8’s – not a magic number

Mini-bonds –  who needs them – who loves them? Why do they exist?

They exist to line the pockets of people who find easy money in our yearning for 8% interest on our money. Where does this desire come from? It comes from the days when UK Government bonds carried a yield of 5%. Today yields are less than 1% but people are still “anchored” in their way of thinking , they still think that with a bit of ingenuity, a return of 8 or 9% is achievable – and what is more dangerous, they feel entitled to it.

So when someone without a moral compass comes along and tells them that they can invest in a bond that yields 8 or 9% , which can sit in an ISA , they want to believe. Which makes convincing people it can be done an awful lot easier.

The collapse of London Capital & Finance (LC&F), in January this year, was one of the grislier events in financial services during 2019.

The Tunbridge Wells-based firm had issued unregulated “mini-bonds” worth £237m to 11,600 investors lured in by the promise of 8% interest rates. Those investors are likely to have lost most of their money.

8’s – not a magic number.

LC&F – An existential threat to your career at the FCA?

This time last year, Andrew Bailey, the big boss at the FCA was being lined up to be the next Governor of the Bank of England, he’s still second favourite behind Minouche Shafiq (at 14/5) but LC&F happening on his watch – did him no favours.

This might explain why the FCA are being unusually pro-active in banning the promotion of similar mini-bonds in the first-quarter ISA selling season.

I am being tad harsh on the FCA here as their hands are tied (to an extent) by what they call their “regulatory perimetre”. They cannot regulate what sits within the mini-bond and call out the kind of chicanery going on at LC&F which invested in no-hope companies like London Oil & Gas which was leaking money back to the people running LC&F.  That relationship is now the subject of a fraud inquiry.

The FCA can regulate the financial promotions used to get ordinary people to see speculative investments as the equivalent of that building society account we held in the “good old days.

Which is what the FCA should do and are doing. Why I remain sceptical that the FCA has turned a corner, is that there are still too many financial promotions that pop on our devices , that tell us financial impossibilities.

It’s the way you sell’em

Were I to issue a mini-bond backed by AgeWage, my own company  you would rightly point to the real chance that AgeWage will not be around in thee years, there being no secondary market for the shares and for our company only having recently received its first trading revenue. But I could point to my company having a market cap of just under £4m.

You would be right on all accounts, though the claims of many min-bonds are based on the same speculation that gets crowd-funders to invest through platforms like Seedrs and Crowdcube in businesses like mine.

The difference is about promotion, as Frank almost says

“it’s the way you sell’em”

The problem is with us – not them!

There have been successful mini-bonds , launched by organisations like John Lewis and a number of sports clubs.

If people invest for as a supporter, as a charitable giver or even to support the aims of an organisation such as John Lewis, mini-bonds can attract the kind of crowd-sourced capital that does good things. I’ve written on this blog about the social value of Zopa for the same reason

If you look carefully at this promotion fo LC&F, it is positioned against Zopa.

But while Zopa explains the nature of its business and the risks attached to that 4%, L&CF never did.

Instead it used that magic anchor of 8% to make plausible it’s financial impossibility

If we are ever to rid ourselves of the menace of  8% promises, we are going to have to get people to think long and hard about why they still cling to the 8% dream.

We have to get people thinking about that simple but difficult idea of the “real return”, the return on our money that beats cash. Cash returns right now are not giving real returns, nor was 8% if interest rates were at 10% and inflation higher than that.

The world has moved on, but many of us are still anchored in a world of 8% returns. It’s nostalgic, unrealistic and very dangerous.

What the FCA need to be doing , as part of their duties, is promoting financial realism, helping people to understand that a risk-free return of 8% is a financial impossibility and that achieving a return of 1 or 2% in today’s climate, is not failure.

The problem is with us – without our behavioural bias’ , the crooks cannot win.

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Yesterday the Labour Party published a radical manifesto designed , among other things, to address inequality in British society by redistributing from those who have to those who haven’t.

Hardly an area of British life would be untouched by this manifesto. If it  was adopted after a Labour majority, we would see radical changes in matters as diverse as public ownership, tuition fees and funding of the NHS.

The 83bn GDP cost of improving services to the general public will be met from extra taxes on high earners and business.

And yet the 40bn GDP cost of pension tax relief has not been put under any threat of change.  Why are pensions Labour’s sacred cow?

Labour’s radicalism did not extend to pensions, with no plans to reform the current system of tax relief on retirement savings. https://t.co/Q4BdqvAdRp

— Josephine Cumbo (@JosephineCumbo) November 21, 2019

The sacred cow is public sector pensions

To understand Labour’s failure to get to terms with the inequality of pension tax relief distribution , you need to think people not policy. The Labour party’s policy is dominated by unions – Unison, the public sector union and Unite. 

