18 January 2009

Clubs find more excuses for giving less

| johnboy
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The Canberra Times brings word from the club sector which is threatening they might have to stop buying so many plasma screen TVs for themselves, and bribing our political parties, and calling it community contributions.

Nah I’m joking. The investment in their own amenity and no doubt the political “donations” will continue, but other stuff is getting the axe, particularly noted is a $50,000 grant from the Tradies to the National Folk Festival.

Economic uncertainty and smoking bans are being fingered.

Personally the I reckon the Tradies ripping out all its character and replacing it with plastic might be to blame in that particular case.

If our political parties weren’t beholden to these aggregating behemoths it would be nice to see a real inquiry and review into the original rationale for letting licensed clubs have poker machine licences and whether these city-wide businesses still serve those purposes.

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All the old booths were at least something different.

Sure the Tram cartriages were fun and the bike museum and stuff was cool. But charm? Atmosphere?

Are we talking about the same Tradies?

The one where there is the constant barrage of bells and whistles from poker machines 24-7?

If that’s your idea of atmosphere then what do you do to chill out? Sit too close to the TV while someone throws change into buckets suspended from your ears???

I blame the schnitzels changing for the Folk Festival missing out on it’s grant. That and the cheap booze is the best and probably only good thing about the tradies.

They even sold up most of their holiday accomodation, where did that money go?

chrispy said :

I was living in SA when the State government removed the ban on pokies in pubs and clubs. My local pub which was a hideous scary shithole changed to a nice clean friendly place with good meals that you can now take your family too. My local sports club decided against getting pokies and it made very little difference to their finances. Their budget for uniforms and ground maintenance was always tight. I suppose my point is that pokies can do some good.

You’re not allowed to say that Chrispy.

haha..yes the canberra casino dress standards are a bit slack…..however i have been inside the cairns casino wearing a singlet shorts and thongs…..during the day of course…must have a tshirt on at nighttime….hahaha

I was living in SA when the State government removed the ban on pokies in pubs and clubs. My local pub which was a hideous scary shithole changed to a nice clean friendly place with good meals that you can now take your family too. My local sports club decided against getting pokies and it made very little difference to their finances. Their budget for uniforms and ground maintenance was always tight. I suppose my point is that pokies can do some good.

The Tradies (read CMFU) were given a land grant by their Labor stooges to build 20 story apartment buildings in Woden that they will make a tidy profit on.

Don’t bleeding hear me guys.

Smoking might be one reason, the economy another, but in the case of the Dickson Tradies the decision to axe pretty much all member benefits (holiday homes, bingo, big raffles and so on), spend a fortune on turning it into more of a casiono than it already was, and chopping and changing the food service (and the big price hikes that followed) seems to have put members offside. Go to the Ainsle footy club if you want to find where the old Tradies members are these days.

Everybody seems to be giving less at the moment, whether groups or individuals. I would think that losing $50,000 would be quite a blow to the National Folk Festival though. I wonder how it’s likely to affect the operations of the festival this year.

Perhaps some sort of change to the way pokie funds are distributed, so that clubs with no pokies get a bigger share of the money then the clubs with pokies. Think about it.

Tradies was much nicer before they re-furbed all the atmos out of it – bring back the penny farthing.

Growling Ferret3:48 pm 18 Jan 09

JB

Its not just the pokie palaces that are struggling – smaller community clubs are in trouble.
I would have no sadness if the Govt Legislated mini casino’s full of pokies struggle, but the smaller sporting clubs and community clubs are also going to the wall…

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