You know the problem with greyhound racing. . . somebody should. . . .
I get probably 10 calls a week from greyhound enthusiasts telling me what is wrong with the industry. Everything from promoters “taking millions to build restaurant toilets” to chocolate teapot solutions like, ‘we should have the same system as Australia’.
Probably the last thing greyhound racing needs is another set of politicians and mid-grade civil servants pontificating on what is wrong with the industry like a group of neighbours leaning over the fence offering advice when your lawn mower won’t start.
There is not one sentence in the latest EFRA report that couldn’t have been pre-empted.
1) Leading welfare organisations think having a lovely kennel is more important than having a healthy greyhound.
2) Greyhounds are retired and we don’t know what happens to all of them afterwards.
3) Greyhounds get injured and we want to know why.
4) Greyhound racing is under-funded
And so it goes on with snippets about bad teeth and random kennel checks, etc etc.
I am not criticising the good intent of the EFRA committee – but they might as well be telling me – with the sweat pouring off my forehead and the veins on my neck sticking out like ropes – that I have pulled the choke out to much and flooded the carburetor.
My response to EFRA and DEFRA and any expense fiddling MP or Peer of the realm who wants to listen is this:
Make the betting industry hand over the cash and then make demands of us.
You foisted the expensive GBGB on us, with no thoughts or concern of what it would cost to run. Tracks are closing, owners are leaving, breeding numbers are falling, the level of training expertise has never been lower, and now you want to make demands of a skint industry before guaranteeing that shysters like Betfair will actually pay a fair price.
Your report will gather dust like all the others before it.
Now sod off back to Whitehall!