These unions, not only dominates union pension policy, they control Labour policy and they are  driven by an almost messianic commitment to preserve public sector pensions whether funded or unfunded.

Any radical policy that undermines the principal of member rights to a defined benefit is  squashed by Unison and by the Labour party’s powerful union lobby.

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Of course we can have radical pension policies which reinforce public sector pensions.

The manifesto pledge to freeze increases in the State Retirement Age at 66, should be paid for by some kind of levy on public and private pensions but appears to be uncosted and so a pass-on to future generations

The IFS estimates the #LabourManifesto pledge to freeze the state pension age at 66 will add a projected £24 billion a year to spending by the 2050s.#GE2019

— Josephine Cumbo (@JosephineCumbo) November 21, 2019

Similarly , improvements to benefits to pensioners

From May this year, mixed-age couples (where one party of the couple is over Pension Credit qualifying age and the other under that age) were no longer be able to choose whether they claim Universal Credit or Pension Credit or pension age Housing Benefit.

— Josephine Cumbo (@JosephineCumbo) November 21, 2019

What then for the private sector?

While public sector pensions, state pensions and pensioner benefits are preserved or improved, the private sector are set to be squeezed by pension policy.

What for the sponsors of workplace pensions?

In sharp contrast to the protectionism in the rest of the document, private sector workplace pensions seem set for more reform with the focus being on the costs to employers of workplace pension contributions.

There are cryptic references in the costings section of the manifesto to a 10 per cent contribution rate assumed on wages – P 11.

Hourly rates have been adjusted to factor in 10% pension contributions for staff 

While these proposals are sketched in to policy, the big proposal is to set up an independent Pensions’ Commission – modelled on the Low Pay Commission – to recommend target levels for workplace pension.

One can only assume that 10 per cent is the imputed future employer contribution rate for auto-enrolled pensions.

What for the ordinary saver?

There is nothing in the manifesto of comfort to DC savers who appear to be “off -radar”.

The only reference to consumer protections is against ‘rip-off auto enrolment schemes’. Workplace pensions have just gone through the master trust authorisation process and are under intense scrutiny when GPPs. Where are these rip-off AE schemes?

It is as if the Labour party knows nothing about what is actually happening to the vast majority of UK retirement savers.

This is precisely what you would expect from a pension policy team – so dominated by unions and so under-represented by anyone from the private sector. There is nothing here for the ordinary person who does not have the good fortune to be in a union-dominated collective pension scheme.

In short, the private sector gets the stick, the public sector gets the carrot.

And it’s very short on detail…

There are a few passing nods to the detail of pensions policy. Labour supports CDC – so long as they are for  “Royal Mail and similar schemes” …. similar schemes?

Labour supports a single (state controlled) dashboard.  Labour will continue to push for transparency on cost and charges.

But when it comes to less fashionable policy items, such as the fate of the 1.7m employees, enrolled into workplace pensions but getting none of the promised 25 per cent rebate on their pension contributions – nothing. This doesn’t even make it into the remit of the Pensions Commission.

It is as is anything that might upset the status quo on public sector pensions [where most of the net pay scandal is going on, is out of bounds.

I am sorry to say it, but the Labour party appears to be feather bedding their own  and excluding  anyone who isn’t in the Union pension corral from the fun.

And what is left…?

Left in if you are in the public sector, left out if you aren’t – the politics of the left show little sympathy for pension funds.

The PLSA have thrown their hands up in horror over the impact on DB funding of Labour’s privatisation plans. DC pension growth could be stunted by the planned taxes on dividends and it looks like pensions will become an employer tax under a future Labour Government.

What is left out – of this manifesto – is any attempt to get to grips with the glaring inequality  of the distribution of pensions tax relief

2/3rds of tax relief paid out by Govt goes to higher rates taxpayers, despite only representing 1/4 of the people claiming it

What is the left but a way of correcting such inequalities?

And what is left of Labour’s pension policy without a strategy to correct this issue?

I would argue that the Labour Party’s pension manifesto is a sop to the unions, an affront to the private sector and that it presents a bill to future generations so that the cosy status quo that prevails today, can persist.

It reinforces the very real inequalities between public sector and private sector pensions and does nothing to address the fundamental unfairness of pension taxation.

