Fred Done's £66 million snub to owners came as no surprise

Done cancelled the Tote’s sponsorship of the members of the Racehorse Owners Association’s colours, which is a significant financial snub.

Without sponsorship, the owners’ ability to reclaim approximately £66 million of VAT a year on the cost of having horses in training is jeopardised under a deal agreed with HM Customs and Excise.

News came on Friday that the ROA has taken over the sponsorship, which is laudable but does not alter the fact that Done’s hostile gesture makes a mockery of the empty words he simpered into the ears of Government’s ministers whilst assuring them of his eagerness to work with racing.

In fairness to Done, he isn’t the only bookmaker trashing the financial return to racing. When Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt adjudicated on the 50th Levy Scheme last year, he anticipated that the amount it would yield to racing would be £70 million. The bad news is that when that scheme comes to fruition at the end of next March, the actual return may be as low as £55  million. A disastrous shortfall.

So what thoughts will go through Hunt’s mind when, as sure as eggs are eggs, the 51st Levy Scheme falls without agreement on his desk in November?

It will be glaringly obvious to him that bookmakers moving their businesses offshore have made a mockery of his projection last year, for two reasons. First, and most obvious, if gaming operators are based in Gibraltar, they’re not bound to pay Levy in the United Kingdom. Second, and much more important, bookmakers avoiding the 10.75% Levy payments by being offshore can use that money in marketing campaigns to suck in more customers. Those campaigns involve offering punters increasingly attractive terms such as 'Bet with us, and if the favourite wins we’ll give you your money back’.

Whilst those offers are great for punters, they also squeeze the margins of all bookmakers to the point that the Levy, currently based on profits, increasingly contracts.

Hunt, however, will also be mindful that the bookmakers will be paying racecourses more money for the picture rights of races than they have in the past – the Arena Leisure courses alone will pick up an additional £10  million next year. But he needs to bear in mind that the Levy losses far outweigh the picture right gains.

His conclusion, I am sure, will be to do very little and continue to encourage John Penrose, the Gambling Minister, to consign the current Levy system to history as soon as possible. In Westminster that means the spring of 2013 if one has a fair wind and not too many Liberal Democrats getting in the way.

Quite how many horses there will be in training by then is another matter. Forty per cent of races fail to attract the optimum eight runners needed to generate attractive each-way betting and the rate of decrease in the number of horses racing is estimated to double in 2012.

In 2007 the foal crop in Great Britain and Ireland was roughly 18,500. This year that will fall to around 11,300. Of course, horses can be imported, but the economic sense of doing so has disappeared out of the window. There is also the issue of who will be able to pick up the bill for training these horses, let alone buying them, given the stagnation of the economy.

In 2012 the cost of keeping the racehorse population in action will come to around £330 million a year. That figure is set to rise sharply given the upward pressure on the price of labour, diesel and forage.

It is this rising cost base that will cause the number of horses in training to collapse further – unless more of that cost can be recouped from a fair return from betting via a commercial deal.

Environmentalist Leopold deserves continued study

Our state has long been home to many people who treasure nature in all its vast and varying forms. People traveled to this state from far-away homes to establish new lives, made possible by the bounty that the rich waters and soil yielded.

Those who understood and appreciated what our resources provide were sometimes moved to do what they could to protect or conserve them. Manitowoc County has certainly has had its share of conservation legends, some of whom helped preserve Point Beach, Collins Marsh, the Rahr Forest and Woodland Dunes.

In particular, two people from Wisconsin are often held in highest esteem among conservationists, and both had connections with the University of Wisconsin as well. The first is John Muir, who came with his family from Scotland at a young age to the central part of the state to farm. He later attended UW just a few years after its founding, then left to embark on remarkable journeys of discovery of nature, journeys which eventually led him West where he was an important spokesman for conservation and later founded the Sierra Club and helped establish our national parks.

The second was Aldo Leopold, who was born in Iowa and who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and in the 1930s the Forest Products Laboratory, a position that brought him to Madison.

After a few years he began a teaching career at the University of Wisconsin, and he is considered to be one of the originators of modern wildlife management methods. Leopold remained in Madison for the rest of his life, contributing much to our knowledge of wildlife and helping to found the Wilderness Society.

While there, he purchased an old, bankrupt farm near Baraboo, renovated its chicken coop as a family cabin, and visited on weekends to work to restore its land, observe and record its phenology (seasonal natural events), and to write about nature. As he thought about nature and peoples' impact on it, he developed what he called a land ethic — a philosophy, or morality, relating to how we have come to use or abuse natural systems. A number of his writings were gathered and published as "A Sand County Almanac."