Jon wrote:Word Warrior wrote:it seems to me you closed it because of Mike Winch's last post, you seem to make your own rules up as and when it suits you.
Mike's post had nothing whatsoever to do with the politics section closing. Nothing at all. We had discussed the closure of the section a couple months ago and it was always in our plans to lock it some time after the results of the AAA vote. The fact that Mike's post was one of the last is purely coincidental. And the email instructing me to go ahead and lock the section was actually sent before Mike posted that message.
Then you should open it again because the politics of the sport is one of the few areas worth discussing and the only way to bring attention to the the problems and reasons why GB athletics is not succeeding as well as it can.
What is seriously relevant, for example, is the fact that whatever the misguided stalwart supporters of the establishment want to think, the sport at governance and administrative level (UKA) is mismanaged and has been for years. They are resourcefully inept, cash wasteful, totally unaccountable, uncommunative and woefully lacking in the expected level of professional expertise.
How do I justify that? Well, we have just 6 athletes in Britain in the world top 10 (after 9 years and £100 million spent.) Three are injured, two failed to medal even in the Commonwwealth and overall their prospects for the podium in Beijing look extremely doubtful and they can all forget London in 2012. And, the championships record for finalists, medals and even qualifiers over the same period must raise serious questions? But it doesn't! Because the sport is too passive and the goverment quangos too complict in the failures.
Pessimistic? no, realistic. We have no young newcomers impacting on the world stage who we could reasonable expect to podium in London in 2012 and (with great luck) only two possible medal chances for Osaka next year let alone Beijing the year after. Don't accept what I say just read what the T&F statisticians predict (but probably the gullable followers of UKA Ltd., won't believe them either!)
How can any objective view of UKA's delivery performance to date indicate they are going to deliver GB success in future global championships? Which is exactly what they were set up for and funded to do since 1997.
Dave Collins has not sacked anyone (athletes or coach) and neither has Moorcroft. Have we seen D. Collins's brave new plan for success? No, because its unlikely he has one even though he keeps telling us he has.
Why isn't there a detailed breakdown of every lottery funded athlete's provision? Not just for accountable information but also perhaps to inspire others to get on the (for some) gravy train.
England Athletics has no published detailed business plan. And no financial plan either. UKA claim 18000 coaches in the UK!! What?? The overwhelming majority of these are teachers who take a local authority sponsored level 1 or 2 purely for insurance purposes in schools. Ask UKA to provide a breakdown of coaching levels and clubs of the magnificent 18000? It's just something that looks great in glossy brochures and for Sport England.
UKA associates itself with off shore companies used for the purpose of secrecy and tax avoidance. Sportscentric the website providers for UKA is owned through a trail of companies associated with Alan Pascoe that end up in the British Virgin Islands and Trust funds in Guernsey where anonimity is paramount. They seemed to have great difficulty in presenting accounts and then reported first year losses of c£950.000 and 2nd year losses of c£450.000....for a UKA website?!!
Alan Pascoe (reportedly associated with 29 different companies) or any one his directors at Fastrack earn more than the combined salaries of the UKA directors together from that one company. (Fastrack diretors took c£366.000 each) Why does UKA engage a company to sell it's product that then makes far more money than UKA itself ? Is this good business sense? Fasttrack will reportedly also take £1m to put on a "schools Olympics" in Glasgow later this year! (how much does a League div 1 final cost?)
Mike Winch (the current and elected Vice President of UKA and seemingly well respected in the sport) has called for Dave Moorcroft to be sacked. How much more of an indictment do we need? But unfortuantely, it won't happen because failure and incompetence are clearly the measure of our national government and they're the ones keeping Moorcroft and company in place.
"if all else fails, immortality can always be achieved by a spectacular failure" -John Kenneth Galbraith
, had to stop you guessing lol.