Staines Town FC suspend all activities
Quite incredible statement from our old Isthmian League rivals Staines stating they have suspended all activities, including all competitive matches, due to the activities of their landlords, who they claim are possibly involved in or associated with, slavery, human trafficking, bribery, murder and breaking Russian sanctions. Beyond their listed crimes, the landlords - Downing LPP - appear to have been utterly shafting the club over a number of years with Staines in very real danger of going under. The original statement has been removed - and the club's site went down for a while - but it's on the Against league 3 Twitter if you want a read:
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The big scandal being that these entities are using mechanisms set up within the UK for the benefit of the rich and powerful within society to shield their interests and their money from government regulation. If trust funds, bearer shares and off-shore accounts didn't exist, it would be far easier to shut this sort of thing down, but reform isn't ever going to be on the agenda because then most of the assets of the political classes would then be subject to tax, so instead we lament the nasty people taking advantage of the system wishing that there was something we could do about it.
surely you mean 'for the benefit of selfless, patriotic wealth creators working only for the good of the nation' ? @Ed_
The more recent Against League 3 thread gives somewhat more context about this issue. I would suggest that this is more about a very long standing dispute between landlord and tenant than Staines Town suddenly turning into our local version of the International Criminal Court.
It's a load of old bollocks. Sorry. I'm all for taking rich bastards down a peg or two, and saving football clubs, but I actually worked at Downing for nearly a decade and these claims are laughable.
Downing invested in a company, The Thames Club, who are landlords for Staines Town. Staines pay a peppercorn rent but fell behind on paying their service charge. Because they weren't paying the service charge and had built up a significant debt, they stopped getting access to stuff like the club bar (because they were no longer paying for its upkeep I guess?), which denied them revenue. Staines Town owner Joe Dixon got mad, so now he's trying to fling as much shit as he can at Downing.
Downing manages a fund, which owns, literally, about 0.001% of some big listed companies. Staines Town are arguing that any criticism you can make of Glencore PLC you can now level at Downing, and using any dirt they can find. So claims like this in their letter to Priti Patel "ABC Radio reported in 2005 that Glencore ‘has been accused of illegal dealings with rogue states including apartheid South Africa, USSR, Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein’ and has a ‘history of busting UN embargoes to profit from corrupt or despotic regimes.’" are being used to link Downing to human rights abuses, or funding of modern slavery.
Joe Dixon has shut down operations at Staines entirely over this. It's going to go nowhere. He's probably killed their football club.
Downing always looked a decent team, surprised if they were knowingly supporting slavery and corruption. This feels more like a landlord/tenant dispute.
I also note that when the current owner of the football club took over, talking of taking them to the Football League, they were in Conference Sourh, and now they are rock bottom of the Isthmian League One South Central, one place below Chalfont St Peter, facing relegation if they lose their next game, after conceding 106 goals in 31 games this season.
Sounds to me like Joe Dixon needs a journalist type to bring this issue to the fore by posting these allegations all over social media.....I wonder what Alan Swann is doing at the moment? ??
Staines Town and Wheatsheaf Lane hold special memories for me.
Back in 1985, it was the venue for where we met Staines in the Hitachi Cup semi final. There was a real fizz there that night, of whom about 2/3rds had travelled from Bucks. The reason was that the news had filtered through that after years of rejecting invites to join the APL/Gola lge, the WWFC Committee had at last thrown of the shackles and shown some ambition and applied to join the Gola Lge, if we finished in a promotion spot that would be considered.
Two Declan Link goals that night, saw us through to the final.
Sadly after limping through last season, it appears that Staines Town have now folded. Their league place has been allocated to Hill Top FC, a club with close links to London's Somali community.
Another former Isthmian League foe now no longer it seems.
I bet they didn't owe £30m to HMRC! Such a shame that no businessman in the Staines area could help them out in their hour of need
Quite the story, The "against league three" guy did a long set of tweets explaining, but they amount to the same as a lot of other similar stories: Deluded tw@t buys club, or some of club, mostly with someone else's money, turns out to not have the first clue what he's doing, all turns to shit.
Thread
https://twitter.com/AgainstLeague3/status/1542215345812930560?t=m6MvFqF4yQ1bBy_BmwG7_g&s=19