Nov 2007 29

How much for a chess tournament?3

ClownsLiverpool’s taxpayers will be shocked to know they have to stump up a whopping £150,000 for…wait for it…a chess tournament. 

This tale of incompetence started with the Liverpool Culture Company (LCC), a semi-private body, agreeing to pay for the European Chess Tournament, but reneged on the £100,000 deal. 

Out of the blue, however, the North West Development Agency (NWDA), a taxpayer-funded quango, has emerged with £150,000 of taxpayers’ money to fund the tournament. What are they using, golden pawns? 

But alas if you look closely enough you find this is yet another story of government bureaucrats going along hand in glove with each other to squander yet more taxpayers’ money. 

Follow this trail if you will.  The Liverpool Culture Company was meant to have funded the European Chess Tournament in Liverpool.  The Chairman of the LCC is Bryan Gray.  The Chairman of the NWDA now funding the tournament is Bryan Gray.  The chief operating officer of the LCC is Bernice Law.  The deputy chief executive of the NWDA is Bernice Law.  Isn’t it odd that the same people are involved in spending your money on a chess tournament when a private body was meant to?  You draw your conclusions from those links, but it seems to us that taxpayers’ money is being used where it shouldn’t be and far too much is being used on a mere chess tournament.

Feel free to email Bernice Law to find out why the taxpayer should foot the bill.

We should strongly expose this to the local papers.  Send your letters to the Liverpool Daily Post:

Letters Editor
Liverpool Daily Post
PO Box 48,
Old Hall Street,
Liverpool,
L69 3EB,
United Kingdom
Email: [email protected]

And the Liverpool Echo:

Letters Editor
The Liverpool Echo
PO Box 48,
Old Hall Street,
Liverpool,
L69 3EB,
United Kingdom
email: [email protected]

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  • David

    This is foolish economically-illiterate comment. The money spent on the chess tournament is trivial compared with the economic returns generated. One tournament will bring into the city over 1000 players and their families for 14 days; that’s more than 20,000 hotel beds + spend @ c £100/day. In short, that’s a return of c. £2 million. The other tournament will generate worldwide attention from more than 20 million internet visits over the ten days; people associating Liverpool with brains, not a punch in the face. Of the entire expenditure of £150k, more than 80% remains local. Organisers like myself give our time free without charge.
    Stop sneering, and support quality efforts to do something positive instead

  • Sammy

    David your first sentence is illiterate. If the chess tournament is such a money spinner why did the Culture Company renege on their promise. And if it is going to pull £2 million pounds into Liverpool Hotels why cant we have The Crowne Plaza Chess classic. So are you now saying that any profit making hobby should also be funded by the taxpayer ? My first choice would be the elderly and the infirmed, they need our help .

  • David

    Sammy, my first sentence was far from illiterate. You Tory Boys simply never know when to stop sneering. Why did the Culture Company renege? I’ve no idea; they wouldn’t say. All I got from one Board member was the sardonic comment that some other Board members felt that chess was “insufficently trivial”. Instead the money has gone on funding a ‘Song for Liverpool’ and similar weighty initiatives.
    But instead of sneering at chess events, from which some good will come, you’d be better placed asking why a power boat race, sponsored by Honda, receives £200k subsidy; why Liverpool spent £700k on fireworks this year; and so forth. But that would require you to do some research, not sit on your lazy Tory Boy backsides reading half-digested Press cuttings.