Phillips is a shrimper

[philtalkin]

Fact- you have come up with your usual unwiggy reply-well done bore!

Corrected............

 

[Jai]

A lot of people would have only seen the headlines and the big boards outside their local newsagents. Not many people actually read the Echo, but will tell their mates down the pub and at work etc. how SUFC / Ron has screwed Little Havens and that SUFC are 'going down the Swany'.

But in that case, surely it's not the Echo's fault that some people walking past their billboards are dangerously stupid and will gossip to their mates without buying the paper and thus knowing the full story.

Also, when my editor is off I am in charge of the bills and they have to be very short and to the point - ie no words longer than six letters, no more than six or seven words. Now that's not much to go on for the average pub gossip - if people take in headlines and bills without reading the full story that's them being stupid, not the newspaper.

 

[Hooly]

TS. Your points/questions are valid but don't they apply to every league & premiership club?

If Ruski withdrew his support from Chelski & nobody took up the funding they are right royally fecked. Unlikely, but it could happen. Simples!

 

[philtalkin]

But in that case, surely it's not the Echo's fault that some people walking past their billboards are dangerously stupid and will gossip to their mates without buying the paper and thus knowing the full story.

Also, when my editor is off I am in charge of the bills and they have to be very short and to the point - ie no words longer than six letters, no more than six or seven words. Now that's not much to go on for the average pub gossip - if people take in headlines and bills without reading the full story that's them being stupid, not the newspaper.

Oh I see, so something like:

'cat gets head stuck down bog' or

'Ron Martin in bad hair day scare' or

'Most people read Echo in WH Smiths'

 

[OldBlueLady]

Agree with this Pubey and, OBL I think you are wrong and a bit naive. The fact the club 'supposedly' owed 40K, was a very big part of the story.

My take on it (And I have to stress I do not know the ins and outs and this may or may not have happened, who knows what goes on etc...) is that CP went to his editor and said he wanted to run the story, hoping for front page coverage which, let's face, it is the highlight of his career.

He later found out that only 4K was owing. (No excuse - the club still should have paid it).

Now, we know it was late on in the evening when he realised his mistake and CP either went to the editor to explain, or decided not to say anything.

'Oh my God! What can we do? We've held this story for both the front and back pages and owing 4K doesn't sound very exciting. Perhaps we could change the front page to the story about the kid hurting his knee in the school playground' (needed 2 big plasters) or 'let's just run it and print a tiny apology the next day'.

I could be completely wrong, this is only my opinion, terms and conditions apply etc etc...

Returning to this "missing zero" thing, I can't find the actual apology to quote from anywhere - though I have searched - but IIRC it wasn't so much a case of a missing zero more a case of apportioning the wrong amount to the testimonial. Don't think the full amount of £40k was actually what was in dispute, so therefore it's not actually Chris mis-reporting what was owed to Spinner rather the breakdown of where it was from.

Maybe I'm not so naive after all.

 

[Jai]

Oh I see, so something like:

'cat gets head stuck down bog' or

'Ron Martin in bad hair day scare' or

'Most people read Echo in WH Smiths'

Basically, yes. They're quite good actually.

 

[philtalkin]

Returning to this "missing zero" thing, I can't find the actual apology to quote from anywhere - though I have searched - but IIRC it wasn't so much a case of a missing zero more a case of apportioning the wrong amount to the testimonial. Don't think the full amount of £40k was actually what was in dispute, so therefore it's not actually Chris mis-reporting what was owed to Spinner rather the breakdown of where it was from.

Maybe I'm not so naive after all.

A few questions:

1. I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about. Please clarify.

2. Is IIRC a division of HMRC? And, if so, do we owe them any money?

3. LOL

p.s Must have GSOH

 

[philtalkin]

Basically, yes. They're quite good actually.

Please do not encourage me, I am very unstable.

 

[Uncle Leo]

Where was that reported nationally though?

Mentioned on the The Football League Show on Saturday night. I'm fairly certain it was the lead story on CNN for much of Thursday afternoon as well.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

I'm not sure I get this thread.

I don't think anyone ever doubted Chris Phillips' passion for the club. He's as passionate as any of us on here are. Him being a Southend fan is hardly news. I suppose he was responding to Ron Martin's slur about the editor supporting Col Ewe, but passion about the club isn't a requisite to be able to do his job. Indeed Ron Martin's jibe would suggest that maybe passion could get in the way of objectivity.

But maybe it is worth remembering that Chris Phillips is a fan. Like us he is passionate, but like most of us he doesn't (to my knowledge) have any particular qualifications in football, or experience in finance or business to make him an expert and an authority on the those topics. This is probably worth bearing in mind next time he opines in the pages of the Echo (or somewhat bizarrely as the BBC Essex expert summariser). His view is valid (and through his journalism skills better expressed than most on here), but it is no more so than many of ours.

