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Diary - Thursday 24 July 2008

24 July 2008

GTFC sponsor Young's has been sold in a £1.1bn deal which sees the local seafood firm fall into the hands of Lion Capital - a company belonging to the notorious private equity sector. Given the track record of private equity firms in massive redundancy programmes following their takeovers, it is perhaps surprising to see so renowned a campaigning and caring newspaper as the Grimsby Telegraph give the story only cursory treatment and abdicate its responsibility to provide a balancing quote to the positive spin it dutifully relays from the company's managing director. "Springboard for further growth... fabulous news for the town... great deal all round... hugely successful... premier league deal... more firepower... new era," is the verdict from the Telegraph and Young's MD Jim Cane. John Wilson, a senior organiser with the GMB union, has cited the closure of a processing factory in Hull when private equity firm Permira took over Birds Eye, and said: "GMB want to meet with Lion Capital to talk about the future of Young's Seafood in Grimsby. We want that meeting as soon as possible." By refusing to report this, the Telegraph has failed in its duty to journalism and failed local people.

No, he isn't perfect. Certainly he carries a bit of excess timber at times. Sure, sometimes he taps the ball into the goalkeeper's midriff while his striking partner is screaming for it, unmarked and five yards away square to his left. But Danny North is a player much cherished by the Diary: local born and bred, a Town fan through and through, with a none-too-shoddy 15 league goals in 33 starts, a big heart and a grin wider than the Humber estuary. It is with some interest, then, that we note young Danny taking a coaching session with some under-10s and assuming the role of manager at a new Sunday league side. "I've played on Football Manager on the games console and now I'm going to be doing it for real," the 20-year-old forward told the Grimsby Telegraph, fulfilling the dream of half the male population of the Western world.

Before the Diary heads off to the Indietracks festival tomorrow and Guest Diary steps in, there's just time for a quick dip into the inbox. One act appearing at the festival is Ballboy, whose majestic anthem 'I've Got Pictures of You in Your Underwear' the Diary cribbed from on Tuesday to provide the title at the top of this page, and when Dave Chambers emailed yesterday to refer to it, I was so unprepared for anyone recognising the lyrics that I didn't pick up his gist. "You quoted the irrepressible Ballboy in yesterday's Diary. Or did you not mean that?" My apologies, Dave - and my compliments on your taste. Today's final word, though, goes to Mark Wilson, who has emailed (presumably) in response to this week's story about the Romanian forward who landed a trial with Lincoln City by giving his girlfriend a piggy-pag round their training ground in the nuddy. He says: "My wife's been on my back for 20 years but it never got me a trial with Town." Boom boom! Thanks for reading, folks - I'll see yers next week.