Who do you believe?

"Eddie Davies, God bless his soul, was an incredible man” and "an amazing person to have at this club", says Auntie Sharon.

A 'ruthless businessman', said Sam Allardyce.

Who do you believe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FlJSDo7K_A&t=1988s

Can he not be both?

My old boss also lived on the IoM, and if you ever needed a template for a ruthless businessman, he was it.
If he had any scruples, I'm pretty sure he kept them in a sock, weighted with ball bearings.

ED was a whole other animal.

My old boss still at it from the grave.


I never bothered following up on the case, it was hard enough listening to this for seven minutes.

boltonbonce wrote:My old boss also lived on the IoM, and if you ever needed a template for a ruthless businessman, he was it.
If he had any scruples, I'm pretty sure he kept them in a sock, weighted with ball bearings.

ED was a whole other animal.

He can't have been, Boncey, can he? ED I mean. Sam Allardyce had years to think about it and the only thing he could come up with was that ED was 'a ruthless businessman'.

Just so we know what we are talking about, here are a few synonyms for 'ruthless':
cruel, uncaring, hard-hearted, callous, merciless, inhumane, uncharitable etc etc.

You don't think, do you, that we might have learned more about Sharon Brittan from her kind, appreciative, thoughtful and spontaneous comments than we learned about Eddie Davies? And don't you also think, by the same token, that we learned a lot about Sam Allardyce from his not so spontaneous comment?

Whilst Nuts members can't bear to tear themselves away from the Sluffy/Troy debate there's been a deluge of Shazzalove on t'internet after Iles of the Beeno eventually got round to/decided to publicise Auntie Sharon's interview with Cowgillman.

See it for yourselves:

Viewings went past 4K yesterday. Not massive as YouTube goes but what did Nutters make of it?
Who has fallen head over heels for Shazza like the YouTube commenters?

Not exactly 'who do you believe' but more like a 'you believe what!!?'

I thought this tweet from someone who is apparently* the Professor of Economics at a German University and expat Wanderers fan, might equally amuse and dismay you to see such naivety and stupidity from those who seemingly believe what they read on social media to be the truth!

The thing that constantly leaves me shaking my head is how often seemingly intelligent and professional people seem to do so???

Anyway for your amusement Bob...

Iles is (and has been for the last 8 years!) the go to football 'financial' analysis for the Professor of Economics of a large university...

8 years ago today, I realised that #bwfc were in deep trouble and @MarcIles became my go-to football financial analyst. Boy, those were rough times. https://t.co/U98PPA8CaE

— Andrew Lee (@leeconomicsKA) December 31, 2021

* https://www.karlsruhe.dhbw.de/prof-dr-lee.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg_Cooperative_State_University

Sluffy wrote:Not exactly 'who do you believe' but more like a 'you believe what!!?'

I thought this tweet from someone who is apparently* the Professor of Economics at a German University and expat Wanderers fan, might equally amuse and dismay you to see such naivety and stupidity from those who seemingly believe what they read on social media to be the truth!

The thing that constantly leaves me shaking my head is how often seemingly intelligent and professional people seem to do so???

Anyway for your amusement Bob...

Iles is (and has been for the last 8 years!) the go to football 'financial' analysis for the Professor of Economics of a large university...

8 years ago today, I realised that #bwfc were in deep trouble and @MarcIles became my go-to football financial analyst. Boy, those were rough times. https://t.co/U98PPA8CaE

— Andrew Lee (@leeconomicsKA) December 31, 2021

* https://www.karlsruhe.dhbw.de/prof-dr-lee.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg_Cooperative_State_University

Thanks Sluffy and Happy New Year to one and all.

Every day and every year bring new experiences; new things to learn and new things to treasure. But it also reminds you that the world is full of nitwits and people who are so gullible and unworldly that they somehow stumble their way through it without ever really learning or understanding much at all.

That Universities grant chairs to folk like that should only surprise those who have not encountered many University professors in real life.

I'm still gobsmacked though.

Having read a few more of Professor Andrew Lee's tweets I am unconvinced that he fits the mould of the dotty professor. The levels of dottiness and eccentricity that I have in mind usually take years of refinement and he seems to be too young for that.

Nope there's something else going on there and I believe that I've seen it a few times before. Its something that he, Marc Iles and David Conn all seem to have in common; a virtual compulsion to completely blank out any facts that do not fit in with their existing prejudices.

I believe I first noticed it with Conn when Eddie Davies paid off all the Reebok debt a few days before he retired from the Board of Burnden Leisure in 2009. In Conn's perverse way of thinking, Davies had done this to profit from the interest ignoring the fact that, barring a minor miracle, Davies was never likely to get any of the interest unless he provided the funds to pay it himself and was unlikely to see much, if any, of his capital ever again.