Enter a caption

Appendix

What the Labour manifesto says on pensions

People work hard for most of their lives
and deserve a decent retirement free of
financial stress and insecurity.
Under the Tories, 400,000 pensioners
have been pushed into poverty and
a generation of women born in the
1950s have had their pension age
changed without fair notification.
This betrayal left millions of women
with no time to make alternative plans
– with sometimes devastating personal
consequences.

Labour recognises this injustice, and
will work with these women to design
a system of recompense for the losses
and insecurity they have suffered.
We will ensure that such an injustice
can never happen again by legislating
to prevent accrued rights to the state
pension from being changed.

The Conservatives have repeatedly
raised the state pension age despite
overseeing a decline in life expectancy.
Labour will abandon the Tories’ plans
to raise the State Pension Age, leaving
it at 66. We will review retirement ages
for physically arduous and stressful
occupations, including shift workers,
in the public and private sectors.

We will maintain the ‘triple lock’ and
guarantee the Winter Fuel Payment,
free TV licences and free bus passes
as universal benefits.

Thanks to automatic enrolment,
which was introduced by the last
Labour government, record numbers
of employees are now in workplace
pension schemes. But too many
people are still not saving enough
for a comfortable retirement.

We will stop people being auto-enrolled
into rip-off schemes and seek to
widen and expand access for more
low-income and self-employed workers.

We will establish an independent
Pensions’ Commission, modelled on the
Low Pay Commission, to recommend
target levels for workplace pensions.
We will create a single, comprehensive
and publicly run pensions dashboard
that is fully transparent, including
information about costs and charges.
We will legislate to allow the CWU/Royal Mail agreement for a collective
pension scheme to proceed and allow
similar schemes.

Labour has listened to the NUM and
in government will end the injustice of
the state taking 50% of the surplus in
the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme and
introduce new sharing arrangements
so that 10% goes to government and
90% stays with scheme members.

This new sharing arrangement will
also apply to the British Coal Staff
Superannuation Scheme.
We will ensure that the pensions of UK
citizens living overseas rise in line with
pensions in Britain.

Pensions in the costings document which accompanies  the manifesto

Restore pension credit for mixed aged couples

WP Research and Analysis briefing ‘Mixed age couples: benefit impacts of ending access to Pension Credit and pension age Housing Benefit’ (updated April 2019) gives the estimated saving from implementing this policy as:

This figure was estimated by the House of Commons Library by taking the total expenditure on frozen pensions in 2018-19 and applying the Office of Budget Responsibility’s annual ‘triple lock’ uprating forecast to each of the following years.

Calculations are based on DWP Benefit Expenditure and Caseload Tables, DWP Stat-Xplore State Pension dataset and the OBR Economic and Fiscal Outlook March 2019.

Boris Johnson had better not sell me a reduction in my national insurance contributions as an incentive to the poor.

Neither of those figures is correct. £12,000 should have been £12,500 but at a date unknown and in fact £9500 next year. And £8424 should be £8632 this year and would be around £8800 next year. It will apply to workers of any collar colour including PM. Employers will save too https://t.co/8lTIIL2tAD

— Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) November 21, 2019

His jump the gun announcement ahead of the manifesto was made up as it went along with all the wrong numbers. But worse – much worse – is the intent of Johnson and his party to fool us into thinking this is an “incentive’ for the poor. The proposals won’t help the self-employed or the elderly

People over state pension age who are employed or self-employed do not pay NICs so cannot benefit from a cut but their employer, if they have one, does.

— Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) November 21, 2019

and it will benefit the likes of Tory membership card holding me, much more than the hard-working families that Johnson is sucking up to

People over state pension age who are employed or self-employed do not pay NICs so cannot benefit from a cut but their employer, if they have one, does.

— Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) November 21, 2019

So let’s not pretend that this is going to target those who need extra money in their purses. This is going to benefit the people who have the internet bank accounts and are prospering.

Here is the IFS’ Xu summing the proposed giveaway up

‘If the intention is to help the lowest-paid, raising the NICs threshold is an extremely blunt instrument. Less than 10% of the total gains from raising NICs thresholds accrue to the poorest fifth of working households. The government could target low-earning families much more effectively by raising in-work benefits, which would deliver far higher benefits to the lowest-paid for a fraction of the cost.’

Or pay them back their overpaid pension contributions

The fate of 1.7m pension savers who are currently paying 25% too much in pension contributions is being ignored.

I hear Conservatives are thinking of giving all of us a national insurance bung as an “incentive”. First he should honour incentives promised but not paid to the 1.7m low-paid not getting tax-relief on their pension contributions. Giveaways to the rich or incentives to the poor?

