The Trumpit Formally known as The Thackley Trumpit Established in 1990 July 2018 Issue 445 FREE The New Inn by John Trueman Local Hero Dean Harrison! Isle of Man TT Masterclass Page 20 Engaging Communities Page 4 PLUS All the usual features The Trumpit Editorial So my friends, how do you feel about the new Trumpit? We have had many comments in the first couple of weeks and almost all of them favourable, but we need more. We can’t possibly keep readers happy if you don’t tell us what you don’t like as well as what you do. Each month we will publish our ‘takings’ so you will all know what there is available for local good causes, secondly we also wish to encourage local writers and photographers to submit their work, we will not be making monitory offers for these but please let us have your names and addresses to publicize your work, but please tell us if you would like any details withholding. With the decline in sale of other local newspapers, local news is being lost, Social Me- dia is ok but it is over and done with the following day so we believe we are crucial in this by keeping news alive and in front of the public. Other matters this month are Hatches, Matches and Despatches (Births, Marriages and Deaths) another local service which has declined in recent years, but is still important. Please let us have these notices, just remember our deadline dates are usually around the 25th, of the month and space is at a premium so keep them relatively short. Are you regulars at your local pub, social club, church, youth centre football, cricket, bowls, croquet, swimming, tennis clubs. Or motor club and motor cycle or cycling club. What about golf, rambling, strolling or running club? The list is endless and I’m exhausted just writing about them. So how about you writing about your club? It tells everybody about what you do and what it is all about, it can swell membership and if it gets people off their backsides and helps them get fit so much the better and we need to know. Ed. If you want to get in touch with me my phone number is 01274 428659 Money put aside for the Trumpit Community Fund from the first Edition was £84.50 ADVERTISING RATES Full Page £100 Contact Steve on 07771 508729 or [email protected] Half Page £60 Pick up a copy as soon as you see it, after all it’s a Free Quarter Page £30 read enjoy. Eighth Page £20 Engaging Communities? Our local area has a fine sporting pedigree not least where the summer game of cricket is concerned. However, the game is in deep crisis with rapidly falling participation numbers. Recently, Idle CC, established over a hundred years ago, gave up the ghost and the overgrown ground is a sad sight. Most clubs have issues with player numbers, finances and a game that has lost its appeal to young people and hard-pressed volunteers alike. But why has the grassroots game reached this point? The blame lies squarely at the sport’s governing body the English Cricket Board (ECB). In 2005 England had finally won back the Ashes, beating Australia in a thrilling series watched by millions on Channel 4. That was the last we saw of cricket on free to air television and will be until 2020. Imagine football doing this? Add to this the fact that cricket had all but vanished from the state school sector by this time and the ECB’s failure to capitalise on England’s new heroes was lamentable. Instead it sold the game to Sky. True it supported Chance to Shine in 2005 with the aim of providing regular coaching and competitive cricket in a third of state schools by 2015. Back then cricket had fallen to the sixth most popular sport played in schools, with many cricket pitches lost when school playing fields had been sold off. Funded by a mix of private donors and government funding through Sport England, Chance to Shine like to claim some bold statistics. Having direct experience of this, it is more a numbers game based on box-ticking. Try “coaching” a class of thirty kids in a sport most have never heard of? It is no surprise the game has continued to decline amongst the young. Wind forward to today and the whole focus has shifted to what the ECB refers to as the South Asian population. Engaging South Asian Communities is the ECB’s fourth strategy document since 2013 relating to the grassroots. It is a 100 page plus monster of a document, the sort governing bodies love. And it is stuffed with self-serving padding and uncosted grand plans. Money will rain down faster than a monsoon, nowhere more Continued on page 5 Continued from Page 4 than in parts of Bradford learning nothing from wasting millions on postcode led projects at Manningham Mills and Myra Shay to name few. A combination of the ECB, Sport England and our hopeless Council are already committed to a £6m plus spend at the dilapidated Bradford Park Avenue. Did you know almost £1m has been spent to date with your cash-strapped council’s part £330k? The ECB has also funded five free to play artificial cricket wickets at Myra Shay, Woodhall Recreation Ground, Haworth Road, Hudson Avenue and Park Avenue at a cost estimated at £50k. Find them if you can but pitifully there is no evidence of usage. Bradford Council tell the ECB they need eighteen new cricket pitches yet clubs continue to fold? Still, if it helps the money flow who cares about the truth? Nationally, the ECB is looking to create more than 20 new Urban Cricket Centres and develop 1,000 non-turf and 100 turf pitches by 2024 in the UK. It defies any logic that a sport in crisis should focus so narrowly on one community. Lord Patel of Bradford is at the head of this; you would have thought he would have no problem responding to a few legitimate questions? However, whilst happy to blather on about his new vision on Sky Sports Cricket during the recent test match, he is strangely mute. Several emails later I am still awaiting responses to legitimate questions as to the direction and focus of huge sums of public money. Unbelievably, we also have Spirit of 2012, a £1.8 million national programme set to “bring together young people, their families and communities through regular engagement in cricket: as players, fans and volunteers.” This will focus on five cities… well…certain bits of them. Put simply, if you proposed a massive programme of investment aimed at, say, white working-class communities you would be shot down as racist in an instant. So why is the opposite acceptable? And do not think the Asian cricket community are wholly supportive either. They know they are being used to soothe the consciences of self-serving do-gooders. Cricket has the power to unite diverse communities like no other sport but this will do nothing but the opposite, taking facilities and resources to already insular parts of the city creating yet more division. And the game will continue to wither and die because it relies on far more than patronising handouts. It is a desperate plan written in the wasteful and ignorant tome of political correctness, displaying a blatant ignorance of the real state of grassroots cricket. Those behind it should be ashamed. IDLE WORKING MENS CLUB LTD THE CHEMIST 23 HIGH STREET, IDLE, BRADFORD Arriving home, a husband was met by his BD10 8NB sobbing wife. Tearfully she explained, "The Chemist. He insulted me this morning on TEL. 01274 613602 Email: the phone, and I had to call multiple times [email protected]. before the would even answer the phone. www.idleworkingmensclub.co.uk “The husband drove down to confront the OPEN 7 NIGHTS A WEEK 7 till 11-11.30 Chemist to demand an apology. Before he on Saturdays could say more than a word or two, the Chemist said "Now, just a minute...Mate, Also open Friday, Saturday, Sunday & hear my side of it. This morning the alarm Monday Lunch failed to go off, so I was late. Without LIVE ENTERTAINMENT SAT. & SUN. breakfast I hurried out to the car to realise EVENINGS LARGE SCREEN TV, I'd locked the house with house and car keys SNOOKER, DARTS & DOMINOES inside. I Had to break a window to get my keys. “Driving a little too fast, I got a WEDNESDAY QUIZ NIGHT IN THE speeding ticket, and about three streets from LOUNGE, THURSDAY BINGO NIGHT- the store, I had a flat tyre." "When I finally EYES DOWN AT 8.30 PM got to the store a bunch of people were ROOMS FOR HIRE FOR PRIVATE waiting for me to open up. I started waiting PARTIES, MEETINGS ETC. on these people, all the time the damn phone never stopped ringing. Then I had to break NON MEMBERS WELCOME TO COME open a roll of pound coins against the cash IN AND HAVE A LOOK ROUND register drawer to give change and they spilled all over the floor. I had to get down on my hands and knees to pick up the pound IF MY BODY WERE A CAR... coins and the phone was still ringing. When I came up I cracked my head on the open If my body were a car, this is the time I cash drawer which made me stagger back would be thinking about trading it in for a against a showcase with bottles of expensive newer model.