Favour please - Bristol City needs your help.

knip

knip

knip

Soldato
Joined
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Somewhere in Bristol
Hello lovely people, I need a favour.

As most of you know, I am quite heavily involved in doing bits and bobs for Bristol City football club, and late last week we were hit with the news that our new stadium is now in doubt. I am going to copy and paste the blurb as to the reasons why because I cant put it into words without getting upset.


Plans for a new World Cup stadium for Bristol are under threat from attempts to classify the site as a village green. This would mean that the stadium cannot be built. It would mean that Bristol would lose out on the opportunity to host World Cup football.

Thousands of jobs would be lost for local people. Millions of £££s would be lost to the local area. The majority of people in Bristol and further afield - would lose out.

Bristol City Council will make the final decision. They need to know that you and everyone else in the city and indeed further afield wants a new stadium not a village green. Please let them know that you're behind them!

22 nimbys are basically exploiting a loophole in the law which allows for them to request that any piece of land (in this case 42 acres) to be made a town green. In Bristol Citys case this land was once a landfill, and is by no means a "village green" however the future for our new stadium is not looking good.

Therefore I am wondering if you would do me this one teeny favour and sign the petition I am linking to in this post. Also if anyone wants to spread the link to the petition via twitter/facebook etc to try and get more signatures, that would be brilliant.

It doesnt matter that you aren't from Bristol, the bigger the audience signing this petition the better. We need Bristol City Council to sit up and take notice of how much people want a new stadium. They have to make the difficult decision to over rule the report, and say yes to our new stadium.

Sorry to whitter on, I just wanted to explain things. Please help me :)

Here's the link to the petition.

http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/view/stadium_not_green

Also if you want to, we have made this You Tube Video to help explain things as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIidbwA40-E

Thankyou, and I will shut up now.
 
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Hmm, very caught in the middle on this, could you elaborate a little on the situation.

A very quick look on wiki suggests its a 29million pound stadium plan at 30k capacity, that would be extended to a 42k capacity stadium if England win the 2018 world cup bid?

Could you let me know what funding would be for the 29mil if its a Bristol City only stadium, do Bristol need heavy financial help to build that, or can they do it out of profits, do Bristol City in current 21k(i think) stadium sell out every game, how much would the 42k stadium cost and would that then become heavily subsidised by the government to help with the world cup bid?

What I'm kind of against is the idea of Bristol City gaining a free massive boost to stadium capacity, to host world cup games, that would artificially allow them to outspend everyone else in their league, mostly many times over and financially compete with the top half of the premier league.

Ok, other teams have had the same help from outside investment fair enough, but something feels even more wrong about the government paying for it.

Also with regards to a world cup, 42k sounds pretty lame to be honest, 3 games a day in general, at 42k capacity would become the 15th biggest stadium in the UK. Considering the number above 60k, the investment by the government and the costs involved and the money to be made by a government heavily in debt, I think using the big capacity stadiums we have will increase revenue HUGELY over a 42k capacity stadium.


Now if Bristol City themselves or with investment from non government sources can finance a 42k stadium, I'd happily sign, but frankly I'm very against the government spunking cash thats unnecessary and a team gaining a MASSIVE advantage out of it at little cost to themselves.

Also, 29million, isn't that cheap for even a 30k capacity stadium, ok, its not the Emirates, its not on incredibly expensive London land, but it still seems oddly cheap.

No I don't think a council should screw themselves, and thats the odd thing here, what reasoning did they give for it. Your council should be all for it, getting money and business, jobs out of the government is good for them so is very strange for them to fight it.

I'm just not sure I'm for a government in SERIOUS financial trouble funding the building of the 15th largest stadium in the UK on tax payers money, when it will limit the revenue generated in the world cup.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Hmm, very caught in the middle on this, could you elaborate a little on the situation.

A very quick look on wiki suggests its a 29million pound stadium plan at 30k capacity, that would be extended to a 42k capacity stadium if England win the 2018 world cup bid?

Could you let me know what funding would be for the 29mil if its a Bristol City only stadium, do Bristol need heavy financial help to build that, or can they do it out of profits, do Bristol City in current 21k(i think) stadium sell out every game, how much would the 42k stadium cost and would that then become heavily subsidised by the government to help with the world cup bid?

What I'm kind of against is the idea of Bristol City gaining a free massive boost to stadium capacity, to host world cup games, that would artificially allow them to outspend everyone else in their league, mostly many times over and financially compete with the top half of the premier league.

Ok, other teams have had the same help from outside investment fair enough, but something feels even more wrong about the government paying for it.

Also with regards to a world cup, 42k sounds pretty lame to be honest, 3 games a day in general, at 42k capacity would become the 15th biggest stadium in the UK. Considering the number above 60k, the investment by the government and the costs involved and the money to be made by a government heavily in debt, I think using the big capacity stadiums we have will increase revenue HUGELY over a 42k capacity stadium.


