DO you remember that magic money tree which didn’t actually exist?
Theresa May, still Prime Minister at the time of writing, told nurses among some others that they wouldn’t be getting a raise because, in the words of Blackadder no less, the government was as poor as a church mouse, that’s just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese.
There was no magic money tree she said.
Then the daftie goes and calls a general election, fails to win and has to ask the DUP for some hauners so she didn’t have to flit, which to be fair is a pain.
That cost £1billion give or take a penny or two. Turns out there was a money tree after all. And it was in full bloom.
It’s a funny thing. Those in power are forever pleading poverty until something comes along which they really want and, hey presto, they have more gold than Smaug.
As I’m in a mood for quoting people (it eats into the word count and saves me from thinking) let’s turn to the great Tony Benn who had a thing of two to say.
“If we can find money to kill people, we can find money to help people.”
Call me sandal wearing stoned hippy if you want – I’m not the only one – but the great man night just have been onto something.
I was told yesterday that our skint leaders found over £1.6bn on the new Wembley and the Olympic stadium, which is now home to West Ham United who, arguably, are not as important as nurses.
Wembley cost £789m when it was opened in 2007 – a touch over £1bn in today’s money – paid for in large part by tax player and national lottery.
Which brings me to this.
If they can find money to build big stadiums from scratch in London, they can find money to put up a couple of stands in Glasgow.
Ian Maxwell, the SFA chief executive, was refreshingly open yesterday when he spoke about who government funding to give Hampden a facelift would come in hand and, in fact, is something Scottish football deserves.
“Because I think that Scottish football is a real force for good,” said Maxwell. “I think football across the world is a force for good. I think UEFA are undertaking a social return and investment study which will actually start to quantify that.”
He went on.
“They have done trials in Sweden and Romania. They have said: ‘Right, we have got X amount of players who play football, that means this benefit to the health service, diabetes is down by this, employability is up by this.
“They have got some very clever people in a room who have worked out an algorithm that can quantify exactly the impact that that makes. I think that is part of the problem. We will go and say: ‘Give us some money and we will go and do programmes’.
“But how do you actually quantify how that looks. The more we can do that the more compelling the case we have got to give to government.”
Maxwell went on to make the point that football is by far the biggest sport in this country. Look at how many of us go to games every week. We might not be great at the sport but by Dalglish it’s a vital part of Scottish life.
Where is our shake of that tree?
While listening to Maxwell yesterday explain why the SFA chose Hampden over Murrayfield, it was clear at least to me that had Willie Haughey not chipped in with £2.5m, then Edinburgh would have won over Glasgow.
The SFA could do with some help.
Is it really too much to ask this government to write a modest cheque to help make Hampden a good thing once again? After all, it is a historic site and the good people of Glasgow deserve an iconic sporting venue.
As it’s the Tories in charge, it’s not going to win them any votes but…ah, the penny has dropped.
Even I can admit that there is more important things to spend money on, the NHS and schools spring to mind.
But it wouldn’t cost a fortune for this country’s national football stadium to give everyone inside a decent view of what is going on at the event they’ve paid into see.
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