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F.A.N Manifesto – Let's Make It Count

29/3/2015

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Today see’s the publication of the 11 point F.A.N manifesto; a coherent document whose purpose is to encourage politicians to think seriously about our national game.

NUFC FANS UTD have been heavily involved in its development alongside football supporters from clubs across the country. Indeed, those who attended our meeting back in January will recognise the fundamental points delivered by its inspirational author David Goldblatt in his draft manifesto presentation. 

The manifesto calls for footballing change; something we are sure will resonate with the majority of football supporters.  Please read the manifesto, enter the debate and see if you can make your vote count. 


1. TIME TO LEGISLATE: PASS A FOOTBALL REFORM BILL

In 2011 Hugh Robertson, then minister for sport, said: “If football proves unable to sort this out itself then the government may have to legislate.” Four years later football has not sorted itself out and there has been no legislation.

Whoever is the next secretary of state for culture, media and sport must make the introduction of a Football Reform Bill a departmental priority.

This would serve as the final opportunity for the Football Association to complete its process of internal reform. Either way, there must be legislation to ensure the reform of club ownership, taxation and governance.

2. DO THE UNTHINKABLE: PAY THE LIVING WAGE
At the leading clubs, players, coaches and chief executives earn more in a day than those on the minimum wage earn in a year. Some clubs have tried to make their contract staff buy their own uniforms. Yet without the army of stewards, ticket takers and catering staff, the show cannot go on, however good the football. If the Premier League can now pay full-time staff the living wage, please pay all the part-timers the same. If FC United of Manchester and Dulwich Hamlet, six levels below them, pay the living wage then everyone in between can too; and that should include the FA and the Football League.

3. STOP FLEECING FANS: SET FAIR TICKET PRICES
In the past 20 years, at every level, tickets have increased in price faster than inflation many times over. In the Premier League the real rate of inflation at some clubs has been close to 1,000%. This is shameless rent-seeking by effective monopolies over people’s football affections. If you want to watch Spurs, there’s no option but to go to Spurs. This is particularly unfair given that the value of the game’s media rights is underwritten by the ebullience of crowds. Supporters are not just customers, but critics and chorus. Away fans, vital in sustaining a meaningful atmosphere, have been treated shamelessly. We call for the Premier League to collectively freeze ticket prices for the duration of the next television deal, set a maximum price for away fans’ tickets and increase the number of cheaper seats. We call for clubs at every level to ensure that a reasonable number of cheaper tickets are available.

4. STOP DITHERING: INTRODUCE SAFE STANDING
If football fans were customers, if football really was a free market, then presumably fans would get what they wanted and they were ready to pay for. The introduction of safe standing has been researched, tested, found safe and acquired considerable support from fans and their clubs. It is an effective way to improve the atmosphere at matches and to lower ticket prices. It is in operation in Germany with great success. Yet still government and clubs dither. This requires no more than a simple amendment to the Football Spectators Act to allow the licensing authorities to permit the introduction of safe standing. Do it now.

5. MODERNISE, AT LAST: TIME FOR A FIT AND PROPER FA
The FA’s record of internal reform has been so tortuously slow that this must be considered the last opportunity for it to complete the process itself rather than it being imposed by the Reform Bill. At the very minimum the FA needs to:

■ Reform the composition of the FA board, reducing the number of representatives of the professional game and the national game and replace them with independent directors and a supporters representative.

■ Reform the FA council so it actually looks and sounds like the wider football nation.

■ Establish and fund a system of club licensing and regulation with teeth.

■ The Freedom of Information Act should be applicable to the FA.

6 TAKE BACK POWER: WITH TRANSPARENT CLUB OWNERSHIP
Central to the Reform Bill, a proper set of rules on transparent club ownership:

■ All shareholdings in football clubs will be made public, including full disclosure of any beneficial owners and holding companies behind which the unscrupulous have hidden.

■ The introduction of a new club licensing scheme overseen by a reformed FA that would make clubs’ financial dealings transparent; strengthen the fit and proper persons test and make its workings public; require all new owners to meet a club’s supporters’ trust before acquiring shares; and protect key aspects of the club – such as its main strip and its name – in law.

■ Reform the composition of club boards and the duties of directors through changes in corporate law. This would include making the interests of the club paramount over those of shareholders; require a majority of independent directors on boards with a legal responsibility to encourage supporter ownership, and include a minimum of two directors from a club’s supporters’ trust.

■ A statutory right to buy for supporters’ trusts whenever a club faces insolvency, its shares are going to be sold or new ones issued.

■ Changes in the tax regime. These would be designed to support social ownership and deter carpetbaggers – for example, removing tax relief on leveraged buy-outs and making it easier for supporters’ trusts to obtain it.

7. REAL REDISTRIBUTION: A WINDFALL TAX ON THE PREMIER LEAGUE
In the absence of wage controls the massive windfall that is coming the Premier League’s way will almost entirely disappear into players’ wages and agents’ fees. No one can say that these groups have not been generously rewarded. Some of that windfall needs to go elsewhere.

