Daily Mail sketch writer Quinten Letts has noted local MP Jesse Norman's recent comments about Hereford United in the House Of Parliament.
Topics raised this morning included non-league football
That last one came from Jesse Norman (Con, Hereford & S Herefordshire) whose local club, Hereford United, narrowly avoided relegation last weekend after a season of torrid financial troubles caused partly by tax demands. Mr Norman hailed the ‘do-or-die battle’ of ‘The Bulls’ (as United are nicknamed) and invited the front bench to help preserve ‘our football heritage’.
It so happens that The Bulls are my local team and I go and watch them when I can.
I can tell you that their survival in the Skrill Premier League last weekend electrified the county of Herefordshire. It was enormous news – people were even talking about it over the post-matins cider at church on Sunday.
It created a sense of fiery local identity. Real Big Society stuff. Yet the blasted tax man would happily close the club.
Sadly, Mr Javid was not answering Mr Norman’s question. That task fell to the sports minister, Helen Grant, a figure of rare inadequacy. She managed to get wrong the name of Hereford United’s opponents in the final match of the season (you wonder if her civil servants ever read the newspapers’ sports pages) and spoke in sentences of the most bland disengagement.
Philip Hollobone (Con), in reference to his local club Kettering, witheringly compared the vast salaries of top footballers to those at the lower end of the game. The useless Mrs Grant had nothing to say on this.
Mr Norman is a member of the Treasury select committee. When he next has officials from HMRC in front of him, perhaps he will ask why tax collectors are trying so hard to put small football clubs like Hereford United out of business, while giving allegedly such favourable treatment to the likes of Google, Starbucks and Bernie Ecclestone.
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