 

[OldBlueLady]

A few questions:

1. I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about. Please clarify.

2. Is IIRC a division of HMRC? And, if so, do we owe them any money?

3. LOL

p.s Must have GSOH

You agreed with Pubey in his post about "missing zeroes" (maybe this should be a kind of anti "cult heroes"?) which made me think you believe the claim that Chris Phillips had erroneously added a zero into the figure of £4k raised at Spinner's testimonial. If you read Ron's "Mr Angry" statement at the time, it is not Chris Phillips he is actually having a pop at on this occasion, but more the editor who took the decision, seemingly, to print incorrect information

IIRC is nothing obviously, to do with HMRC, but "if I remember correctly" and that being the case I fail to see why people are being so blinkered in their views on here.

 

[blue shrimp]

Regarding Spinners benefit game.
How many fans were allowed to defer payment on entry,The club had any monies due to Spinner yet none was paid to the man ,Ron Martin has had plenty of time to pay the player yet prefers to inform the masses of his 10k payment to LH.

Bottom line being not many of us knew regarding the above non payment and I thank Phillips for telling us all.

 

[toellandback]

Mentioned on the The Football League Show on Saturday night. I'm fairly certain it was the lead story on CNN for much of Thursday afternoon as well.

What part of the story was featured?

 

[Uncle Leo]

What part of the story was featured?

It amounted to 'the win may have lightened the mood at Southend after sections of supporters were calling for CEO Geoff King to resign'. Or words to that effect anyway.

On CNN, there was a big bit about Osei Sankofa's investment portfolio whilst their 'And Finally' section was a collection of training ground jokes that Ian Joyce has been playing on the other guys.

 

[grassroots]

Unfortunately, you have fallen into the trap that a lot of others have fallen into. It's not our club, it's Ron's. He owns the lot basically, so he can do what he wants with it. Now that may be hard to take for a few people on here, but that's the bottom line. And the sooner some people on here realise that, the better.

Sorry BB should have put "our" club. Of course I know only too well who owns it - he's made that fact very apparent over the past few years. I probably meant to say that we were here long, long before RM and we will be here long after he has cashed in his chips and toddled off.

In reply to a later poster. If RM had not come in to 'save' Southend, with all that land attached, someone else would.

 

[Reg Martin]

You agreed with Pubey in his post about "missing zeroes" (maybe this should be a kind of anti "cult heroes"?) which made me think you believe the claim that Chris Phillips had erroneously added a zero into the figure of £4k raised at Spinner's testimonial. If you read Ron's "Mr Angry" statement at the time, it is not Chris Phillips he is actually having a pop at on this occasion, but more the editor who took the decision, seemingly, to print incorrect information

IIRC is nothing obviously, to do with HMRC, but "if I remember correctly" and that being the case I fail to see why people are being so blinkered in their views on here.

I don't agree with you therefore you are blinkered

Regarding Spinners benefit game.
How many fans were allowed to defer payment on entry,The club had any monies due to Spinner yet none was paid to the man ,Ron Martin has had plenty of time to pay the player yet prefers to inform the masses of his 10k payment to LH.

Bottom line being not many of us knew regarding the above non payment and I thank Phillips for telling us all.

I agree with you on this. He did bring us this story and it is of genuine interest to Southend fans. What has caused the storm in the teacup is the way The Echo ran the story. They tried to turn a minor story into a major one partly by being 'economical with the truth'.

Sorry BB should have put "our" club. Of course I know only too well who owns it - he's made that fact very apparent over the past few years. I probably meant to say that we were here long, long before RM and we will be here long after he has cashed in his chips and toddled off.

In reply to a later poster. If RM had not come in to 'save' Southend, with all that land attached, someone else would.

Not clear who. I hope whoever this person was is still out there should the unthinkable happen next month

 

[philtalkin]

IIRC is nothing obviously, to do with HMRC, but "if I remember correctly" and that being the case I fail to see why people are being so blinkered in their views on here.

So, we don't owe them any money. That's a relief.

 

[fbm]

I'm not sure I get this thread.

I don't think anyone ever doubted Chris Phillips' passion for the club. He's as passionate as any of us on here are. Him being a Southend fan is hardly news. I suppose he was responding to Ron Martin's slur about the editor supporting Col Ewe, but passion about the club isn't a requisite to be able to do his job. Indeed Ron Martin's jibe would suggest that maybe passion could get in the way of objectivity.

