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Mike Ashley, Bread Rolls and Lost Newcastle Jobs

10 years ago
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A strange headline popped up on my news feed, it was regarding a bakery creating thirty new jobs.

What had this to do with the alerts I have set up for Newcastle United related stories?

The story related to Clayton Park Bakery based at Huncoat in Lancashire who have opened a new factory as the firm continues to grow.

Reading down the story it turns out that this Lancashire firm has just won the contract to supply Newcastle United and this is part of the impetus for them to create more jobs…in Lancashire.

Under Mike Ashley the club have outsourced all kinds of services and sadly United getting their bread rolls from a few hours drive away means yet another person or two is employed elsewhere, rather than Tyneside.

While sadly the north east isn’t the manufacturing heartland of the UK in the present day, I have heard rumours that we do still have the odd baker up here capable of knocking up a stottie or two.

Some of you may say ‘Yawn yawn, just another chance to knock Mike Ashley’. Well I think I have every right to knock him for this. Before somebody states the obvious, no I don’t think Mike Ashley deals directly with the minutiae decision of picking where he gets the club’s bakery products from. However, he owns the club and all decisions filter down from the overall strategy of how the club operates, so the reality is that he could run the club on the basis of helping the local community as much as he possibly could…but he doesn’t.

Just like every other north east institution, whether it is the councils, universities, other businesses, or indeed our very own football club, I think they all do have a massive duty of care to wherever possible help create and sustain jobs in our region.

Newcastle United is a club that should be at the heart of the community and maybe one or two of you will be one step ahead with my punchline.

When it comes to trying to keep a flow of money circulating around the north east rather than leaking elsewhere, it obviously works both ways. So it isn’t a major leap of thinking that every extra person who is in a decent job in the north east is one extra person having money in their pockets to potentially buy match tickets, replica shirts, programmes, burgers/hot dogs wrapped in bread rolls….

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