Prospective MP in blame the fans shock

Surprised he didn't turn on the manager,can bet any thread blaming Brent on there lasts 0.3 seconds on there

Typical politician, albeit potential - totally out of touch and naive, just spouting off for show!! The farm must have guidelines form the animals to follow as they are all in line as usual - same old, same old!! Would you vote for this guy?

They're like minded people who gravitate towards the same threads. The same people on here are in almost every thread too.

The 'glory' hunters didn't really turn up under Holloway (arguably the best team and style if play in recent years). Ken Brown had a very good side too back in the early 90s and we didn't get 20k+ gates then either. I personally think it's a myth that we're a massive club. We have a catchment area but who's to say those people want to go and watch a live game? Who's to say those people even like football? Even if they did, as Angry said, it's over £20 for an adult ticket. If it was down to catchment areas, China would have the greatest football team in the World and they'd be up there with India and Indonesia and the USA and Russia. It doesn't work like that. Apparentky we have a half decent basketball team - I'd never go as I don't like basketball.

there are many reasons why argyle doesn't get a bigger home following, the reason for Tuesday evening low gate is people don't have £20 available to watch sh1te.
do people like jameson not know theres a recession on & Christmas is coming!!!!

what it boils down to is those with 'disposable' income don't go.

people want to be associated with success, I find it baffling that s many still go and are 'happy' to be associated with never ending defeat.

football is a VERY expensive hobby, £20 for an adult tkt for 90mins entertainment of pay the same for a family of 4 to be entertained at the cinema.
you'll not miss any action because you can catch the goals on the TV the next day!

hairy j wrote:

They're like minded people who gravitate towards the same threads. The same people on here are in almost every thread too.

The 'glory' hunters didn't really turn up under Holloway (arguably the best team and style if play in recent years). Ken Brown had a very good side too back in the early 90s and we didn't get 20k+ gates then either. I personally think it's a myth that we're a massive club. We have a catchment area but who's to say those people want to go and watch a live game? Who's to say those people even like football? Even if they did, as Angry said, it's over £20 for an adult ticket. If it was down to catchment areas, China would have the greatest football team in the World and they'd be up there with India and Indonesia and the USA and Russia. It doesn't work like that. Apparentky we have a half decent basketball team - I'd never go as I don't like basketball.

Raiders Sold out most games.

Jamerson, I would'nt turn my back when he is around.

I wouldn't blame politicians as such. Dear old Lee is to politics what this man is to the legal profession.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

The "blame the fans" schtick comes out whenever the ruling elite are rattled. You could set your watch by it. The irony is that the people who did so much when the club was dying (let's assume that their motivation for doing so was legitimate) are now responsible for the utter failure of corporate governance and the reprehensible gutter-scum tactics used to discredit an elected Trust board.

The rhetoric of fans at fault stinks of the infamous "same old Argyle" article on the OS. The irony being that De Lar, Newell, Jameson etc couldn't wait to get round Brent and nag him to sack Rick Cowdery as soon as possible.

The one bizarre constant about the last four years or so has been the resilience and dedication of the fans who threw fivers into buckets, who lit candles outside Home Park, who kept on coming through thin and thin and who just want to see a winning team at Home Park. And they're the ones who get shit from both sides. They get mocked because they still go rather than embarking on a noble boycott; they get mocked because they choose not to pay more than last season to watch dross on a rainy Tuesday night when they're just back and showered from an 800 mile round trip to Hartlepool.

I'm as frustrated as anyone that those mainstream fans are too easily seduced by a trembling lip and a lame call-to-arms by the people's president, but it's a reality.

Greenskin wrote:

Surely not a diversionary tactic? 

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Well tried , dear boy. Lord knows how many times you've spelt it out to them. They still can't seem to comprehend.

As for Jameson............ what a dumbass, self serving pillock.

Tgwu wrote:

hairy j wrote:

They're like minded people who gravitate towards the same threads. The same people on here are in almost every thread too.

