A long flight. Breakfast in “The Curious Rabbit” just off the main street. Looking forward to a hike along a mountain trail later and a splash in a thermal pool. And then I will check out the stables and start making some entries around the country tracks…
Fooled you….!!!
I am not actually in Wagga Wagga. Yet….?!
“Not as bad as we feared” seems to be the refrain from many commentators and analysts. But “not as bad” is hardly good, and still has plenty of “bad’ about it…
In our racing bubble – “Racing spared from tax rises but bookmakers hit for more than £1bn”.
I guess we will need to let the dust settle on that and see how the bookmakers react. Their sponsorship and advertising budgets are sure to be slashed, and bonus offers to punters will be thin on the ground. And you don’t need to be Einstein or Aristotle to find a Black Market bookie who will swamp you with lucrative incentives – and pay not one bean to the levy from their profits…
There is obviously good news in the fact that feared “harmonisation” of gambling taxes failed to materialise – but as one headline stated yesterday, “we are still in a war zone….”
This is not some pivotal “milk and honey” moment that is going to see our racecourses drenched in pots of golden prize money. It is a relief. But the bigger picture remains fragile, flawed and fraught. Credit to those who lobbied hard on our sport’s behalf – but one small battle wins no wars…
Let’s see. Let the dust settle. Which will take a little longer than it took for Ashes to ashes…
Outside of racing’s bubble, the rural community, and farmers in particular, continue to be treated with disdain. A lot of scared folk out there toiling the land this morning, wondering how on earth multi generational responsibility and stewardship can be so brutally treated. Flawed, wrong, sad and bad – and horribly misplaced and vindictive….
And breathe…
Every single generation will have a moment when they feel that their backs are hard against the wall. And sometimes it is incredibly hard to see a way – or to find that way…
When the going gets tough…..
It can be pretty tough…
Chelmsford and “light relief” are words rarely found in the same sentence. CALAFRIO will head there later in search of the latter, and back to back wins. An unkind draw and a large field stand in her way…
