[Archived] Can A Empty Seat Sing

[tcj_jones]

Even if you are unemployed, I find it hard to believe that, if you live in the Blackburn area, you cannot afford £15 to go to one home game a month, at least. You still get a fair bit of football but hardly spend a dime.

[rebelmswar]

Even if you are unemployed, I find it hard to believe that, if you live in the Blackburn area, you cannot afford £15 to go to one home game a month, at least. You still get a fair bit of football but hardly spend a dime.

I can get that money here by collecting 600 coke cans.

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

Sorry Waggy but Rovers have bent over backward's to help the fans with cost this season,they have literally broken their ball's trying to get fans back into Ewood......tell your mates there's work out there if they look hard enough,just like you Waggy and you have a season ticket.

Rovers cant do any more.

[Manchester Blue]

I thought that was his point.

No His point was it was unacceptable for skilled people to be paid the low wages that unskilled work attracts.

It's a harsh world and there are many people who are unfortunate not to be able to afford tickets, including many who do work in cheap labour. Where do you draw the line? Like Stu says the only fair way would be to have people pay in line with their salary, if you wanted to go down that road. At the end of the day the footy is a luxury, some people work damn hard to be able to go week in week out. I can just imagine their reaction when someone who, for one reason or another, gets in free whilst doing nothing.

[blue phil]

I personally wouldn't mind too much but it could well do more harm than good if it p*ssed off many of the employed people.

It certainly would . In all walks of life we see freebies dished out to those on benefits whilst the low paid have to survive with disposable income of next to nothing .

If the club want to fill the ground then all kids who go with a paying adult should be allowed in for free .

[American Rover12]

If the club want to fill the ground then all kids who go with a paying adult should be allowed in for free .

thats a genius idea

[Hannah]

I think Waggy has a point about there is no point in having empty seats - what you do with empty seats though is always going to be a contentious issue.

If Rovers decide to give tickets away surely it is better to give the tickets away to people who are going to in the future be a potential source of income i.e. kids.

Around the late 1990's Rovers used to sell my Mums school (which is in Blackburn) tickets at £2 a ticket. Mum used to go as an adult to supervise the school kids at a reduced rate. The club also provided coaches to ship the children in. The school mum worked at had an excellent uptake of this offer and loads of children used to go. The other positive is that Mum regularly sees expupils of hers at Rovers games that no longer attend her school - no longer getting really cheap tickets. This hasnt happened in a long time and I dont know why it stopped but surely if we are going to just fill the seats this must be a better way of doing it???

[Billy Castell]

Man, I'd love to come.............but I'm about to get a minimum wage job in Devon, which screws that up. I'd be effing sorted if we played Exeter, Bridport, Plymouth Tiverton or Exmouth in the FA Cup.

[stuwilky]

I think Waggy has a point about there is no point in having empty seats - what you do with empty seats though is always going to be a contentious issue.

If Rovers decide to give tickets away surely it is better to give the tickets away to people who are going to in the future be a potential source of income i.e. kids.

Around the late 1990's Rovers used to sell my Mums school (which is in Blackburn) tickets at £2 a ticket. Mum used to go as an adult to supervise the school kids at a reduced rate. The club also provided coaches to ship the children in. The school mum worked at had an excellent uptake of this offer and loads of children used to go. The other positive is that Mum regularly sees expupils of hers at Rovers games that no longer attend her school - no longer getting really cheap tickets. This hasnt happened in a long time and I dont know why it stopped but surely if we are going to just fill the seats this must be a better way of doing it???

Rovers still do the schools scheme. But as with many things relating to schools - keeping the adult:child ratio acceptable, and finding people who are CRB and OFSTED cleared, and willing to take a group of kids is very difficult.

I tried to organise it for the school my lads go to. Couldnt get enough adults.

[Hannah]

Rovers still do the schools scheme. But as with many things relating to schools - keeping the adult:child ratio acceptable, and finding people who are CRB and OFSTED cleared, and willing to take a group of kids is very difficult.

I tried to organise it for the school my lads go to. Couldnt get enough adults.

I am not entirely sure but we do trips based on 1:6 and as the children get older it increased to 1:8. Parent volunteers can have a 99 check rather than a full CRB check if they arent going to be left entirely alone with the children and in terms of (bloody) OFSTED they require risk assessment and evaluation if any issues - these only need to be filled in once as it will always be the same!

I'm sure mum's school has been told they don't do them anymore - who would she have to contact if she was interested in organising it from her school?

[stuwilky]

I am not entirely sure but we do trips based on 1:6 and as the children get older it increased to 1:8. Parent volunteers can have a 99 check rather than a full CRB check if they arent going to be left entirely alone with the children and in terms of (bloody) OFSTED they require risk assessment and evaluation if any issues - these only need to be filled in once as it will always be the same!

I'm sure mum's school has been told they don't do them anymore - who would she have to contact if she was interested in organising it from her school?

How dare you slag OFSTED off I mean, the information and avvise they give is always the same depending on the person you speak to in the call centre :ph34r:

I'll root out the paperwork on the contact, It was early last (school) year.

[Hannah]

How dare you slag OFSTED off I mean, the information and avvise they give is always the same depending on the person you speak to in the call centre :ph34r:

I'll root out the paperwork on the contact, It was early last (school) year.

Ofsted ended any chance of me having a life next year or season ticket so excuse me if I don't like them in the slightest!!!

Thank you

[stuwilky]

I run an after school club ( as a voluntary chair )

After 12 months of doing it, and dragging a satisfactory provision to an excellent provision, with the support of excellent staff, OFSTED have this summer taken the mick and I have told people I am stopping as soon as they can find someone else.