Davies had lashed out the neck end of £100m by then and would end up spending a similar amount over the next nine years trying to keep BWFC afloat. He died in September 2018 two or three days after he had lent Ken Anderson the money to pay off the BluMarble mortgage taken out by Dean Holdsworth in March 2016. There were a few weasel words from the Bolton News and a small number of supporters attended the memorial service but its all mostly forgotten.

Professor Lee says that he's proud to be a member of the Supporters Trust but none of the ST, the Beeno or the Grauniad ever did get round to commenting on how much Holdsworth's involvement had cost BWFC.

Lest I forget, Eddie Davies never did appear on the Sunday Times Rich list again after 2008 and you don't need to be a professor of anything to figure out why.

I'm interested in how you came across this, Sluffy. It really does speak volumes of how much hogwash has been taken on board by Bolton supporters who ought to know better.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:I'm interested in how you came across this, Sluffy. It really does speak volumes of how much hogwash has been taken on board by Bolton supporters who ought to know better.

Iles re-tweeted it...

Me and you both, Andrew!
Don't miss NYE accounts, that's for sure!

— Marc Iles (@MarcIles) December 31, 2021

As bad as Iles is, he's still the papers Wanderers reporter, so I do look to see what he says on twitter (I don't pay to read the BN online) for the rare occasions he comes up with something.

To be honest I find it more amusing to click on to the link under the twitter intro 'blurb' on every twitter account which says 'Tweets & replies' and read his retweets and replies to other twitter accounts - that's how I discovered this 'genius' in question!

I'm not an avid follower of twitter - I'm sure you are well aware of my views of those who live their life in the fantasy realms of social media - but when I have cause to, I quite often look at the company that twitter account seems to attract as followers as something of a gauge to what bias and prejudice the poster may well have.

For instance today I noted on Troy's mate Maugham's GLP twitter account that they had retweeted an eminent QC's rubbishing of a Telegraph's article on their 'slew' of JR cases GLP had taken out against the government.

As you would expect all of Maugham's acolyte's and camp followers brainlessly swallowed it all with glee, with no second thoughts whatsoever.

Par for the course on social media (which sadly means in the real world to as most believe it to be the one and the same nowadays).

I however simply put this QC's name and Maugham's into google and found out that it was the same person who represented GLP in...

acting for the legal campaigner Jolyon Maugham in a challenge to the legality of the UK/EU Withdrawal Agreement on the basis that it contravenes a statutory provision prohibiting the Government from entering into arrangements under which Northern Ireland becomes a separate customs territory from Great Britain;

...so hardly someone offering a completely independent and impartial view then is it???

None of it matters really, people believe what they want to believe no matter how clever they might think they are like the Professor of Economy believing Iles is his go to football financial analysis!!!

People make me laugh.

I can't change the world, I've failed miserably on here to even persuade people to 'consider' that what they firmly believe in their heads simply isn't actually based on any 'hard' facts whatsoever but mainly pure hysteria whipped up by others with a vested interest in doing so!

I can't change peoples hatred and ignorance - so I just find it funny to laugh at them instead - like this 'nutty' Professor for instance!!!

Thanks Sluffy.

Its no surprise that Iles should be following Andrew Lee or vice versa. Lee and his contacts seem to be wedded to left-wing politics. One of them, David Henig, is the son of Stanley Henig a former Labour MP and leader of Lancaster City Council at the time of Blobbygate, a financial catastrophe that is fondly remembered in these parts.

His mother is Labour Peer, Baronness Henig.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:Thanks Sluffy.

Its no surprise that Iles should be following Andrew Lee or vice versa. Lee and his contacts seem to be wedded to left-wing politics. One of them, David Henig, is the son of Stanley Henig a former Labour MP and leader of Lancaster City Council at the time of Blobbygate, a financial catastrophe that is fondly remembered in these parts.

His mother is Labour Peer, Baronness Henig.

If you don't have a twitter account you may be unaware that if someone mentions you in their tweet - as Lee did in respect of Iles - then you receive a notification of such.

I don't think Iles was aware of Lee until then (he may have been?) but he obviously liked the 'praise' enough to vainly retweet the post, so that his 'followers' could view it too.

You would think that Iles in his position as the journalist for the Wanderers on BN would want to at least 'follow' sites such as WW and Nuts Twitter accounts being that WW at least is bigger and more representative of fans views than the ST (whom with the defunct forum Burnden Aces forum both of) which he does follow!

Iles is Iles and if people wish to believe him implicitly - as Lee does on football financial analysis - then that's up to them then.

Some folk are easily led I suppose?

Not just easily led, Sluffy, but hostile to the facts and the truth. You might be interested in summat I posted on TW today. Its a potted history of the money ED spent on BWFC:

''The reason ED got nowhere near the Sunday Times Rich List after 2008, Bruce, is quite simply BWFC.

The Times had him down as being worth £100m in 2007 and £98m in 2008 but you have to remember that these figures are ESTIMATES based on information that might easily be 12 months or more out of date. They were intended to include everything he owned, or effectively owned, like Fildraw, Moonshift and the Eddie Davies Trust. I suspect he was probably worth more but maybe not by all that much.