But maybe it is worth remembering that Chris Phillips is a fan. Like us he is passionate, but like most of us he doesn't (to my knowledge) have any particular qualifications in football, or experience in finance or business to make him an expert and an authority on the those topics. This is probably worth bearing in mind next time he opines in the pages of the Echo (or somewhat bizarrely as the BBC Essex expert summariser). His view is valid (and through his journalism skills better expressed than most on here), but it is no more so than many of ours.

I agree YB, I can't really get this either.

Another thing I don't understand is exactly what CP was hoping to achieve. 90% of people would be so far completely out of their depth being involved in big business dealings and the Southend fans and RM are no exception to that.

To people with half a brain cell it must be obvious that football clubs have no money unless they are funded by Russian oligarchs, Arabs or have huge stadia that they fill on a weekly basis. The collective number of clubs that fall into those categories can be counted on one hand. We aren't one of those.

Further, and more importantly in my view, there have been scores of clubs that have gone in and out of administration, had points deducted, had transfer embargoes or playing in front of near empty grounds. We ain't any of those either.

Anyone who has bothered to analyse exactly what has happened in the last few years will have sussed out that we have had and spent the "warchest" that has amounted to over £1m; that the effect of relegation from the CCC and receiving L1 income when we had players still on CCC wages yet has been by far the most damaging financial event that has hit us; further the only body we owe any money to is SEL Ltd (apart from HMRC) and that is 100% owned by Ron.

It is therefore obvious to me that the person who has most to gain by keeping this club afloat is Ron and he is therefore going to do whatever he can to salvage it and stop it going into adminustration otherwise he will lose all his money.

So what I don't understand is what Chris Phillips actually hoped to achieve by breaking these stories in the largely inaccurate way that he did.

Firstly it was Revell off to Swindon and this was a total shock to him as he wanted to stay here and he was told it for was financial reasons. When we actually get the facts we discover that he was one of 4 players who had been circulated to go out on loan, he knew about it and whilst he may have wanted to stay here it certainly wasn't the financial crisis that was intimated. We couldn't afford Revells wages AS WELL AS bringing in some quality loanees so we had to get a couple out to bring a couple in and improve the squad. The club could have handled the PR better but that's history.

The lead headline the following day on front and back pages of the Echo was that Spinner hadn't been paid £40K from his benefit match and, more importantly, neither had the charity involved.

The interview with Spinner contained hearsay about the stories that some players hadn't been paid and stated that he imagined things must be awful and where is the Eastwood money?

That was pretty shameless and vindictve reporting in my book and I cannot see any purpose in running those stories AT ALL unless it is to drive a wedge between fans and club.

The amount owed was exaggerated 1000%, there was no agreement from the club at all to pay anything to the charity as that was Spinners choice, the parties had been in dialogue over the unpaid money and said it would be paid soon and the rest was unnecessary gossip and speculation.

CP may well say he believed the fans needed to know but for what reason? What can anyone actually do about it? We know the club is short of dosh, the club are managing it and it is not so much a crisis as a difficult period we need to get through that has been made more tough by the economic climate (that's nothing to do with Ron, is it?).

So I have little sympathy for CP or the Echo. Chris may well be a shrimper, he seemed a nice chap on the one occasion I met him but I'd love to know what he thought would be a positive outcome from all this.

Finally, a word on media reporting. The way in which a story is portrayed makes all the difference to the interpretation the reader makes. A couple of weeks ago, my partners daughter was involved in a road accident. It was reported something like

"Hit and run driver knocks over girl, 11, on crossing."

Now that conjours up an image of a young girl crossing the road and a speeding car ignoring the lights, speeding through, knocking her over and leaving the scene.

B*stard driver.

What actually happened is that she was on the crossing but PROBABLY when she shouldn't have been, the lights PROBABLY weren't in her favour and a car coming through had to break very hard to avoid knocking her over, which probably frightened the life out of the driver. There was minimal contact with her but she did get hit, although there is no grazing or bruising. They didn't get out of the car, which they should have done, but spoke to her through the window and she said she was fine before she ran off, scared that she would be getting into trouble. Having gone quite a few yards she collapsed in agony and hobbled home (about 500 yards) and after 2-3 hours when her leg started to swell, her Mum took her to the hospital where it was x-rayed and found the leg was broken. I suspect the damage was caused by running away.

Kind of puts a different slant on it, doesn't it?

That's why I don't particularly hold with this "reporting the facts" defence. The way it was reported portrays a set of events that aren't factual at all.

 

[Crabby Shrimper]

I agree YB, I can't really get this either.

Another thing I don't understand is exactly what CP was hoping to achieve. 90% of people would be so far completely out of their depth being involved in big business dealings and the Southend fans and RM are no exception to that.