Im used to dealing with competent professionals. OFSTED don't fall into that category!

[Sandiway Blue]

I must admit i have always thought the problem of filling the empty seats at Rovers could be helped by perhaps dedicating the top tier of the darwen end to maybe `a quid a kid scheme` for EVERY league game.

I know we would lose money short term,but i chose Rovers as my team when i was about 10yr old and i think this is when most kids kind of pledge their allegiance to a particular team so to speak.

If for instance you managed to get 1,000 kids a game then hopefully you may get around half that figure that may carry on supporting the club as they get older thus long term increasing support? Of course it`s a heck of a gamble but it may be worth trying over say a 5yr period and see what the results would be.

[Paul]

Please tell me this is a joke!

It is.

Can't see how the club can be expected to do anymore. £15 is a reasonable price and as others have said we have pretty close to full employment. As others have said finding staff is increasingly difficult for employers.

[Paul Mellelieu]

Wrong there Jan. If the difficulty of a job was linked to pay please explain why Gordon Brown gets less in a year than John Terry does in a fortnight. Or how the bosses of the privatised industries increased their wages ten-fold overnight, for doing the same job. Is a Children's Social Worker or someone in the NHS working with Paedophiles less skilled than a media-type that designs campaigns to get kids to buy chocolate?

Are footballers more skilled now than ten years ago? Of course not, it's jsut a load more people are prepared to pay to watch it from their living room

It's about supply and demand, the market, professional associations, political priorities, and dare I say it plain a lack of fairness.

Not sure we have full employment either. In Manchester there are nearly 40,000 people on incapacity benefits, just short of ten per cent of the total population.

I don't think, even if you wanted to, of a way to administer such a scheme.

[waggy]

Sorry Waggy but Rovers have bent over backward's to help the fans with cost this season,they have literally broken their ball's trying to get fans back into Ewood......tell your mates there's work out there if they look hard enough,just like you Waggy and you have a season ticket.

Rovers cant do any more.

i do not work,but am lucky enough to have money put by to pay for mine and junior's season ticket.there is no way i could afford to watch rovers if i was having to relay on benifits,for a single bloke i would get £60 a week,my bed and board is £50 a week,then junior's maintenance,i,m already in minus £££££.

i honestly think for every loafer on the dole there is a genuine person looking for work,the influx of cheap labour from the eastern block,has certianly seen the wages hit rock bottom,and to me why would fans rather see empty seats,than them full with people less fortunate than themselve's

[trs]

Waggy, have you not tried selling badges?

[the original david brent]

heres another take on the argument.

Hypothetically, lets say rovers introduced an unemployment discount on tickets. I dont think it would increase attendances at all.

Because, and I use darwen as an example, very few people support rovers in the poorer, council estate areas where unemployment is greatest. You only see man utd and liverpool tops in these areas.

In the better areas, its all rovers strongholds.

Im sure the same applies in blackburn, accy etc

[3rdpillar]

heres another take on the argument.

Hypothetically, lets say rovers introduced an unemployment discount on tickets. I dont think it would increase attendances at all.

Because, and I use darwen as an example, very few people support rovers in the poorer, council estate areas where unemployment is greatest. You only see man utd and liverpool tops in these areas.

In the better areas, its all rovers strongholds.

Im sure the same applies in blackburn, accy etc

Is your theory here based upon, lifes losers wanting something to shout about, so they glory hunt. Where as people more secure with personal self worth, dont mind fighting for glory?

[the original david brent]

Is your theory here based upon, lifes losers wanting something to shout about, so they glory hunt. Where as people more secure with personal self worth, dont mind fighting for glory?

not really based on anything other something i and others have noticed. There may be an element of truth in the first half of your statement though

[daren]

Unemployment benefit is not really meant to allow you the luxuries in life, if you're getting them, then, bluntly, the benefit is too high. The way it goes is:

1) You have a person out of work

2) You don't want them to starve, you might need them later.

3) You definitely don't want them too comfortable on benefit.

4) If they're working, you make money off their income.

So, to encourage them to look for work, you set the benefit to the lowest you think it's possible to survive on and come up with all sorts of schemes to keep actual money as far away as possible (by partial paying of rent, for instance), and you attempt to make sure that life is uncomfortable, so they'll go look for a job.

No-one on unemployment benefit should feel comfortable there. The whole point of it is as a safety net and a crutch to get you back up, but the whole point is to try and get you back working, and self-sufficient. The entire idea of "giving" them anything but the bare necessities (which does not include - TV, movies, football, pub-time, nightclubs, etc.) defeats the entire purpose of having it in the first place.

[Ben-2000]

Absolutely Daren.

Just to add... Housing Benefit is to make sure you have somewhere to live (in most cases is paid direct to the landlord anyway).

JSA/Income support is paid fortnightly and is there to pay for essentials and not luxury's! Out of this they have to pay for food, gas, elec, water, tv licence etc so really they shouldn't have much left for anything else anyway.

I don't claim any of the above myself but in my line of work I deal with this sort of thing on a daily basis.

[Paul Mellelieu]

Well my lad's out of work at the moment and trying hard to find a job. He gets £45 a week to live on. He's not lazy or stupid, but just had a bit of bad luck. And don't forget 25% of people of working age, aren't in employment, including most of the Royal Family. They find getting tickets fairly easy to come by.

[Sandiway Blue]

Well i`m sorry but if i was out of work i would take the first job available and try to work my way back up to a level that is acceptable,but maybe thats just me.