And Another Thing

September 2008

Newmarket Trainers Inside Information seminar

MID-MORNING and we are all still here. The Hadron Collider has not got us yet but there is time – two months by all accounts. It strikes me all this questing to re-create the Big Bang is a strange situation, sprung without any warning on those of us who live on this planet. Apparently, there is a remote chance of this contraption metaphormaphisising solid matter into something nasty enough to make us a gooey mass. Quite how remote a chance this is has not been revealed. Alternatively, it could produce a black hole that would suck us all into oblivion (already been done in some cases), or possibly into a parallel, and who knows better, universe. Stephen Hawkins claims this is not a possibility. Okay, but on the assumption that everything is possible, is it asking too much for him to put a figure on it? Are the odds a million, ten million, a trillion? I mention this because I do not recall anyone consulting those of us who live on this blue rock whether we actually wished to sanction such action. And of course Mr Hawkins is on a bet to nothing. Assuming he is right and we are here tomorrow trying to figure out the winner of the Park Hill or May Hill Stakes, or head scratching over the Cambridgeshire next month or the Hennessey the month after, his prediction has been borne out; if wrong he will not be culpable.

Someone similarly absolved from his actions appears to be our old friend Mr Paul Scotney who, having summoned Newmarket trainers to a seminar when he was going to teach them how to suck the proverbial egg, he failed to turn up, possibly demonstrating by proxy how to suck a lemon. Most of the trainers concerned seemed surprisingly restrained in their comments of the non-appearance by this self-appointed autocrat of the BHA. In typical policeman-speak, ex-cop Mr Scotney, who seems to have difficulty grasping the rudiments of the written or spoken word said: “The reason we wanted to go down this education route was that on a number of occasions jockeys and trainers found to have been involved in problems in this area would say they didn’t realise they were doing wrong.”

Cor blimey guv, so that’s what it’s all abat! Such gobbledegook may cut it in the interview room down at the nick but frankly, such a cobbled together, incoherent and grammatically incorrect statement makes no sense in the real world. What he presumably meant to say was something like, “We wanted to increase awareness on security issues so that jockeys and trainers would be able to identify when they were transgressing the rules.” I am sorry if it is sometimes necessary to use long words that are difficult to spell Mr Scotney. You can use little ones if you find it easier but the main thing is that what you say or write makes sense and that you do not require an interpreter. Scotney’s comment on his absence that “Today’s package was on inside information, not debating the subject,” is another example of his feeble grasp of the language known as English and his scant regard for the very people who keep the show on the road.

I wonder how Mr Scotney and his band of despots will handle any of the incoming horserace trainers that are on the list of immigrants most likely to be allowed into this country from outside the European Community. Who thought this one up – someone escaping from the black hole we are hoping to avoid?

One trainer allowed to set up an establishment here, Mr Kamil Mahdi, was warned off for ten years in 2003 and is now seeking to regain his licence. Mr Mahdi had several unique ways of training his horses. It appears one of them was to leave his charges in their boxes unattended for five days, forcing them to live in their own urine and faeces. Not sure if it will catch on Mr Mahdi… But apparently there is a shortage of fish filleters!