To people with half a brain cell it must be obvious that football clubs have no money unless they are funded by Russian oligarchs, Arabs or have huge stadia that they fill on a weekly basis. The collective number of clubs that fall into those categories can be counted on one hand. We aren't one of those.

Further, and more importantly in my view, there have been scores of clubs that have gone in and out of administration, had points deducted, had transfer embargoes or playing in front of near empty grounds. We ain't any of those either.

Anyone who has bothered to analyse exactly what has happened in the last few years will have sussed out that we have had and spent the "warchest" that has amounted to over £1m; that the effect of relegation from the CCC and receiving L1 income when we had players still on CCC wages yet has been by far the most damaging financial event that has hit us; further the only body we owe any money to is SEL Ltd (apart from HMRC) and that is 100% owned by Ron.

It is therefore obvious to me that the person who has most to gain by keeping this club afloat is Ron and he is therefore going to do whatever he can to salvage it and stop it going into adminustration otherwise he will lose all his money.

So what I don't understand is what Chris Phillips actually hoped to achieve by breaking these stories in the largely inaccurate way that he did.

Firstly it was Revell off to Swindon and this was a total shock to him as he wanted to stay here and he was told it for was financial reasons. When we actually get the facts we discover that he was one of 4 players who had been circulated to go out on loan, he knew about it and whilst he may have wanted to stay here it certainly wasn't the financial crisis that was intimated. We couldn't afford Revells wages AS WELL AS bringing in some quality loanees so we had to get a couple out to bring a couple in and improve the squad. The club could have handled the PR better but that's history.

The lead headline the following day on front and back pages of the Echo was that Spinner hadn't been paid £40K from his benefit match and, more importantly, neither had the charity involved.

The interview with Spinner contained hearsay about the stories that some players hadn't been paid and stated that he imagined things must be awful and where is the Eastwood money?

That was pretty shameless and vindictve reporting in my book and I cannot see any purpose in running those stories AT ALL unless it is to drive a wedge between fans and club.

The amount owed was exaggerated 100%, there was no agreement from the club at all to pay anything to the charity as that was Spinners choice, the parties had been in dialogue over the unpaid money and said it would be paid soon and the rest was unnecessary gossip and speculation.

CP may well say he believed the fans needed to know but for what reason? What can anyone actually do about it? We know the club is short of dosh, the club are managing it and it is not so much a crisis as a difficult period we need to get through that has been made more tough by the economic climate (that's nothing to do with Ron, is it?).

So I have little sympathy for CP or the Echo. Chris may well be a shrimper, he seemed a nice chap on the one occasion I met him but I'd love to know what he thought would be a positive outcome from all this.

Finally, a word on media reporting. The way in which a story is portrayed makes all the difference to the interpretation the reader makes. A couple of weeks ago, my partners daughter was involved ina road accident. It was reported something like

"Hit and run driver knocks over girl, 11, on crossing."

Now that conjours up an image of a young girl crossing the road and a speeding car ignoring the lights, speeding through, knocking her over and leaving the scene.

B*stard driver.

What actually happened is that she was on the crossing but PROBABLY when she shouldn't have been, the lights PROBABLY weren't in her favour and a car coming through had to break very hard to avoid knocking her over, which probably frightened the life out of the driver. There was minimal contact with her but she did get hit, although there is no grazing or bruising. They didn't get out of the car, which they should have done, but spoke to her through the window and she said she was fine before she ran off, scared that she would be getting into trouble. Having gone quite a few yards she collapsed in agony and hobbled home (about 500 yards) and after 2-3 hours when her leg started to swell, her Mum took her to the hospital where it was x-rayed and found the leg was broken. I suspect the damage was caused by running away.

Kind of puts a different slant on it, doesn't it?

That's why I don't particularly hold with this "reporting the facts" defence. The way it was reported portrays a set of events that aren't factual at all.

Would green that if I could. Agree wholeheartedly

 

[A Century United]

I agree YB, I can't really get this either.

Another thing I don't understand is exactly what CP was hoping to achieve. 90% of people would be so far completely out of their depth being involved in big business dealings and the Southend fans and RM are no exception to that.



It is therefore obvious to me that the person who has most to gain by keeping this club afloat is Ron and he is therefore going to do whatever he can to salvage it and stop it going into adminustration otherwise he will lose all his money.

So what I don't understand is what Chris Phillips actually hoped to achieve by breaking these stories in the largely inaccurate way that he did.


That was pretty shameless and vindictve reporting in my book and I cannot see any purpose in running those stories AT ALL unless it is to drive a wedge between fans and club.

Exactly!!! Right on the nail, fbm.