— Pension Plowman (@henryhtapper) November 21, 2019

If Boris Johnson really wanted to help those at the bottom end of the income scale , he would alleviate the burden of them having to pay 5 rather than 4 per cent minimum contribution levels to stay in a workplace pension.

Labour little better

And shamefully , it is not just the Conservatives who are ignoring the “net-pay pension  rip-off”.

Labour’s radicalism did not extend to pensions, with no plans to reform the current system of tax relief on retirement savings. https://t.co/Q4BdqvAdRp

— Josephine Cumbo (@JosephineCumbo) November 21, 2019

Instead , Labour is pledging various pension commissions to look into matters. They will no doubt find, what this bog has telling them for four years, that the poor are getting a bad deal out of net- pay pensions and no-one cares.

The cost of sorting the net pay anomaly grows, no doubt by the time we get around to trying to do so, we will find that the backdated payment of the promised incentive has become a fiscal obstacle.

Each month that goes past means another month of those who can’t afford to- paying too much into their pensions and as time goes by, the likelihood of this being put on a proper footing grows less.

The Liberals have also toned down the tone of their pensions manifesto, abandoning reform of pension taxation altogether,

Since Conservatives -Labour and Liberals  all seem to be in pre-election giveaway mode, it is source of cross-party shame that this ludicrous situation is allowed to persist.

The irate Tristan Hawthone

Tristan Hawthorne is right to rail against the IFS (and the BBC) for lumping pension contributions into the “taxes” box on our payslip. Here’s the offending statement which appeared on the BBC website

The taxes that many of us are most aware of are income tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs).

These are the sums of money on a payslip that never reach our bank account, along with pension contributions or student loan repayments.

Together, they account for the majority of revenue collected in the UK.

Here’s that  tax “grab in a graph”

numbers without pensions and student loans

And here’s Tristan’s vivid riposte

“For those of us in the benefits industry this is misleading at best and at worst worryingly inaccurate”.

One of my preoccupations is trying to find ways of getting ordinary people to think about the abstract concept of saving for retirement, putting money away for a rainy day and I wonder whether the idea of a “voluntary tax” isn’t such a bad one.

Obviously the reason we don’t like paying taxes is that it leaves us less to manage on when we pay our bills, but put the word “tax” in the title of a blog, and a lot of people will press the link, because we get “tax”. We understand the link between the amount we pay in tax and the level of public service we get.

When I pay 20% VAT on my burger, I accept that that is an amount that will go towards mending the roads that the burger van will drive to deliver tomorrow’s burger. There is a performance target that I expect for my money and that is to have my burger delivered on time (make up your personal targets in your own time).

With pensions it’s a little different

But with pensions it is a little different. We sort of know that our national insurance is buying us rights to benefits if something goes wrong and an income in later life which should keep us off the streets. We kind of know – if we’re in a defined benefit scheme that our pension deduction buys us a share of our final or average salary at some date in the future.

Where things come apart is when we mix up saving into a pension pot with a tax, because pension pots are – as Tristan says – just a kind of very inaccessible bank account and the amount in that account is determined not by some unseen actuary in the sky, but by how you did.

This is why Tristan goes off on one.

Since pension freedoms came in, DC can pretty much act like an ISA, except with different tax treatment, once you are age 55.

You can access as much or as little as you want, as an income or as a lump sum. It is literally your money, in a segregated investment account. While very few people would ever do so or would be advised to do so, you could place all that money into cash at age 55 and it would almost act like a bank account.

So again, it is deeply misleading to the point of inaccurate to claim that pension contributions never reach your bank account. In the case of DC it is almost a bank account in the first place!

Now let’s be clear about this, people generally do see a payslip deduction as a “tax” , Paul Johnson who wrote the paragraph that offended Tristan is right about that.

People do get to spend their pension savings – either tax-free or after tax, and they buy real things.

People get workplace pensions as a voluntary tax-grab and they kind of know that that money comes back to them.

What they don’t know, and this is where the pensions industry makes its money, is what happens in the middle.

Paul Lewis’ wealth or pension tax

Paul Lewis talks about pension taxation not in terms of what the Government takes (it takes very little of the money as it grows) but in terms of the taxes the private sector take on your money.

This kind of pension tax is levied through very small charges which add up to an amount that can erode your pension “bank balance” by up to a third. You might think it impossible that a 1% pa charge on your savings can lead to a pension tax on your final balance of 30% but that is what the maths says and the maths doesn’t lie.

But simply looking at the cost of pension pot management in terms of cost is stupid, all that tax on your savings pays for something, just as VAT and national insurance and income tax pay for something.

They pay for the value you get out of all this pension saving.

