Echo News 'We want to save Southend United but it's risky'

[Evening Echo]

ANOTHER letter on the future of Southend United.

Read more on this story


Help with Echo links

 

[RHB]

Here we go again. Why, all of a sudden are the Echo so anxious to post this noise on SZ?

 

[Holy Joe]

Why does Alan Hales think losses are very likely to occur? What is his expertise?

 

[kentblues]

Why does Alan Hales think losses are very likely to occur? What is his expertise?

More importantly why does the Echo feel the need to publish each letter they receive even if from people who are plainly clueless? 3 letters and they have published them all? Is that where the Echo is now...

Bear this in mind when considering contributions. Think how ill informed the average person is, then remember half the population are more ill informed than that...

 

[Fairport]

To be fair to Mr Hales he is basically highlighting the deal that would mean the Council paying full rents on empty property. It seems now that some Councillors have at last woken up to the fact that this deal would be terrible for the City and it's council tax payers. It will need to be renegotiated. So often, business people, developers, even dodgy ones like RM run rings around public sector bodies who often seem to have little business nous. Consequently they get stitched up to a lousy deal. A good example is Wet Spam and the London Stadium, the club must be laughing all the way to the bank. The sooner this issue over rents gets sorted the better. We urgently need this takeover to take effect.

 

[Russ.K]

Thanks, for your input Alan Hales.

 

[THE SEVENTIES NORTH BANK]

You would think the editor has it in for Southend United. They keep publishing these letters that are anti football, or anti Southend United, or anti the deal and the Fossetts development. The Council haven't publicised the deal in detail, but what a few councillors have said is that it's a good deal for Southend City. So all this scaremongering that it's going to bankrupt the council is nonsense.

 

[RHB]

There have always been contentious letters published in the Echo, nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is deciding that it is worthy of pushing them out onto biased social media like ShrimperZone. Very few readers of the Echo, electronic or hard copy, bother with the letters column, but make it available to a larger electronic audience and the **** hits the fan.

My vote would go to just deleting the letter at birth (but that view is as an ordinary Zoner).

 

[Smiffy]

There have always been contentious letters published in the Echo, nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is deciding that it is worthy of pushing them out onto biased social media like ShrimperZone. Very few readers of the Echo, electronic or hard copy, bother with the letters column, but make it available to a larger electronic audience and the **** hits the fan.

My vote would go to just deleting the letter at birth (but that view is as an ordinary Zoner).

Echo News Is a bot mate. It auto posts anything "Blues" related. Regardless of how tripe it is.

 

[kentblues]

To be fair to Mr Hales he is basically highlighting the deal that would mean the Council paying full rents on empty property. It seems now that some Councillors have at last woken up to the fact that this deal would be terrible for the City and it's council tax payers. It will need to be renegotiated. So often, business people, developers, even dodgy ones like RM run rings around public sector bodies who often seem to have little business nous. Consequently they get stitched up to a lousy deal. A good example is Wet Spam and the London Stadium, the club must be laughing all the way to the bank. The sooner this issue over rents gets sorted the better. We urgently need this takeover to take effect.

SBC will be the landlord renting properties that they will be leasing then owning.
If you go and a buy a leasehold flat and then rent it out, and the tenants leave, then the mortgage company doesn't just cancel the mortgage payments whilst you find a new tenant!

However, the model suggested will assume, based on expert advice, a certain occupancy rate and achieving that occupancy rate will cover for periods of vacancy. Entirely normal.

Of course if as an individual you rented out through an agency, that agency might offer to cover rents through periods of vacancy. But then they make the same calculation as above and, of course, increase their fees a bit across all tenancies to fund. I doubt SBC will use an agency, but they could, and if it covered rent during periods of vacancy all the above would apply.

From what I see far from a lousy deal its an attractive and innovative way of the council increasing significantly housing stock, and housing stock they control.

It is entirely possible there is a councillor or two that are truly clueless (notwithstanding they may be playing politics). Again, think how ill informed the average person is, then remember half the population are more ill informed than that...

 

[Holy Joe]

To be fair to Mr Hales he is basically highlighting the deal that would mean the Council paying full rents on empty property. It seems now that some Councillors have at last woken up to the fact that this deal would be terrible for the City and it's council tax payers. It will need to be renegotiated. So often, business people, developers, even dodgy ones like RM run rings around public sector bodies who often seem to have little business nous. Consequently they get stitched up to a lousy deal. A good example is Wet Spam and the London Stadium, the club must be laughing all the way to the bank. The sooner this issue over rents gets sorted the better. We urgently need this takeover to take effect.

We have no idea of the financials of the deal and so have no way of assessing if it is good or not. The financials will have an assumed occupancy rate, rent received, lease costs etc, as far as I know the details of that are not public so again there isnt a way for the public to asses if good or bad deal.

Plus I suspect the already existing signed deal probably had the council on the hook for unleased properties - if it didn't that would be having your cake and eating it!

 

[Linda Loan Shark]

Thanks Alan Hales

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

‘It’s risky’. No **** Sherlock, there’s risks on all sides. The same can be said about absolutely everything in life, but that’s not a reason to never do anything. The only certainties in life are death and taxes.