The Premier League’s pledge last week to give more generously to the rest of the game is welcome. Uefa takes nearly 10% of the money generated by the Champions League for solidarity payments. Fifa, for all its faults, has allocated 20% of its budget to development projects.

We want the Premier League to raise its contribution to 15%. Half of this should be spent on grassroots, non-league football and social projects and half allocated to a supporters’ ownership fund that will underwrite supporter trust buy-outs and rescues.

8. CLAIM CASHBACK: BOOKIES TO PAY THEIR SHARE
Bookmakers and broadcasters have made a lot of money out of the football boom. Profits have been very healthy and in the case of offshore gambling sites, taxes have been very low. Neither industry, despite a garlanding of corporate social responsibility projects, has returned a fraction of the value it has extracted from the game.

The gambling industry already pays a levy to the horse racing industry; it would be administratively very simple to impose a small percentage turnover tax on every football bet, and more equitable if there were to be a levy on bookmakers’ football profits too.

When football media rights are sold, by the FA or the leagues, the bidders should pay some pro-rata rate to social projects.

9. SHIFT THE FOCUS: TO GRASSROOTS AND NON-LEAGUE
If the grassroots of football received one pound every time the professional game praised it, it would be rich beyond all imagination. But the grassroots – including the youth, women’s and non‑league games – are not rich.

The state of the nation’s facilities is poor, the provision of changing rooms and toilets for women and girls is worse, and the massive squeeze of local authority expenditure has led to a collapse in the maintenance budgets of established grounds. For those who can find a decent pitch, the number of trained coaches per capita is a quarter of Germany’s where the costs are subsidised. Yet football’s private opulence feeds on the enormous pool of enthusiasm and talent that grassroots football generates.

The windfall taxes should be spent here, focused on: subsidising coaching education, supporting struggling clubs, building pitches in the poorest areas and making sure every single playing field has women’s changing rooms.

10. SWEEP AWAY FIFA: CLEAN UP THE GLOBAL GAME
The FA has been a hapless operator within Fifa; the Premier League’s lust for foreign markets is simply shameless. We want a football foreign policy that is a smart, effective voice for reform, not a marketing operation. Smart means working with Europe and acquiring a leading place in Uefa; the FA needs to be part of an effective coalition, not an ineffective independent. It goes without saying that both the FA and government must actively support international efforts to see the complete reconstitution of Fifa, and to insist on models of tournament hosting that are sustainable and carnivalesque.

11. A NEW CULTURE: A REAL FIGHT FOR EQUALITY
If football is the people’s game it needs to look like the people. Football’s diversity campaigns have had real successes getting racism, sexism and homophobia out of the stands, disabled fans into seats that work for them and women on to the pitch. Yet as recent accounts of racist fans on the Paris metro and sexist chants in stadiums remind us, there remains much to be done.

The problem is not just in the stands. The words and then tortuous apologies of, among others, Dave Whelan, Malky Mackay and Richard Scudamore demonstrate that the upper echelon of the football establishment holds attitudes to difference, to gender, ethnicity and sexuality that are at best antiquated and at worst discriminatory. It is this culture that is responsible for the scandalous under-representation of minority coaches at every level, and everyone other than old white men on football boards. If aiming for a quarter of company boards to be women is a good enough model for the FTSE 250, it’s good enough for football, too. There should be two years’ grace before legally backed gender quotas are required. And if the Rooney rule, ensuring a qualified minority candidate is seen by interview panels, works for the NFL, why not here? Football should introduce the Rooney rule immediately.

Read David Goldblatt's full article in The Guardian
Learn more about F.A.N. and get involved here
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Heard the one about the Geordie and the Mackem rowing the Atlantic?

1/3/2015

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Some people take on some amazing challenges in the name of charity, but surely rowing across the Atlantic Ocean accompanied by a Mackem must be one of the ultimate. Well, that’s exactly what Newcastle United fan Sean McGuigan is enduring later this year when he sets off with his Mackem mate Paul Snowdon on this amazing challenge.

Sean is half of the crew from the North Easts first ever entry in the Talisker Whisky Challenge; a 3000 mile race across the Atlantic Ocean in rowing boats completely unassisted. It will take between 45 and 90 days to row across depending upon the weather.
 
Both lads are locals who work together. Sean is an NUFC fan while Paul, is a Sunderland fan and obviously this brings with it the usual banter. They are raising money for specifically two local causes; the North East Alzheimer's Society and St Clare's Hospice in Jarrow and all money raised will stay within the region. So far, all of their sponsors have also been local. 
 
The lads need as much publicity as they can get to help boost their profile to help them raise as much as they can for the charities and also to attract corporate sponsors to advertise on the boat as this money will be paying for the kit needed for the race.

