Mike Ashley, Derek Llambias And Alan Pardew

I used to be a life-long supporter of Newcastle United. I supported them through thin & thinner. Despite having put up with nearly being in the third division of English football, nearly winning the Premier League twice and being losing finalists in several cups, I kept supporting.

This is no longer the case.

Owner Mike Ashley and Chairman Derek Llambias have tried my patience previously: They hired Joe Kinnear. They installed Denis Wise as a "director of football". They contrived to get us relegated. They re-named the stadium. All of which irritated me and alienated yet more of the fan base. But I remained a supporter of NUFC until now.

When the decision was taken to sack Chris Hughton, I decided to switch my allegiances to Sunderland. This is not an easy decision for me, nor one I'd like to last any longer than is necessary, but I will not support NUFC while Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias remain in control of the club.

It seems that despite insisting in October that they'd be giving a new contract Chris Hughton (brought NUFC back out of the Championship after the relegation with the longest unbeaten run in NUFC history) they actually had no intention of doing so. Despite NUFC sitting in mid-table, winning away at Arsenal in the league and at Chelsea in the cup and hammering Sunderland 5-1, it seems they wanted someone "with more management experience".

So speculation was rife that NUFC would get Martin Jol, or Martin O'Neill. But it seemed unlikely, given that Jol had Hughton as Assistant Manager at Tottenham when he was Manager and isn't going to take a job at a club that had just sacked Hughton. And as O'Neill walked from Aston Villa when it became clear he wasn't going to be given complete control of the purchases and team selections, he surely wasn't going to a club where players have been bought and sold without the manager being informed.

And then today, the BBC report that Alan Pardew is going to be taking over at NUFC. If I supported NUFC, I would be really quite cross about that. Pardew has managed for more games than Hughton, but most of them weren't in the Premier League. He did bring West Ham up from the Championship, but when in the Prem, he decided to pick Marlon Harewood ahead of Carlos Tevez & Javier Mascherano. His most recent job - from which he was sacked in August, allegedly for having sex with a player's wife/girlfriend - was to manage Southampton, in Division One.

So why is he the man for the job? Well according to the BBC, he knows Ashley & Llambias because he frequents the same London casino as them. Which, as a *shudder* Sunderland fan, seems as good a reason as any to me. There's already a rumour that he'll be working for NUFC for free as he owes huge gambling debts to Ashley and/or Llambias, but I doubt that's true (for any lawyers reading). But it could be.

The worst part in the BBC's report is that Pardew was apparently in talks with NUFC about taking over the role of manager some ten days ago. Or 8 days BEFORE Hughton was sacked. If that is true, then even as a *cough* Mackem, I would be furious at Pardew and incandescent with rage at Ashley and Llambias.

If the League Manager's Association (LMA) has any clout whatsoever, it would be delightful to see Mike Ashley and/or Llambias being fined for the way they've acted over the sacking of Hughton. As is more likely, sod all will happen, except Carroll, Nolan, Jonas, Collocini & Krul will be sold in January, NUFC will get relegated at the end of the season, and Pardew will be sacked.

When Ashley leaves, I will return - regardless of what division NUFC are in.

Smoking Related Deaths And Middlesbrough

I was just reading an article on the BBC about the perhaps surprising news that 33% of women in Blackpool smoke while pregnant. Then while I was wondering if that meant there were three pregnant women in Blackpool and one was a smoker (as there are no figures given in the piece), I read the following nugget;

Smoking related deaths from lung cancer were highest in Middlesbrough, with the illness claiming 71 victims per 100,000 in 2006-08.

Now how do you define smoking related deaths?

Is it that you were a heavy smoker all your life and then died of lung cancer? Is it you smoked 10 a day from the age of 12 until you were 30, then died of lung cancer? Or maybe you lived with a smoker for your entire adult life, then died of lung cancer?