The value you get from pension saving is a reward for putting the money away for a long time and not touching. It’s a reward for patience and it’s given you by the people who benefit from your money. In economics terms it’s what you get from patient capital.

We have a right to know what this reward is and whether the people who have managed our pot have given our fair shares. We have a right to know how our savings have done, and if we want to use the phrase Tristan hates, we have a right to know how our pension tax has done.

But we don’t get the right to know how our savings have done

While pension providers have become very expert in taking money off us via payroll taxes, and are increasingly good at giving back to us using pension freedoms, what happens in the middle remains a mystery.

We don’t know what happens to our money and we don’t know how our savings are rewarded , we don’t even know how much we are paying third parties to look after our money.

Which is shocking!

Instead we get a whole lot of paper we don’t read with graphs and tables that describe what has happened to funds and strategies, none of which is directly applicable to us.

We simply don’t get a statement on how our money had done and certainly not a meaningful statement on how we’ve done compared to everyone else.

When I look at that chart (scroll up) at the top of this blog, I see that about 35% of my money is paid to the Government to look after me. Reading that, I’m saying – so what.

I want to know what that 35% means compared to other countries, other Government tax-grabs. Fortunately, those numbers are to hand

Which makes me feel a little more comfortable, so long as I am an average citizen. Then I ask myself what being an average citizen mean and I discover that actually the average person on £28,000 a year is doing very well against the average person abroad but that the rich person is doing about average

I hope that like me, you find these charts compelling. They would be even more compelling if I could put in my and my partner’s income and compare ourselves individually.

But we recognise that working out the value we get from our tax is a lot harder than working out the tax we pay. So economists and tax-payers call it a day about now. Because we know that we will never quite know whether we are getting individual value for money and are prepared to accept we are part of a collective set up.

Why DC is different

But back to the bank account and Tristan. Tristan is fundamentally right. Taxing people to build up a private pension pot is just a way of paying people later and is quite different from paying into one big pot from which Defined Benefit pensions are paid out.

DC is different because we get to see the fruits of our savings as a bank account as we go along and as a spendable bank account from aged 55.

Whereas we can’t really get granular about how our taxes have done and demand “hypothecation” of our taxes paid, we can get super-granular about this pension tax into our DC pot.

We can and should be able to see where our money is going, what it did (good and ill) and what reward we got for waiting for it to come back to us. We should also be able to find out how much of our money was paid to the people who looked after it for us.

We should not have this information passed to us in an abstract way – as “performance”, that is the old lazy way of governance – founded in DB reporting. We should instead have this information given to us as a score telling us -as Experian tells us- how we’re doing relative to everyone else.

Which is what AgeWage is doing, and is why AgeWage is going to be so important to us in the years ahead.

Note

My word press functionality isn’t working properly this morning  – forgive the unusual headers and other formatting anomalies

A parliament united by what it doesn’t want

Boris Johnson has finally admitted he has abandoned his “do or die” on October 31st Brexit policy, after MPs voted for the Benn Act to secure an extension to the Article 50 process from the EU and avoid a disastrous No Deal.

The Lib Dems and SNP  have tried to pass a People’s Vote in this Parliament, even as recently as last week when Labour refused to support the Liberal amendment to the Queen’s Speech.

But with Parliament gridlocked, and with Conservative MPs, a substantial minority of Labour MPs, and a handful of independent Conservatives currently blocking a People’s Vote as a means of stopping Brexit in this parliament, a General Election seems  the only other alternative route.

The Lib Dems, Conservatives, and SNP only seem united in  waning to sort Brexit by electing a new parliament where  a majority  can emerge to revoke article 50 , hold a People’s Vote or finally leave.

So it looks likely that everyone will agree to hold an election, even Labour who have announced they’d agree to a 12th December date.

Politicians have found some unity in recognising that dysfunctionality cannot persist forever.

What Europe wants

To date , most of us have assumed that what Europe wants is bad for Britain. The idea that what Europe wants is what is best for Britain and Europe is considered naive. Consequently, negotiations with Europe have been confrontational.

Europe clearly doesn’t want Britain to leave, in fact it still clings to a hope that Britain might stay following either a referendum or shake up in Government.

The French prime minister is the only slight dissenting voice in the European consensus. He clearly wants to move on and has rather recklessly contemplated a “no deal” to that end.

The extension of the deadline has been modified to allow us to get out earlier than the end of January, but no one seems to think this likely.

I’m not hearing many British people saying this, but Europe’s united approach and consistent wish to engage in a negotiated solution is in sharp approach to disunited Britain.

Will people change their minds?

The hope is that by rolling the dice with a general election, the British people will create a decisive government where a majority view can be created.