Both lads are serious about the race and they aim to win. They have both done many endurance events and are not in it to make up the numbers. Sean holds the fastest UK time for a rowed marathon for the last year and is also one of the World record holders for the longest non stop 'tandem' row on a Concept2 rowing machine which stands at 30 hours 30 minutes without allowing the flywheel to stop.
 
Despite the fact that they are from opposite sides of the fence football wise they are sure that they will be able to an sit in a boat without killing each other for two months. They actually attended the Stadium of light recently for a photo shoot with their boat and Sean turned up in his Newcastle top which drew a few suspicious looks, but he had to maintain his integrity! 
 
Back to business. The North East, cancer and Alzheimer's doesn’t care what colour your top is so if you can support the lads in any way either through making a donation or through corporate sponsorship then please get in touch and follow their progress via their website at www.NorthEastAtlanticChallenge.co.uk
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Pegida UK - Not In Our City

1/3/2015

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From Zeit.de

The soccer fans have a central role within Pegida Dresden.  In the newly established Pegida Branch in  the UK, they play a central role too. However: In the UK they are leading the Anti-Pegida-Movement.

Steve Hastie has been going to Newcastle United games since 1967. He went for the first time when he was 7 years old and hasn’t walked away since. He witnessed two second place finishes and 3 relegations. He saw Paul Gascoigne, Alan Shearer and Dietmar Hamann. He went through ups und downs with his team. “More downs then ups”, he says. But nothing has Steve Hastie more disturbed then this strange group that wants to demonstrate in Newcastle on Saturday, prior to a match of his club: Pegida.

While the Dresdner anti-Islamic movement only manages to bring a fraction of their former supporters on the road, they are expanding to other countries. They are also in the UK now. They call themselves Pegida UK and have invited everyone for their first demonatration this Saturday. Some people like this. For example the 800 people that joined the event on Facebook. Many more people however want to fight it, for example Steve Hastie and his friends from Newcastle United.

The supporters association NUFC Fans United published the statement Not In Our City. They wrote: “There is the fear that fans of Newcastle United, of Islamic faith, are being singled out and insulted (…) What kind of message does this event sent to those that came to our Universities to study or the tourists that visit our town? (…) This event is unaceptable and not welcome in the streets of Newcastle.”

“Our jerseys are black and white”
These crystal clear words are remarkable. At best, German soccer fans always remained passive with regards to Pegida. When 25,000 people took to the streets in Dresden in December to protest against the alleged Islamisation of the West, hooligans and fans of the football club Dynamo were at the forefront. They even acted as a kind of anti-riot. There was no visible action of German soccer fans against the xenophobic ideas of Pegida or its offshoots in other cities.

England shows a different picture. Even before the first demonstration the people of Newcastle and especially their football fans act. “We don’t want Pegida” days Hastie “how could we: our jerseys are black and white”.

Model for Hogesa
Hastie says, after Pegida announced the demonstrations,  many fans with Asian or African decent, went to the fan association and told them: “This is wrong”. Maybe Pegida hoped for support of the fans “but that does not fit together”, says Hastie. “How can a football fan talk about islamisation and then a few our later celebrate his heroes at the stadium, among them are four or five Muslims”, says Hastie.

Sure, there are NUFC Fans, that support Pegida UK and their ideas, says Hastie. Racism is a problem in English football too. A few years ago the English Defence league (EDL) was founded, which attracted many Hooligans. They were a model for the German Hooligan group “Hogesa”, whose assembly escalated in Cologne in October. Only recently, Chelsea fans urged a black man man from the subway in Paris, while singing a racist song. The outrage was great and even the UN commented on it.

Pegida UK has around 17,000 likes on its Facebook page. Many from Germany. The movement leans heavily on its German originals. The 19 theses presented  by Pegida in Dresden apply here too. According to British Media reports, the organiser of Pegida UK is a 29 year old social worker named Matt Pope. Pope describes himself as a very liberal person.

Of course, a Newcastle jersey does not prevent a person from supporting Pegida, says Hastie. But for each of those fans, there would be at least 5 that reject those ideas. And that’s what we wanted to show. The reactions to the ‘No Thanks’ statement of Newcastle United supporters were "very positive". The British Media reported it, politicians congratulated them, there were responses from Argentina and reports in Spain and Greece.

600 against 3,000
The fans could not prevent the assembly of Pegida. However many of them will be there on Saturday as part of a counter demonstration with representatives of the Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Sikh communities that come together in a movement called Newcastle Unites.

Steve Hastie will be there too. He expects 600 supporters and more than 3,000 people demonstrating against Pegida UK. Many of the counter-demonstrators will go to the match afterwards. Hastie says: “we'd prefer it if Pegida had not chosen to come to Newcastle at all, never mind pick a day when Newcastle United play.”

The original article by Christian Spiller, appeared on 27.02.2015 and was translated for NUFC Fans Utd by Anja Böehme.
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