There is the risk of financial loss to the council/property developers on one side, which Alan seems very alert to. Oddly, he seems less concerned to note that there is also the potential for those same folks to fill their boots. The DD should help narrow down the range of likely outcomes, and insurances will quite possibly further mitigate any downside risk.

There’s also a risk that the football club is kaput, which Alan doesn’t really dwell on at all despite limp protestations about how ‘we all wish the club well’, ‘start next season with optimism’ and other unconvincing hackneyed guff.

Alan, you sir are a prat. Your letter is garbage. Next time, do us all a favour and don’t bother.

 

[rigsby]

To be fair to Mr Hales he is basically highlighting the deal that would mean the Council paying full rents on empty property. It seems now that some Councillors have at last woken up to the fact that this deal would be terrible for the City and it's council tax payers. It will need to be renegotiated. So often, business people, developers, even dodgy ones like RM run rings around public sector bodies who often seem to have little business nous. Consequently they get stitched up to a lousy deal. A good example is Wet Spam and the London Stadium, the club must be laughing all the way to the bank. The sooner this issue over rents gets sorted the better. We urgently need this takeover to take effect.

Maybe they should employ someone who knows what their doing. Rather than risk your local club learn how to rent property out.

Clean, tidy and fair price should get you 90% occupancy. I could get them 100% in the first 5 years.

In fact I could guarantee them 100% on a few of them if the price is right and they allow me to Airbnb them.

 

[overseas shrimper]

‘It’s risky’. No **** Sherlock, there’s risks on all sides. The same can be said about absolutely everything in life, but that’s not a reason to never do anything. The only certainties in life are death and taxes.

There is the risk of financial loss to the council/property developers on one side, which Alan seems very alert to. Oddly, he seems less concerned to note that there is also the potential for those same folks to fill their boots. The DD should help narrow down the range of likely outcomes, and insurances will quite possibly further mitigate any downside risk.

There’s also a risk that the football club is kaput, which Alan doesn’t really dwell on at all despite limp protestations about how ‘we all wish the club well’, ‘start next season with optimism’ and other unconvincing hackneyed guff.

Alan, you sir are a prat. Your letter is garbage. Next time, do us all a favour and don’t bother.

Ron doesn't see it that way.

 

[South Bank Hank]

More importantly why does the Echo feel the need to publish each letter they receive even if from people who are plainly clueless? 3 letters and they have published them all? Is that where the Echo is now...

I do get your point but maybe we just need to cut the Echo a little slack. Season is over. Pretty safe to say every day is a slow news day right now. Like every other newspaper, they have to drive engagement. No one’s forcing any of us to read (and get triggered) by the letters.

When you strip it all back, isn’t SZ just people posting their opinions and opening up debates anyway.

Some are better than others…

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I do get your point but maybe we just need to cut the Echo a little slack. Season is over. Pretty safe to say every day is a slow news day right now. Like every other newspaper, they have to drive engagement. No one’s forcing any of us to read (and get triggered) by the letters.

When you strip it all back, isn’t SZ just people posting their opinions and opening up debates anyway.

Some are better than others…

Opinions are opinions wherever they are aired, it's true.

However, nonsense opinions get drowned out by other posters correcting them on online forums. It's next to instant on a busy forum like the Zone. The worst posts are also removed, either by the poster themselves or in moderation (as a last resort).

When a letter/article is published in the paper there's a mindless headline - loosely based on the letter/article it relates to but often missing the more interesting elements of letters/articles in order to maximise clickbait through sensationalism, naturally - which is the only thing a proportion of the readership see.

Many never go on to read the letter/article and thereby have the opportunity to decide that it's dross, or - even rarer - read the whole thing to the bottom and then go on to read the comments in reply (if there are any). Where there are comments, they are very often way more abusive and mindless than anything we ever get on here. I wouldn't rely on them to articulate the alternative view.

So it would be a little misleading to draw a straight comparison between the impact of opinions in letters published in the Echo and the pearls we all cast on here, IMO.

 

[rigsby]

If anyone takes notice of the Echo comments section then they are of no consequence anyway.

 

[Paulie Walnuts]

I wonder what old Alan's thoughts were on this little beauty, which was nothing but a gamble with a silly amount of public money:

Thurrock council hid losses as it gambled millions on risky investments

Official report criticises Tory-run authority’s dysfunctional leadership and says it tried to silence critics

www.theguardian.com

Now that was risky.

 

[Sleaford Shrimper]

I think that @kentblues post #10 is a very good assessment of how the domestic property rental system works. Speaking as the landlord of a smallish house in Lincolnshire that my wife and I bought to rent out when we retired 13 years ago as a means of supplementing the income from our pensions, we calculated that charging a reasonably competitive rent and assuming an 85% occupancy rate would make us an overall annual profit after our own outgoings, and we have been proved right. Southend City Council will, I am sure, be working on a similar model but on a much larger scale. The difficult part for them will be calculating the appropriate overall projected rental income and percentage occupancy rate to balance against negotiated outgoings in their leasing agreement with the Martins. If they find that they cannot strike that balance it could be the death of the deal.