"Tell us why it is too complicated to just pay off Archway... Don't just tell us it is you silly cunt"
I find this particularly perplexing. The club says in the minutes that it's not a case of just paying them off. Well, last month the owning Josif family said this....
"
It's getting rather nasty now. Some fans have taken it on themselves to phone us up and abuse us, and abuse our staff.
Some of the behaviour of fanatical Spurs fans towards us is animalistic, when we're just exercising our rights.
It's irrelevant whether we're Spurs fans or not now. This is our business, and it's where we make our money. Everybody keeps going on about whether we're Spurs fans or Woolwich fans.
We've got nothing against the football team.
This business is our family's future.
People have been threatening us, we've had bomb threats, we've had people saying they'll come and get us at night. We've had people calling us greedy, and saying they hope my children are visiting food banks and starving.
The police are dealing with it. Nobody has yet come and said it to my face but it's a matter of time.
Someone has threatened to burn down our building. If you get a few idiots who want to be heroes - why should we have to go through that? My Dad has 14 grandchildren.
We're a big family and we live off the company. When people threaten our family, it's not nice."
Now, reading that you'd think that all they'd need was enough money to relocate their business, staff and facilities and there would be no problem.
Their grounds for challenging the CPO in court are
"
1. The authorisation of the CPO granted is not empowered to be granted under the relevant legislation, ie, that a decision has been reached that is ultra-vires, totally “irrational”, the inspector or minister has refused or neglected to take into account information they ought to have taken into account or, conversely, taken into account information they ought not to have taken into account.
2. Relevant requirements or regulations under the appropriate legislation have not been complied with and substantial prejudice has been caused."
In layman's terms, they say that the Secretary of State didn't have legal authority to make the CPO. Now, there is an advantage to delay, namely that a CPO expires after three years (and the Harigay Council one is already 29 months old). So what the club says about delay tactics does make sense. However the reference to the inspector's comments don't relate to the Archway business, but rather to area regeneration using public funds, so there is still no indication of what the Archway objection truly is and whether or not it could be rectified with a big enough offer. Maybe the Josif family just don't want to move because they have always had their family business and the principle is more important to them that what the claim in their statement, and therefore they will use any tactic to frustrate things. But then I read one particular article that claims this on behalf of the family....
"Archway is demanding a better deal involving a land-swap so that the business can continue to grow."
So, what do we believe? Is Levy treating this like a transfer deal? Why can't the Trust ask what the non-financial objections to the CPO are? Sounds to me that Levy could well be bullshitting on this and just isn't willing to consider big demands.
