BLETHERINGS SEPTEMBER 2010 3rd September 2010 Not a good day. Eight horses declared to race and, this morning, every one looked to have a good chance. One, Autumn Riches, was found to be lame at the start; one, Glen Shiel, won’t be coming home; and the other six were unplaced. Thankfull, these days don’t happen very often. 2nd September 2010 It occurred to me this morning (in fact, I woke up thinking about it – how sad is that?) that, throughout the time since I became a trainer, the racing industry has been constrained by the same repeated ‘advice’ from those that have a vested interest in robbing our industry of its rightful share of revenue earned directly from British Horseracing. For a start, we are continually told that racing must provide a united front: Government and others will not take us seriously unless we all sing from the same hymn sheet. And, by this, they mean that we should sing from the hymn sheet given to us by the Racecourses or the various, bureaucratic, committees that trainers and other ‘paid servants’ aren’t allowed to sit on. We are also told that we must not be confrontational. ‘Negotiation, not confrontation’ is their favourite phrase. And professional negotiators, usually from other industries, should be employed to negotiate for us and/or lobby Government because that’s the way things are done. It strikes me that, for twenty years, the only beneficiaries of this policy have been those who have been paid large sums of money to fail us time and time again. And, above all, they tell us, year after year, that the Government will be very unhappy if the Levy goes to determination. They have, apparently, much more important things to do and they expect racing to put its own house in order and develop a commercial relationship with the bookmakers. Eh? What more important things do the Department of Culture, Media and Sport have to do? What sport brings in more revenue for them? What sport employs more people? They are supposed to be our government, elected by us to represent us and, more importantly, paid for by us. It is long past time they were told to get off their butts and work for us. So long as they legislate to allow the betting industry a free rein to rape racing and don’t allow racing to control the price of its own product, we will always be unable to establish a proper commercial relationship with the betting industry and, if you ask me, the Levy should go to determination every year until the politicians get the message.

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