The 'glory' hunters didn't really turn up under Holloway (arguably the best team and style if play in recent years). Ken Brown had a very good side too back in the early 90s and we didn't get 20k+ gates then either. I personally think it's a myth that we're a massive club. We have a catchment area but who's to say those people want to go and watch a live game? Who's to say those people even like football? Even if they did, as Angry said, it's over £20 for an adult ticket. If it was down to catchment areas, China would have the greatest football team in the World and they'd be up there with India and Indonesia and the USA and Russia. It doesn't work like that. Apparentky we have a half decent basketball team - I'd never go as I don't like basketball.

Raiders  Sold out most games.

Jamerson, I would'nt turn my back when he is around.

Still do and Devils have good attendances for speedway. Albion do ok too so plymouth folk and those who live around the city boarders do turn up for its sports teams when the sports teams give value for money and at least try to win.

hairy j wrote:

The 'glory' hunters didn't really turn up under Holloway (arguably the best team and style if play in recent years). Ken Brown had a very good side too back in the early 90s and we didn't get 20k+ gates then either. I personally think it's a myth that we're a massive club. We have a catchment area...

What catchment area? Does Cornwall still make up a major part of this? A county with one of the smallest populations, lowest population densities and worst transport links in the entire country? There are only 500'000-odd people living in the place for chrissakes.

Even if you use the almost meaningless population measure derived from inhabitants within the lines drawn on a map which constitute the arbitrary city/Local Authority limits that you Greens use to hopelessly skew the relative size of Plymouth upwards, then Cornwall has roughly the same number of inhabitants as Sheffield alone and not all that many more than Bristol. If you get real and make your comparisons with Urban Areas (or even Metropolitan Areas) there are ten urban settlements in the country where the population exceeds that of the whole of Cornwall. It's not all that much more impressive in Devon. The population of 1 million is only about the same as the Southampton-Portsmouth Metropolitan area - the most densely populated region in the UK outside of central London - and a significant proportion of that isn't likely to be interested in Argyle.

I'm afraid I can't see hordes of potential Greens regularly schlepping up to Plymouth from Penzance, or Falmouth, or Camborne on the dual carriageways of Kernow, even to watch Championship football. Expecting coachloads of day-trippers from Barnstaple, Ilfracombe, Tiverton and Axminster to turn up is a complete non-starter. Jeez - I doubt most of them would even turn up to City games except in the most unlikely circumstances.

As David Conn said when writing about you during the administration period, "huge potential catchment area" is simply another way of saying "miles from anywhere else".

I'm absolutely not having a go at you hairy - in fact I applaud you as one of the few with the realism not to delude themselves with the canards about potential that are often repeated by many of your compadres. Unfortunately these myths seem to be held with a fervour that sometimes appears to border on religious belief. Just look at Biggs' post on the thread linked to in the OP. The same insane and gerrymandered comparisons rear their ugly head - for example claiming that Plymouth is on a par with Bristol and Cardiff, when the truth is that by any sensible measure it's not even as big as Reading  - and you're in a far more disadvantageous location than almost every other decently-sized city in England.

This sort of self-delusion is only going to keep cutting you off at the knees. You can't make plans to do anything successfully unless you deal with the facts as they are and not as you'd like them to be.

Elias wrote:

...football is a VERY expensive hobby, £20 for an adult tkt for 90mins entertainment of pay the same for a family of 4 to be entertained at the cinema...

And often the experience takes place in extremely uncomfortable conditions and could hardly be dignified with the word "entertainment".

The whole thing is completely nuts. I seem to remember Hartlepool charging away fans £25 when were both in League 1. I have to wonder if lower-league football isn't heading for some major meltdown, especially if the real economy remains stagnant. Apparently wages have dropped in real terms by more than at any time in the last hundred years and the trend is likely to continue.

The evidence has already been established Jabba.


