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Don’t fall into the trap of confusing animal welfare with animal rights, the two are in essense completely different arguments. It only confuses things if you try to use a welfare point against a rights argument, or vice versa.
Animal welfare activists (RSPCA etc) do not want to see racing banned, but want it to be as safe as possible.
Animal rights activists believe that racing (indeed, any use of animals by humans) is wrong, and want it banned. They highlight deaths at the National and so on in order to advance this argument. They are not saying: stop the deaths and we’ll let you carry on.
Zorro
Call up the file, do Control-A, Control-C, then go to the posting box for this forum and Control-V. As if by magic, all your bon mots should appear…
For reason best known to themselves, the Racing Post hasn’t updated its clippings for nearly two months so unless it’s picked up by one of the online cuttings services, I fear the answer is no.
Zorro probably still has it on his computer, though, so he could always cut and paste. <br>
These days there is Betfair Form too…
According to the Racing Post tips table, a £1 level stake on the favourite is currently showing a return for the year of 97.96%, having dotted up in the same contest last year with about 95pc over the 12-month period. Not a great deal of margin there for an on-course operator, whether you’re betting on numbers or opinion.
I’m probably closer to Paris than Newton-le-Willows, horsestats, but very much enjoy going to Haydock on the rare occasions I’m there. Hope you have a successful afternoon…
Walk down from the station to the main road and there is a bus stop to your right. Buses from there every 10 minutes.
Dubai is much more image-conscious than the other Emirates, for obvious reasons. A modern-day version of "Death of a Princess" set in the middle of Dubai City would not do much for the tourist trade.
Several of the other Emirates have no such worries, though. This is from the Amnesty website:
<br>In December [2004], two women domestic migrant workers – Indonesian national Wasini bint Sarjan and Indian national Rad Zemah Sinyaj Mohammed – were sentenced to flogging, after becoming pregnant outside marriage, by a Shari’a (Islamic) Court in Ras al-Khaimah. Rad Zemah Sinyaj Mohammed was sentenced to 150 lashes, to be received in two sessions, followed by deportation. Wasini bint Sarjan was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment and 100 lashes, followed by deportation.
The sentences were to be carried out once the women had given birth and their children had been weaned.
<br>
I believe the following day is the first ever rugby international at Croke Park (Ireland v France) which is the reason it’s been put back to Saturday.
And since I’m in self-flagellatory mood, I think you’re right reet hard, it was Thirsk, not Hamilton.
Yep, you may well be right about that, it was sloppy to conflate one with the other. Although if the draw isn’t factored into the CSF, you have to wonder why not, since they get away with it when it comes to the Tricast.
I think it was Patrick Veitch who cleaned up at Hamilton, won £250,000 when the top three stalls came in at big prices – and yes, not long after that, BOLA announced that the draw would be factored in to the formula.
I believe there was also an adjustment according to the total overround on the race ie. if there was a low profit margin, they would bump it up a bit, but if it was high already, well, that’s another matter…
Non Vintage
I used to have a copy of it somewhere – I seem to recall that I phoned up one of the main bookies organisation (BOLA probably, as it was then) and they sent it to me.
I showed it to an acquaintance who happened to be a well-known professor of maths at the local university, and to my surprise, he said that it was relatively straightforward in strict mathematical terms, despite looking horrendously complicated to me (it ran to about five pages of A4).
Basically it’s the odds of the winner multiplied by the odds of the second, but then there are four or five stages after that where "tweaks" are made to shave the dividend: when there’s an odds-on favourite, for instance, or there is a well-known draw bias, like low numbers at Chester.
Of course, you could argue that the odds of horses in low boxes at Chester already take account of the fact that they have a good draw, so there should be no need to tweak the dividend at all. You could, but they won’t listen to you.
Dave
I’m not disputing what you say about the SP system, it’s clearly been fiddled to benefit the margins. I’m just saying that suggesting the bookies should dip further into their pockets still translates, just as it always has, into the punters paying more. Businesses pass on their costs to their customers.
The bookies aren’t stupid, they realise they have to pay money to racing to keep it going and to keep their punters betting, but under the Levy system, they are never going to hand over any more than the bare minimum they can get away with.
If the percentage of profits handed over to the Levy were bumped up, they would simply find a way of passing that on to their customers, probably via an industry SP with a fixed margin, though it’s not going to happen as the current level has been agreed on both sides as acceptable and no-one wants to hack the Government off any further by fallling out over it.
The fact that bookies have to make an offer under the Levy system, and have a very shrewd idea of what they can get away with paying, is why Savill was so keen to truly commercial negotiations.
There was nothing wrong with that in principle, it was just the execution – ie. getting the Levy abolished before they were sure that the alternative was water-tight legally – that was laughably cack-handed.
Even on a commercial basis, though, the money was ultimately going to come from the punters, and everyone involved knew it.