The reason I suggest the last of those is, well, it's Middlesbrough. You could not smoke a day in your life and get lung cancer in Middlesbrough - as you could, in fact, anywhere in the UK - yet be classed as a "smoking related" death due to you having lived with a smoker (who may not have smoked in your presence at any point).

This isn't to deny the likelihood of smoking being a potential (or probable) cause of lung cancer, but does kinda lump everyone into one group.

In the post, Middlesbrough's ratio of "smoking related" lung cancer deaths is compared negatively to that of Guildford. The main thing that irks me about that is, I don't recall several major chemical plants in Guildford spewing fumes forth into the atmosphere, whereas the football team and supporters of Middlesbrough are known as Smoggies for that exact reason.

I'm not going to call Bad Science, but it does look like sloppy journalism.

Make Sixteen Percent Less Shit Then

According to the BBC Trust, they're going to have to start paying for the over 75s to have a TV licence.

At the moment, the cost of this - £556m - is paid for by the Department of Work & Pensions. I wasn't aware that the Government had to actually pay for the over 75s to have a TV licence, I had (stupidly) assumed that they would just send out a different piece of paper with "FREE TV LICENCE" written on it that pensioners could hang on their wall. Or maybe, put a tick in a box on a spreadsheet so that the TV Licensing people wouldn't go round and bother them. You know, something cost-effective like that.

Now I've just worked out that means there must be at least 3.8m people in the UK who are over 75 and receiving a free TV licence. This seems to be in line with the TV Licensing people who say; "At the end of March 2009 approximately 3.97 million free over 75 TV Licences were in issue at a cost of approximately £518.9 million to the Department for Work and Pensions."

According to this document there were 4.7 million people in the UK aged 75 and over in 2006. The number is projected to increase to 5.5 million by 2016 and to 8.2 million by 2031, a rise of 76 per cent over twenty-five years. So the amount of money the BBC is going to have to "pay" for the free licences is going to increase heartily.

Although I think the number of people over 75 getting a TV licence seems to be somewhat high. Given that a fair amount of over 75s live in sheltered accommodation or in residential care (400,000 according to this report) or are in hospital - and the TV Licence for those places are either at a reduced rate or paid for completely by the care home or hospital - and you'd think a fair number of over 75s live together as part of a couple, where are all these over 75s who are living alone?

It's almost as if there's some sort of scam going on. "Yeah, my mother lives with us, we need to have a free TV licence." Free TV Licence appears, mother gets carted off to a nursing home. The BBC/TV Licensing people check mother isn't dead, free TV licence continues for many more years at a place where she doesn't live.

For some reason, I thought the BBC also got some money from the Government on top of receiving the licence fee. I didn't think it was from the DWP, as previously admitted. No idea what I was thinking, but it seems they get the licence fee only. I say "only", that came to £3.45bn in 2009/10. Yes, £3.45 BILLION. I'm going to guess that that figure includes the contested half a billion from the DWP.

So this is, essentially, the BBC complaining about not getting the full amount of licence fee from the Government because the Government will no longer be paying for the over 75s to have a TV Licence. They'd still be getting £2.9bn from the rest of the licence payers, plus however much money they make from their various commerical arms (sales abroad, DVD sales, tie-in merchandise etc)

A BBC Trust spokeswoman said it would be "unacceptable" for licence fee payers to foot the bill. "Anything at this stage is speculation as we have yet to see the detail of the Spending Review. That said it would be unacceptable for licence fee payers to pick up the bill for what is a Department for Work and Pensions universal benefit," she added. Newsnight's Political Editor Michael Crick added increases in the licence fee were unlikely to cover the cost, which was the equivalent of a 16% cut in the BBC's present budget.

Dear BBC, I have some suggestions. Send 16% less people to Glastonbury/Olympics/"major news event abroad". Stop paying stupidly high salaries to presenters (you might lose more twunts like Adrian Chiles that way). Move out of London (side benefit, London regional news stops being presented as national news). Oh, and finally, make 16% less shit than you currently do.