As far as the "who else would buy the Cub" deflecting crap....maybe if we were told the things that those sitting on the PASB were tasked to ask ie the debt etc etc etc. then maybe a sensible answer could be provided to a ridiculous and unintelligent question.

Jabba makes some strange comparisons when trying to point-score.

Cornwall, with a population of half a million and no football team, absolutely falls into the Plymouth Argyle catchment area. It isn't going to fall in anyone elses catchment area, is it? Add that to Plymouths metropolitan area and you've got potentially 850,000 in total. The key here, is that this total area has ONE football team.

Southampton/Portsmouth may have a metropolitan area of a million, but you then have to divide that by TWO.

I'd have thought Leeds/Bradford, along with a few others, would have dwarfed the Hampshire site, but there ya go...

How anyone can argue with Greenskin's reasoning is beyond me.

Greenskin, on the farm, in response to that idiot Jameson:
I don't think you do take the point about Hull or Swansea.Their gates were actually worse than ours during their darkest days and the only thing that got the public visiting their grounds again was success on the field [and i mean real success,not finishing 10th in the second tier] supplemented by building stadia which convinced people that they really meant business.The whole point is that those clubs pushed on and fulfilled their potential,whereas Argyle had two successive seasons struggling against relegation and lost the momentum gained from the upward movement of previous years.Do you really think that their gates would have any better than ours had they had the same results? Of course it would be brilliant if 10-14000 were attracted to HP every week but it's a cloud cuckoo land fantasy to think that just because Plymouth is a city of 243000 then people should automatically support the football club come what may.Argyle don't deserve that kind of support because the club has never earned it through achievement on the field.What has transpired in recent years is a batch of clubs with similar histories [Cardiff,Hull,Reading,Swansea] have now overtaken Argyle in exactly the same way as a previous batch [Southampton,Norwich,Ipswich,Coventry,Palace,Qpr] did in the 1960's and it wasn't because Argyle's gates were historically inferior.It was because the leadership of those clubs had the vision and desire to see what could be achieved and managed to drum up,in diverse ways,the wherewithal to see the job through and got their due long term rewards.There has been comment on other threads tonight about the diminishing interest among the younger element of the fanbase-that is a phenomenon by no means exclusively recent-multiply it by several generations and you come to the reason why Argyle's fanbase is so shallow and volatile rather than a mythical, rather dangerous genetic or sociological attribution.I hope you're right about corners being turned under Mr Brents stewardship,must confess that i haven't seen many signs of it so far and even my patience,which stretches back to 49 years of support, has been tested almost to the point of no return.

_________________

Nobody can Tring, it isn't about reasoning, it's about deflecting, smear and division.

This could well be the first season since i started following argyle that i wont attend a single game! mainly because of non investing banker, but also the side show muppets that infest the club with their pathetic agenda's is it any wonder that most people in the area laugh at argyle rather than support them.

The whole fans on the internet issue isn't an issue for perhaps every one other than maybe 35-50 people. It isn't an issue for me and I'm more than aware of it.

Here's a list of reasons:

Someone doesn't like football = non attendance at Argyle
Those who work on Saturdays = unable to go
Those on benefits = unable to afford it (benefit claimants should perhaps get a large discount - charge then £5)
People who support other teams = like football but won't attend
People that are I'll/too old to go = can't attend
People that did go but don't see the point in wasting time and money = no longer go
People with young families that work Monday to Friday = under pressure not to go
People that play football on Saturday afternoon = DJM (that should change as it's our next generation of fans)

There's a lot of factors.

With regard to Jameson's post - it's been done a hundred times by many other posters and he uses the classic phrase "tin hat on" - it's barely registered with me as it's a lame argument and it's hardly controversial.

hairy j wrote:

The whole fans on the internet issue isn't an issue for perhaps every one other than maybe 35-50 people. It isn't an issue for me and I'm more than aware of it.

