West Hams new Stadium

Just reading that the Olympic Stadium, when West Ham move in, will cost West Ham a measly 15 million quid and the tax payer will have paid half a billion near enough.

All right for some I think. Disgusting I think.

It's marvellous what can happen if you don't have a certain councillor always trying their best to stop a local club move grounds. Mentioning no names.

Another case of a prem league club getting richer!

Though am sure they must have to pay rent every year/match surely

If West Ham didn't move in though (and pay rent) what would happen to it?

There were quite a few clubs wanting to become tenants. West ham, Leyton orient and Tottenham were interested, wasps and Saracens (rugby) also, talk of an American football franchise also.

Ta, so it was always going to be a sports team of some sort taking the stadium on.

Without that I'm guessing it'd just sit there - at least this way it's recouping some cash.

I live about five minutes away from it and have just walked past it as I do most days.  For me, it's one thing to have local authorities providing material help and support to local clubs where there is a community interest, and what West Ham are getting, which amounts to a large amount of taxpayers' money and guarantees going to a private organisation which pays people £100,000 a week.  All of this is taking place in Newham, one of the poorest boroughs in Britain with some of the worst social and educational problems, a borough which pleads poverty to central government while at the same time considering shipping social tenants out to other parts of the country and evicting people on the periphery of the Olympic Park.

What West Ham and Newham are doing is going beyond what is the function of local government and effectively using London (and national) taxpayers as a subsidy for a current top 4 premiership team.  Meanwhile, we're stuck in our backwater of an area with political pygmies like DeFreitas blocking and frustrating at every turn.

The good news out of all of this however, is that should the council eventually get behind our plans and we go about getting the plans going, we should have an excellent chance of getting approval from the Secretary of State as we can cite previous government support for both the Olympic Stadium and Brentford's new ground.

brentford had to bombard the mayor of london and the secretary of state with e mails backing the stadium which only got the nod due to more local support than the nimbys e mails as for my club hayes we still havent finished the main stand yet