But this is an extremely odd way of doing things. The British electoral system can create massive swings based on the votes of a few voters.

A second referendum would at least test the views of the people on the central matter in hand – the reason that people want a general election.

But there is no certainty that any Government would be able to find a consensus to implement leave if the second referendum confirmed the first. It would of course be easier to remain – which is what Europe wants us to do.

The risk of remaining is the alienation it would bring of large parts of the electorate that voted leave not on intellectual but on emotional grounds.

While I think it likely that you could change the minds of the small number of leave voters who saw it as good for Britain in a cerebral way, the vast majority of voters , take big decisions which they cannot get their heads round, on an emotional basis.

I don’t think that enough people will reason for remain to counter those people who believe in Brexit.

This cartoon from four years ago is horribly prescient.

We are stuck and that is bad

Where we are right now is “stuck”. We have just binned a hundred million campaign telling us to prepare for Thursday – 31st October. Those who did will now have to prepare for something else, though we don’t know what.

We are united in not wanting to be in this place, but we are in this place and the best we can do is to work our way out of the hole we have dug ourselves.

Conventional wisdom says that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging.

We are now so exhausted by all this  that we have lost all perspective on the matter in hand. I really think the best thing for our country would be to take a breather, a moratorium and ask for a further extension, perhaps for a year so that whatever we do, we do with a degree of national unity.

Because I sense that the decisions that will be taken in this current malignant atmosphere will be decisions that will not command any consensus. The purpose of the original referendum has been to clear things up, in fact it’s made things a lot worse. I can see no point in repeating the referendum, changing Government or crashing out of Europe in the current climate.

Time may be the healer yet

As we used to do at school, when there was a fight, we should all leave the playground, go back to class and sort this matter out when heads are cleared.

Perhaps the most difficult decision is the best decision . In this case, the most difficult decision is to put the decision off a year. That’s what I’d do if I had a way of doing it.

Leyton Orient v Yeovil Town 191215

Yesterday’s was the first Saturday afternoon I’ve spent at home since March. I had thought to go to Haringey to watch Yeovil against Haringey in the preliminary round of the FA Cup but thought against it as my son is away at College and my partner has toothache and could do with my company.

We are an apolitical household, my partner and I have radically different views on Brexit and so while we were aware of developments, I did not go marching.

Instead, we watched the racing and I watched the twitter feed. After a poor first half we got a penalty and I awaited with impatience the result. After a lengthy delay, we scored. It was to be the last good news I was to hear about that game.

Shortly afterwards, the club feed gave the first bad news

64| I cannot believe I’m tweeting this, but Haringey Borough are walking off the pitch.

🧤 1-0 🔰 #YTFC

— Yeovil Town FC (@YTFC) October 19, 2019

The detail came from following the #YTFC. Two bottles had been thrown onto the pitch, the goal keeper had been spat at, obscenities had been thrown and there was talk of rascist chants directed at the Borough goalkeeper.

After a delay, the match was announced to be abandoned and the players came back on the pitch

The players of both sides return to the pitch as a show of solidarity. #YTFC pic.twitter.com/yAlV44MYrf

— Yeovil Town FC (@YTFC) October 19, 2019

Later that evening the Borough manager made a statement explaining why he took his players off the pitch.

Tom Loizou, manager @HaringeyBoroFC – class act and a true leader acting with compassion, courage and integrity. Now for the FA to do the right thing #kickitout #NoToRacism #YTFC https://t.co/2jRFHfXvw1

— AmyJebreel 🌈 (@AmyJebreel) October 19, 2019

Talking to Radio 5 he said not just the goalkeeper but his number 6 were subject to racial abuse and that the team were in no state to play the rest of the game.

Yeovil Town issued a club statement.  The Avon and Somerset police have called for video evidence.

The impact on Yeovil supporters has been shock and deep shame that the traditions of a family club with fans who pride themselves on their behaviour will be tarnished by this.

Last week, immediately after a home match, we’d had another horrible shock when we learned that one of our great fans, Martin Baker, had been found dead in his flat, we now know he died of a massive heart attack. Martin had run the unofficial club news site “Ciderspace”.  Martin grew up in Shaftesbury and knew my family well, but he knew everyone well – this match had been dedicated to him and the non league football paper had written this tribute to Martin. 