Here's a list of reasons:

Someone doesn't like football = non attendance at Argyle
Those who work on Saturdays = unable to go
Those on benefits = unable to afford it (benefit claimants should perhaps get a large discount - charge then £5)
People who support other teams = like football but won't attend
People that are I'll/too old to go = can't attend
People that did go but don't see the point in wasting time and money = no longer go
People with young families that work Monday to Friday = under pressure not to go
People that play football on Saturday afternoon = DJM (that should change as it's our next generation of fans)

There's a lot of factors.

With regard to Jameson's post - it's been done a hundred times by many other posters and he uses the classic phrase "tin hat on" - it's barely registered with me as it's a lame argument and it's hardly controversial.

Not on your nelly, a fair proportion of people on benefits are as well off if not better off than a fair proportion of people who go to work............and yes i do live in the real world and am regularly in contact with people who live on benefits, many of whom can afford fags, booze, takeaway food, sky tv and taxis.

Young people on benefits without children really aren't 'well off'. That's another thread though.

Jack Sheppard wrote:

Not on your nelly, a fair proportion of people on benefits are as well off if not better off than a fair proportion of people who go to work............and yes i do live in the real world and am regularly in contact with people who live on benefits, many of whom can afford fags, booze, takeaway food, sky tv and taxis.

No they're not. You shouldn't take the bile spewed by the Daily Mail seriously.

I believe there are only about 150 families on benefit in the country who exceeded the average wage before the benefit cap and not much more than that received anything close to that amount of benefits.

Jobseekers Allowance is around £55 pounds a week for a single person under 25 and £76 if they're over that age. Of course you have to factor in Housing Benefit, but that is not disposable income - it goes straight into the pocket of the landlord. The Housing Benefit bill has spiralled purely as a result of Thatcher's stupid 1988 Housing Act and the policy of selling off council houses, both of which caused private sector rents to soar.

Interestingly, someone on £49,999 with three children will receive Child Benefit which is less than £10 below the level of a young single person's Jobseekers allowance. If they have four children they receive more than a single unemployed person and if they have five they receive more than every single person on Jobseeker's allowance in the UK. Before last year anybody received these amounts of Child Benefit - even the head of a multinational company earning millons. I note that when the changes came in, the Telegraph, Mail and Express all ran articles explaining to the furious parents of little Henry, Tarquin and Arabella how they could try and get around the change in the Child Benefit rules.

Czarcasm wrote:

Jabba makes some strange comparisons when trying to point-score.

I'm not trying to point score. I'm trying to make you understand that your cherished beliefs about your potential are based on false premises derived from some fundamentally incorrect facts and a complete distortion of statistics, such as the ludicrous dependence on the totally bogus definition of the size of a settlement based on the population contained within arbitrary lines on a map. I'm not repeatedly making these points to have a go, but because your dreams are leading many of you on a fool's errand for a sugar-daddy to take you to the so-called Promised Land. IMO these beliefs have made a significant contribution to your current troubles and they will continue to make you chase your tails and lead you up blind-alleys if you insist on clinging to them through thin and thinner.

Quote :

Cornwall, with a population of half a million and no football team, absolutely falls into the Plymouth Argyle catchment area. It isn't going to fall in anyone elses catchment area, is it? Add that to Plymouths metropolitan area and you've got potentially 850,000 in total. The key here, is that this total area has ONE football team.

Southampton/Portsmouth may have a metropolitan area of a million, but you then have to divide that by TWO.

It's immaterial whether or not it's anyone else's catchment area. It only matters how easy it is to exploit. You can't possibly compare the 500'000 people of Cornwall spread out over an area of 3'500 sq Km with a similar number spread out over two urban areas of about 40 and 20 km squared, or a combined metropolitan area of probably around 80 km squared - it doesn't make any sense. You are conveniently ignoring the issue of travel, not just the distances involved but the quality of transport links - and that's without even considering the hold that rugby has on the area.

