a complete inestigation is carried out into this incident and the Alfie Meadows incident and official complaints are launched and the police who did this are brought to task for this.
Myself and this blog do not condone violence and would be condeming this just as much if a police officer got hurt dont get me wrong but i se no evidence of this so will stand on the side of the poor innocent students who could not defend themselves like the police could.
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