louisg wrote: Ok Felix...so if a 5 percent partner in a horse brings racing into disrepute and then resigns from the partnership and hands in his colours, exits racing.......you would suspend the rest, the remaining 95 percent of the partners, with no evidence that they have done anything wrong but just in case they might have...?
Ummmm.... LOL !!!
This is not an argument for or against. Just an anecdote from an incident I was peripherally involved in a few years ago. Perhaps it might help put things into perspective.
An owner in my neck of the woods got into financial trouble. He owned shares in various horses and at the time, our authorities saw fit to suspend the horses that he owned shares in, including a promising young colt which the remaining partners - all in good standing - wanted to run in a minor feature. The colt was barred from running and the remaining partners were prejudiced because the authorities were hell bent on punishing this particular person (who, to the best of my knowledge never dragged racing into the tabloids, 6 o'clock news or stirred the ire of local workers' unions to the point of threatening to disrupt a major racing event). At the time, the authorities even went as far as barring the transport companies from moving this person's horses and further threatened another trainer with cancellation of his stable lease for the great crime of temporarily housing this individual's horses while he tried to make a plan for them.
If you put the two incidents side by side, they look a little out of whack. This is only one incident. There are many more examples.
Rightly or wrongly (and it's fair to say that I am not in full possession of the facts in either of these cases), disparities like this unfortunately come across as one set of rules for some people and a different set for others. It's not good for the regulator and it's not good for the sport.
It's less a question of the personalities involved, and more a question of whether our rules and regulator, who are supposedly there to ensure that everyone gets treated fairly and equitably, are doing their job correctly.
There is no perfect system and of course the NHA have an unenviable job, but at the same time, the system is designed to be adaptable (as we see with rules being changed or brand new rules being invented on a weekly basis). Unfortunately, it currently seems that the system is only adaptable from one direction.
A lot of the rules seem to be implemented without due input from the folks on the ground - the very people they affect and are supposed to protect. I believe there should be more dialogue. Despite the statements made in the latest NHA newsletter, I think I can safely say that the majority of people find it very difficult to be heard by the NHA and that we still see far too much playing of the man, rather than the ball.
So we end up airing our views elsewhere - such as here - because there simply isn't any other workable platform (yes, I know there is an annual AGM, but who can wait for a once a year opportunity to air an opinion, which will then only be minuted in 12 months' time?)
If the NHA are happy to a) invent and implement rules, as well as fining and punishing people for the most insignificant infractions, they ought to be amenable to commentary and feedback from the people they regulate and the same ought to be applicable to them. Until such time as that happens, we'll keep having this kind of discussion in the vain hope that the pressure of public opinion might cause a re-think as nothing else seems to have been effective so far.
And I suspect that is the real point OTA is trying to make.
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