I'm afraid you're simply kidding yourself if you think that a significant proportion of the population of Cornwall are going to regularly make a round trip of as much as 120-100 miles down the A30 from the likes of Penzance and Camborne. Your comparison with Southampton and/or Portsmouth ignores the fact that nearly every one of the 500'000/1million+ who live there will be within a few miles reach of the football club and that most of them can travel there by local public transport.

Quote :

I'd have thought Leeds/Bradford, along with a few others, would have dwarfed the Hampshire site, but there ya go...

I never said it wasn't - I referred to the population density of Southampton and Porstmouth as being second in the UK. That measure is very important if catchment area is to mean anything. Say there were no clubs between Plymouth and Birmingham and as little as 500'000 people were spread out over an area of say 100,000 km squared - would you seriously expect anyone from Northampton to regularly attend Argyle home games?

In any case, the relative population size of the Leeds/Bradford and Southampton/Portsmouth conurbation depends on what measure you use. If you use the ONS standard of Urban Area/Built-Up Area the West Yorkshire Urban Area is bigger than the South Hampshire Urban Area, which is the sixth largest in the UK. If you use the proposed EU standard of Metropolitan Area, which allows for slightly bigger gaps, then Solent City is about  same size in fourth place.

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Jack Sheppard wrote:

Not on your nelly, a fair proportion of people on benefits are as well off if not better off than a fair proportion of people who go to work............and yes i do live in the real world and am regularly in contact with people who live on benefits, many of whom can afford fags, booze, takeaway food, sky tv and taxis.

No they're not. You shouldn't take the bile spewed by the Daily Mail seriously.

I believe there are only about 150 families on benefit in the country who exceeded the average wage before the benefit cap and not much more than that received anything close to that amount of benefits.

Jobseekers Allowance is around £55 pounds a week for a single person under 25 and £76 if they're over that age. Of course you have to factor in Housing Benefit, but that is not disposable income - it goes straight into the pocket of the landlord. The Housing Benefit bill has spiralled purely as a result of Thatcher's stupid 1988 Housing Act and the policy of selling off council houses, both of which caused private sector rents to soar.

Interestingly, someone on £49,999 with three children will receive Child Benefit which is less than £10 below the level of a young single person's Jobseekers allowance. If they have four children they receive more than a single unemployed person and if they have five they receive more than every single person on Jobseeker's allowance in the UK. Before last year anybody received these amounts of Child Benefit - even the head of a multinational company earning millons. I note that when the changes came in, the Telegraph, Mail and Express all ran articles explaining to the furious parents of little Henry, Tarquin and Arabella how they could try and get around the change in the Child Benefit rules.

I don't read the daily mail, i said i live in the real world and i see it with my own eyes, i even know people who are swinging the lead and who think people who go to work are mugs.
You can scour the net for as many left wing facts and figures as you want but i'll believe what i see thanks.

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Czarcasm wrote:

Jabba makes some strange comparisons when trying to point-score.

I'm not trying to point score. I'm trying to make you understand that your cherished beliefs about your potential are based on false premises derived from some fundamentally incorrect facts and a complete distortion of statistics, such as the ludicrous dependence on the totally bogus definition of the size of a settlement based on the population contained within arbitrary lines on a map. I'm not repeatedly making these points to have a go, but because your dreams are leading many of you on a fool's errand for a sugar-daddy to take you to the so-called Promised Land. IMO these beliefs have made a significant contribution to your current troubles and they will continue to make you chase your tails and lead you up blind-alleys if you insist on clinging to them through thin and thinner.

Quote :

Cornwall, with a population of half a million and no football team, absolutely falls into the Plymouth Argyle catchment area. It isn't going to fall in anyone elses catchment area, is it? Add that to Plymouths metropolitan area and you've got potentially 850,000 in total. The key here, is that this total area has ONE football team.

Southampton/Portsmouth may have a metropolitan area of a million, but you then have to divide that by TWO.