When Sam Allardyce took flight in 2007, ED had already spent £15-17million on the club depending on whether you believed the Guardian or the Bolton Evening News. I view both with scepticism but don't doubt that it would it be somewhere near that. He had also guaranteed some of the bank debt, including the funds provided to buy Nicolas Anelka.

By mid-2010 ED had lent the club another £79m taking the loan account up to £85m inclusive of re-invested or rolled-up interest, the money being used mainly to repay the bank debt and fund further investment in the playing squad.

FourFourTwo reported ED to be worth £60m in 2010 and two years later reduced their estimate to £40m before ED disappeared entirely off any rich list.

By 2015 the loan account had reached £185.5m including £14.4m of re-invested/ rolled up interest. In other words ED had provided the club with £171m capital between Allardyce’s departure and 2015, all of which was written off in due course including the interest.

It’s unsurprising that there have been so many misconceptions. Reporting in the media has been consistently abysmal since ED took over full effective control in 2003 but I suspect that the roots of it go further back than that. A psychologist might understand how the old guard at BWFC and their pals might have responded to this younger and wealthier businessman arriving on the scene in 1999 to, in effect, dictate to them the terms on which he would provide money that the club would need if it wanted to get back into the Premiership or stay there".

I'm pleased that there have been over 5,000 viewings since the Sharon interview was publicised on here and TW.

Most commentaries though have concentrated on what a lovely person Shazza is rather than what she had to say of real substance. The vilification of Eddie Davies by the Bolton News, the Supporters Trust, the Guardian newspaper, Sam Allardyce and unrealistically disgruntled shareholders of Burnden Leisure had continued unimpeded until Eddie's final act of repaying the BluMarble mortgage immediately prior to his death in September 2018.

And it remains the case that, despite Sharon's objectivity and kind words, most Bolton supporters on social media want to ignore, misrepresent or draw a veil over what really happened and why during the ownership of one of the most influential individuals in the history of Bolton Wanderers.

Eddie might well have said:

'There are only 3 types of people ....those who can make things happen, those that watch things happen and those who don’t know what has happened'


But there is another type:


those who don't want to know what has happened.

It's a small world sometimes.

On another thread there was talk about the current Attorney General, Suella Braverman which I got involved in and as far as I was concerned I'd said what I need to and moved on.

However I've got a quite an enquiring mind and having a spare moment thought I'd give her a quick look up om Wiki - I do this sort of stuff all the time - I guess I'm just curios about things?

Anyway guess what I found in her wiki bio...

Braverman is the chair of governors at the Michaela Community School,[46] and supports plans to create a free school in Fareham

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suella_Braverman

Well, well, well!

I thought I'd cross reference with the school site itself and wiki is not quite right, she isn't now the Chair but was not only a past one but also the cofounder of the school.

Suella Braverman, co-founder and current governor, former chair of governors from 2013 to 2017

Although the following link is from wiki I suggest you have a little read of it as it explains how the school is run on old fashion teaching methods - apparently just like the way we were taught many moons ago!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaela_Community_School

The current governors including Ms Brittan (deputy chair) is shown in the link below through which you can find out more about the school and how it runs.

For some reason though there is no mention of her owning BWFC but note the comments about One Alfred Place!

https://mcsbrent.co.uk/governors/


Looks as though Sharon has some interesting networking connections!

You might have missed it Sluffy but iirc I posted this connection up on Nuts some time ago. Gudnib also posted it on TW recently.

I got an email yesterday notifying me of the upcoming AGM of AFCANK. Its going to be virtual so no pie and pea supper this time.

I don't often attend AGM's anyway but I do like to have a quick look at the accounts. Where's the money come from, where's it gone to, how much is left or how much do they owe?

AFCANK's  accounts are still under wraps but they would like to know if any member would like to 'table a motion'. Don't you agree that some things are best done in private?

What is AFCANK? Its short for All Fur Coat And No Knickers and campaigns for football clubs to be owned by folk with no dosh.

Another statement of capital has arrived at CH, Sluffy.You can't see it yet but I do hope its a bit less perplexing than the last set of documents.

Have you seen the latest financial insights from Professor Lee? Oh wow, that's what das dumpkop
fens want to know, isn't it?

Code:

<blockquote
 class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Oh wow, remember
this  <a
href="https://twitter.com/rodge8?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@rodge8</a>?
 Wasn’t it £5 to get in or something? Anyway, it was freezing! <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bwfc?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#bwfc</a>
 <a
href="https://t.co/PFgs5jQ9Xp">https://t.co/PFgs5jQ9Xp</a></p>—
 Andrew Lee (@leeconomicsKA) <a
href="https://twitter.com/leeconomicsKA/status/1482034429791031300?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January
 14, 2022</a></blockquote>
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