Now if Bristol City themselves or with investment from non government sources can finance a 42k stadium, I'd happily sign, but frankly I'm very against the government spunking cash thats unnecessary and a team gaining a MASSIVE advantage out of it at little cost to themselves.

Also, 29million, isn't that cheap for even a 30k capacity stadium, ok, its not the Emirates, its not on incredibly expensive London land, but it still seems oddly cheap.

No I don't think a council should screw themselves, and thats the odd thing here, what reasoning did they give for it. Your council should be all for it, getting money and business, jobs out of the government is good for them so is very strange for them to fight it.

I'm just not sure I'm for a government in SERIOUS financial trouble funding the building of the 15th largest stadium in the UK on tax payers money, when it will limit the revenue generated in the world cup.
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Can't say i know the exact in's and outs of where all the money is coming from, but as it stands the largest part is coming from our chairman who sold off 40 million quids worth of shares in his company, plus 20 million from Sainsburys who want to build a new supermarket where Ashton gate is.

As far as i know the only money that would be put in by any kind of government would be from Bristol City council towards the likely 10,000 capacity arena that they have been wanting to build for years and iirc they will be paying x amount per year to rent / use some of the conferencing facilities that will be a part of the stadium development.

There are most likely some development grants coming in, but then any development on this scale will be able to get these things, but by and large the funding is almost totally coming from the private sector.

This stadium plus the assosiated developments is much needed, Bristol is loosing out on huge sums of money because Cardiff has spent a vast amount of money developing top notch conferencing facilities and general venues, Bristol has lagged behind and is seen by many as a city stagnating and not really doing anything, the BBC moving out is just one indicator of this, unless this city can offer facilities at least comparable to that of our neighbours over the bridge then it won't be long before the companies like DAS, RBS, Lloyds who all have major offices in Bristol start thinking about buggering off as well.

The world cup money would be a massive boost for the local economy but will by and large pale into insignificance compared to the long term money to be made in the area due to having the business facilities that will be available at the new development.

In a time where government will be severely cutting back on expenditure the private sector must pick up the slack, and here is 90/100 million quids worth of such investment that is being held up by 22 people who want to carry on letting their dogs roam free and crap all over an old landfill sight.

The council want the stadium but without proper grounds can't but go with the recomendation for Village green status as legal precidence has been set by the house of Lords overturning a decision by Oxford City Council to reject a village green application.

This is a blatant abuse of the vagueness of the legislation in this area to pretect what is an old landfill sight which has already had considerable work done to it to reduce the levels of toxins around but still requires more to be done, if we just tried to plonk the stadium on top, the H+S executive would have an absolute field day, but apparently it's perfectly safe to let kids and dogs roam free on this bit of land :confused:
 
BBC is moving not because of bristol. Rbs and lloyds also aren't going anywhere soon.
 
drunkenmaster, Spud21 has pretty much explained things. If you have any more questions i'd be happy to ask. Essentially our chairman is bankrolling a large part of it, with the rest of the money coming from Sainsburys when they hopefully get the go ahead (whole other story, see my other thread in here somewhere) to do so from the council. :)
 
Morba said:
BBC is moving not because of bristol. Rbs and lloyds also aren't going anywhere soon.
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No, but a number of Bristol's "flagship" programs ie Casualty are moving to Cardiff next series. Although in fairness that is just to do with diversity/spreading out the BBC's productions rather than anything against Bristol specifically.

Edit: Nevermind, read your post wrong, thought you said BBC is not moving :p.

Oh, and signed :).
 
Signed.

Good luck to Mr Lansdown and co. City really need a new stadium, and the good it will do for Bristol far outweighs the negatives.

Who knows in a few years even I might be able to afford property in Long Ashton. :P
 
I'll sign it as long as everyone signs the inevitable Dundee related petition that will appear in the next few months :(
 
I will gladly.

Online petition is just about to break through the 5000 barrier, which added to the 2500 collected on Saturday is pretty good. Need a lot lot more though. The club have attempted to take it national this afternoon.

http://www.bcfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10327~2163045,00.html

Losing this just doesn't bear thinking about :(

Keep signing lovely people (and even the not so lovely ones :D )
 
Signed ages ago - of course ;)

Now to start one to do something about the managerial situation.... :D
 
Online petition about to hit 10,000 signatures, and we collected another 3000 at this weekends home game. Fair play to Norwich because once we explained to them what it was all about, loads and loads (they were queuing) were signing it as well. :)
 
3,000? Wow that's good going for one home game- How many of you were out collecting?
 
Bes said:
3,000? Wow that's good going for one home game- How many of you were out collecting?
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About a dozen. We set 3 tables up round the ground and like I said, people were queuing. Then we passed the clipboards round at half time again.

Oh and Sky Sports interviewed me again, may be on Thursday or Friday. :eek:
 
knip said:
About a dozen. We set 3 tables up round the ground and like I said, people were queuing. Then we passed the clipboards round at half time again.

Oh and Sky Sports interviewed me again, may be on Thursday or Friday. :eek:
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Nice work DM- :cool:
 
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