What today should have been about…. #ytfc 🦡 https://t.co/yujtqjzLji

— David Coates (@coatesieboy) October 19, 2019

Like all Yeovil fans I am upset for the club , players and true fans – of whom Martin was as true as any. Yeovil is a small community. It is not a greatly loved place, it has many problems – high teenage pregnancies , low levels of ethnic diversity and average incomes well below the national average. The football club had been a great source of pride for generations. In 2013 it had been promoted to the Championship and the following season Leicester, Burnley and other top flight clubs visited Huish Park to play league fixtures.

Yeovil have since fallen into National League Division one. Yeovil Fans have stuck by the club and this season have seen an upturn in fortunes under a new manager and with new owners. We have a brilliant woman’s team and a growing youth set-up.

Recent problems

Despite this resurgence, Yeovil has been in the news for the wrong reasons lately. A few weeks ago in what was jokingly called “Ball-boy gate”, one of the ball-boys got sent off by the ref in a home game for wasting time. The club marched all the ball boys off in solidarity and the ref was left to get the ball out of the stands himself – later in the game.

This seemed like innocent fun at the time but there were already more sinister tones. Though I didn’t hear it – being on the other side of the ground, Bromley fans suggested that some of our fans were less than sympathetic when the Bromley goalkeeper got injured. There were further rumours of bad behaviour at an away game at Hartlepool and now this.

I feel responsible for our club , though I don’t go to many matches. I suspect that all the more loyal fans feel responsible for the behaviour of their fellow fans. We all feel guilty that this bad thing has been visited on Haringey Borough by us. Indeed our most famous fan, Pat Custard, singled out Haringey Borough for its hospitality, this was their day – more than ours, they are in a lower league and this was their big game.

I was pleased to see our manager’s arms around Borough’s goalkeeper and the two teams mixing without rancour after the incidents.

Yeovil Town apologises and I put my apology to what has happened. And of course what has been alleged to have happened has national resonance as it occurred in the same week as our national team got abuse in Bulgaria.

Our fans will now be put in special measures. When we go to any game, we will  be barracked by opposition fans for what happened yesterday. We will not be able to wear our scarves and shirts with the pride we once did. Obviously we all want the hooligans to be banged to rights but we shouldn’t isolate them as the sole problem. In as much as we  let this happen  no-one can claim to be blameless.

And our own fans have made it very clear they have every sympathy for the Haringey players

Penalty and third bottle being thrown on the pitch by a #ytfc “fan”. @HaringeyBoroFC understandably left the pitch at this point. pic.twitter.com/n4xbgLwUWp

— Mark Stevenson (@mxsytfc) October 19, 2019

But we need to see balance in reporting and await the results of the various inquiries, before judgement on the club is delivered. I found this article provided that balance at this early stage.

A number of accusations have been levied at #YTFC fans over the last 24 hours. Here’s @s_dalbiac on why these claims need to be properly looked at before the club is dragged any further through the mud https://t.co/oXrBMumYNg

— Somerset Live Sport (@SomLiveSport) October 20, 2019

I understand that several of our fans met with their Borough counterparts after the game and that all was well between them

And this personally is what it’s all about… we all have banter during a game we all give the other team shit but throwing objects isn’t good enough… nice to have a chat with some @HaringeyBoroFC fans after the abandoned game who now know all @YTFC fans aren’t idiots! #YTFC pic.twitter.com/NaRVzeiv7z

— Sam Watts (@Watts18Sam) October 19, 2019

Our team itself is very diverse, and players want to come to Yeovil because we have a reputation for treating people as people. Here’s the forward line of our squad.

The behaviour of the few has dishonoured  the memory of Martin and the heritage of the club which will now be remembered for the wrong things. Many will argue that this is a massive over-reaction resulting from social media, whatever the findings of the police inquiry the damage has been done.

Just like pension scamming, a few rotten apples pollute  the whole barrel. There is no way that Yeovil can undo what is done – if found guilty of hate crimes and of bottle throwing, the  culprits  must be banned and we all must bear their shame.

If we are found complicit in racism , Yeovil should voluntarily resign from the FA Cup  and we should adopt Haringey Borough as our team for the rest of their time in the tournament. But I say “if” as it’s still far from clear what actually did occur.

We can’t keep hate-chanting; even calling the keeper a fat bastard (which it seems we were doing) isn’t funny – it’s rubbish behaviour.  Any kind of bottle throwing and spitting is football violence. Things will not get better until we stop thinking this stuff – even done by others – is funny.

I have stood in Thatchers when  gypsy chants have been sung, I’ve hear the Adams Family song, the abuse of northern fans, even the chants against Weymouth. I’ve heard homophobia on our terraces in Brighton away matches . All this seemed innocent fun at the time – it doesn’t now.