It's immaterial whether or not it's anyone else's catchment area.. It only matters how easy it is to exploit.You can't possibly compare the 500'000 people of Cornwall spread out over an area of 3'500 sq Km with a similar number spread out over two urban areas of about 40 and 20  km squared, or a combined metropolitan area of probably around 80 km squared - it doesn't make any sense. You are conveniently ignoring the issue of travel, not just the distances involved but the quality of transport links - and that's without even considering the hold that rugby has on the area.

I'm afraid you're simply kidding yourself if you think that a significant proportion of the population of Cornwall are going to regularly make a round trip of as much as 120-100 miles down the A30 from the likes of Penzance and Camborne. Your comparison with Southampton and/or Portsmouth ignores the fact that nearly every one of the 500'000/1million+ who live there will be within a few miles reach of the football club and most of them can travel there by local public transport.

Quote :

I'd have thought Leeds/Bradford, along with a few others, would have dwarfed the Hampshire site, but there ya go...

I never said it wasn't - I was referring to population density and that is very important if catchment area is to mean anything. Say there were no clubs between Plymouth and Birmingham and as little as 500'000 people were spread out over an area of say 100,000 km squared - would you seriously expect anyone from Northampton to regularly attend Argyle home games.

In any case, the relative population size of the Leeds/Bradford and Southampton/Portsmouth conurbation depends on what measure you use. If you use the ONS standard of Urban Area/Built-Up Area the West Yorkshire Urban Area is bigger than the South Hampshire Urban Area, which is the sixth largest in the UK. If you use the proposed EU standard of Metropolitan Area, which allows for slightly bigger gaps, then Solent City is about  same size in fourth place.

You're trying to make someone understand should probably read help someone understand, how very pretentious.

As for the "I'm not trying to point score", thats ALL you ever try to do in an encyclopedic kind of way.      

Jack Sheppard wrote:

...You're trying to make someone understand should probably read help someone understand, how very pretentious...

How very pedantic.

Quote :

As for the "I'm not trying to point score", thats ALL you ever try to do in an encyclopedic kind of way.      

Believe what you like. I know what my motivations are.

I know people on benefits too, including my brother. who after 30 years working like a dog found himself having to claim disability benefits - and who despite having been sectioned after suffering from bipolar disorder, being forced to wear an eye-patch and now unable to walk more than 100 yards due to a form of arthritis, with two knee replacement operations pending, was denied benefit by the evil ATOS before being awarded it on appeal.

He gets a little more than Jobseekers Allowance. The idea that he can afford takeaways and Sky TV is completely laughable. The only way he can afford even the occasional luxury is because of the odd donation from cash-strapped family members. He has a thoroughly miserable existence from what I can see.

Quote :

You can scour the net for as many left wing facts and figures as you want but i'll believe what i see thanks.

I don't read the daily mail, i said i live in the real world and i see it with my own eyes...

That is an almost meaningless method of judging people's circumstances. I'd be surprised if you even knew a couple of hundred people personally and more than ten or twenty intimately. That is a truly miniscule proportion of those on benefits. Moreover I very much doubt that everyone on benefits you come across spills intimate details of their private lives. especially since the government and rabid right-wingers like yourself succeeded in reducing benefit claimants to the level of social pariahs and folk devils.

Quote :

i even know people who are swinging the lead and who think people who go to work are mugs.

What you think you see is irrelevant. The DWP's own figures put the level of benefit fraud as 0.6%. The "shop a scrounger" phone line found that the vast majority of tip-offs they received were unfounded. I assure you that no-one on benefits I know thinks working people are mugs.

As a famous scientist once said  - "anecdote is not data".

Anyway, the thread is being derailed by this off-topic discussion, so I'm not going to be dragged into trading insults with you. I see that you seem to enjoy that sort of thing, so knock yourself out.

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Jack Sheppard wrote:

...You're trying to make someone understand should probably read help someone understand, how very pretentious...

How very pedantic.

Quote :

As for the "I'm not trying to point score", thats ALL you ever try to do in an encyclopedic kind of way.      

Believe what you like. I know what my motivations are.

From the person who scrutinises every post in microscopic detail.