The rag-bag of nonentities, pygmies, incompetents and narcissists who constitute the Christchurch City Council voted 13 to 3 for the oft-discussed stadium project to proceed, although why it has a silly name of “tea trolley” or “tea cart” (or something like that) is beyond me. As a simple, unworldly country boy, I often find such city slicker-ism unfathomable.
The price tag for the tea trolley stadium is $850 million. That’s the $700 million allocated, and the rest. All contractors involved in constructing such projects, those funded by central or local government, know the score – add 25 per cent to the cost and government will end up paying (if you know what I mean). A nice wee earner.
Instead of say, using the exact same amount of money (probably less!) and building 1,500 new houses and selling them for a small profit to first-home buying residents who meet certain requirements (decent, respectable folk of sober habits) to get them on the property ladder – then rinse and repeat – the funds will be used to build a stadium of theoretical requirements and dubious value. Am I the only outside, casual observer who is slightly uneasy about all of this?
William Gladstone, the great British prime minister, was a very strange man: one of his oddities was to cut down trees, an activity he engaged in until a very old man. Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Winston) once made the amusing observation “…the forest laments in order that Mr Gladstone may perspire”, as yet another tree that may well have stood for hundreds of years hit the deck. This quotation popped into my head whilst watching TV3 news coverage of the council debate and vote on tea trolley stadium; as I say, it left me feeling all a bit uneasy. Ratepayers in Christchurch – and by default NZ taxpayers in general who don’t realise they actually guarantee such loans – will be on the hook for a loan of several hundred million dollars in order that Lianne Dalziel may depart politics after 32 years with an achievement. Well, a sort of an achievement.
To put things into some sort of perspective for you, when a stadium has an event taking place (let’s say a pop star undertaking a concert) the general rule of thumb is 50/50 of the ticket price; the concert promoter gets half the ticket proceeds, the stadium gets half. The stadium’s half is used to cover the overhead for the night – i.e. all costs except paying the pop star’s appearance fee are met by the stadium, not the concert promoter as most people would assume. What is left over after meeting overheads is the profit for the stadium. In the case of the tea trolley stadium the surplus will be sucked up by interest payments on the huge loans undertaken to construct the stadium. But wait – there’s more. The stadium would require two events, sold out, at a $50 ticket price, every single week in order to meet the likely interest payments on the debt. Assuming interest rates don’t skyrocket. In which case it would be three sold out events per week indefinitely.
Do you see what I am getting at here, dear reader? (Is your tummy feeling a bit queasy yet?) There was more of a sound business case behind the Edsel car!