Appendix; post of Dave Coates on the @RedmenTV twitter feed

Excuse the long post, but did anyone see the tweet from TheRedMenTV about our current situation? If not, take a look at my retweet from tonight (Tuesday).

Basically, the snippet of a wider debate they posted calls for us to be chucked out of the FA Cup.

Below a message I sent them in response….

Good evening,

I just viewed your recent @TheRedmenTV Twitter post where your host calls for Yeovil Town to be kicked out of the FA Cup following the allegations of racism made against a supporter at Saturday’s FA Cup tie at Haringey Borough.

I will begin by saying I recognise these snippets posted on social media are there to get a reaction from people and make people watching the full video; I did and I recognise there was a bit of debate about the rights and wrongs of this what was being proposed.

However, as a Yeovil Town supporter who attended the match on Saturday I want to tell you about my experience before, during and after the incident and what comments like your ‘snippet’ have contributed to.

Having left my home in Lancashire at 7.15am on Saturday to get to Haringey, I was one of the first to arrive at the ground and visited the club bar where I was actually greeted by the Haringey chairman.

He expressed his hope that Yeovil would bring more supporters to give his club a well-deserved pay day, we spoke, wished each other well and my conversations and those of other Yeovil fans with staff and supporters of Haringey was nothing but friendly and good spirited.

The match itself was fairly uneventful until the 63rd minute when a penalty was awarded in Yeovil Town’s favour and there was, what appeared from where I was standing, to be an exchange of words with Haringey keeper, Valery Douglas Pajetat.

The keeper squirted water towards fans behind the goal and the situation quickly got out of hand, a plastic bottle was thrown on to the pitch and it quickly became apparent things had escalated.

At this point, both myself and more than 20 Yeovil fans around me immediately confronted our own ‘fans’ calling for whoever had thrown the bottle (this was as much as we knew at this point) to be ejected from the ground and urging stewards to act to do this.

The situation appeared to settle and the keeper faced the penalty which was scored, at which point another bottle was thrown on the pitch, and further words were exchanged which led to the Haringey team walking off, followed soon after by the players of Yeovil Town.

By the time the penalty was scored, there were stewards wearing body cameras dealing with the perpetrators involved in the verbal exchanges, and would have picked up anything said at this time – useful evidence in an investigation, I would imagine.

You have obviously read the headlines since then, the vast majority of which has acted as judge, jury and executioner before either a police or FA investigation had begun (let alone been concluded) and judged Yeovil Town supporters as ‘racist’.

My evidence of this? Supporters being abused as they left the ground, including insults being hurled at buses filled with people who applauded the announcement that the game would not continue, and subsequently hearing from countless fellow supporters that they have received messages and had comments about their club’s ‘racist supporters’ over the weekend and during the week that followed.

I experienced this myself from people and it all came before any type of investigation had been completed.

I now know people who have supported Yeovil Town for generations who are afraid to attend future matches for fear of being the subject of further abuse for being ‘racist fans’ and this has been driven by a rush to judgement of so many parts of the media which led to commentary like that you chose to post.

I now have genuine concerns my friends could be targeted for retribution when attending the re-arranged fixture next Tuesday night. How can it be right that people are made to feel like that? If Yeovil supporters are abused, what role will posts like yours have played in this?

You will have read that two people have been arrested on the allegations of racially aggravated common assault and (as I send this message) no charges have been made public against them; and yet you published a statement which has reached a judgement already.

If these people are found guilty of the allegations against them on the basis of evidence, you will not find a single Yeovil Town supporter who will disagree that they should receive bans and criminal charges brought against them.

But what about the stain on the name of thousands of other innocent people who did nothing more than support the same team as them? What about the reputation of a club with no history of any type of crowd trouble, least of all racist behaviour? I am afraid that statements like that you have made have left both of these things tarnished beyond repair.

If ever there was a supporter of a football club who understood the concept of trial by media and the need to look beyond the headlines, I would have thought it would be Liverpool.

Because one idiot threw someone in a fountain in Barcelona, are all Liverpool fans in agreement this type of behaviour is acceptable? Of course not, it is one idiot. The response of Yeovil supporters at the game and subsequently makes me quite sure there are none amongst us who believe racism has any place in our society, let alone football.

If there was a supporter of a football club who understood the idea of legal process and the concept of innocent until proven guilty, I would have thought it would have been Liverpool.

For this reason, I felt compelled to contact you to convey my deep disappointment at how you, like so many other parts of the media, have tarnished the good name of a club with no history of this type of behaviour, contributed to a situation where people feel afraid to attend a football match, and all before an investigation has run its course.

I hope you take this message in the spirit it is intended, from one football lover to another.