Credit crunch! What credit crunch? Preparations for the Ryder Cup 2010 unaffected by global economic downturn.

Today in Dubai Jose Maria Olazabal has been named as favourite to captain Europe in the 2010 Ryder Cup to be held here in Wales next Autumn.

In the current global economic crisis are preparations for the world’s biggest golfing event being affected by the credit crunch? You can bet your bottom dollar that the golfing fraternity will move heaven and earth to ensure that the event goes ahead as planned. Indeed, the scale of the Ryder Cup means that it has the potential to stimulate and regenerate the region’s economy. Councillor Bob Bright Leader of Newport City Council said

“For the City of Newport, the 2010 Ryder Cup is about much more
than hosting the world’s most prestigious golfing tournament. It is about making the most of the enormous opportunities that come with it”.

The opportunities for tourism and the hotel and catering industry are immense. Already, the major hotels are fully booked across south and mid Wales. Here is just a sample of some of the biggest hotels in Cardiff.


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There has been no sign of mass cancellations from either side of the pond due to the recession. Indeed, demand for high quality accommodation is so great that you can book your cabin on board a luxury cruise liner which will bw berthed 7 miles away in Newport Dock – for a price! You will need to be on more than a sailor’s wage to pay for your stay on the cruise liner.

For the ordinary householder you can rent your way out of the recession. A two bedroomed cottage at Whitebrook near Chepstow rented out for a week will earn you a cool £6000. A 4 bedroom modern house in Cardiff 20 minutes drive from the Celtic Manor £11,500 whilst a miniature stately home will improve your bank balance to the tune of £25,000 for a week’s rental. If you want to rent a 5 bedroom house within walking distance of the 2010 course you will need deep pockets as it will set you back a cool £60K.

The transport infrastructure will also benefit from the improvements made for the vast amounts of people who will travel by car and or public transport to the event. Some 40,000 visited the Ryder Cup when held in the K Club, near Kildare, Ireland in 2006. These improvements will remain after the 2010 event and will hopefully help regenerate south east Wales economy by attracting more firms and industries.



The Ryder cup is the third most watched sporting event in the world that attracts on average 1 billion television viewers. The lush greenery of the rolling Welsh hills in the Usk valley will showcase what Wales has to offer for the tourist. This will help combat the stereotypical image often portrayed of Wales abroad as a heavy industrialised nation full of coal miners with every village having a slag tip on every corner. Gren the cartoonist eat your heart out! With a fair wind and blue skies in the period between 1st – 3rd October 2010 when the event is played it will promote Wales to the rest of the world as a largely undiscovered gem in the geography of the United Kingdom up there with Ireland and Scotland as a place worthy of a visit.


Interview with Paul Williams, PR Manager Celtic Manor

The Ryder Cup will also serve to promote the game of golf as an active and healthy leisure pursuit for people especially for Wales’s youngsters - the future Ian Woosenhams and the Bradley Dredges of this country .




The Celtic Manor already has the golf development academy in its grounds. It also has three golf courses, the twenty ten course being designed especially for the Ryder Cup. Such world class courses will allow Wales’s golf hopefuls to practise and compete using the best facilities available to them anywhere in the world.



So it seems that no matter how much the credit crunch may hurt people’s plans in the next few years golfers world wide will still attend the 2010 Ryder Cup in the Celtic manor - an event they regard as being on par to having a hole in one!

Banking on Peston...

There is one individual who has become synonymous with the banking crisis here in Britain, so much so that one politician has joked that in fact many people now think that he is the Governor of the Bank of England. Step aside Mervyn King, enter Mr Robert Peston.
Robert Peston is the BBC’s business editor and most definitely the face of Britain’s credit crunch. His profile has been raised so highly that it’s been asked has he actually become bigger than the BBC or ‘Aunty’ as the corporation is affectionately known.

This idea that individuals can become bigger than the organisation for which they work is something which has arisen in our guest lecture talks. Rick Waghorn, creator of MyFootballWriter.com believes he, to an extent, is an example of this. As the long standing and trusted news breaker of football news on the Norwich Evening News, he believes that since leaving the paper and creating the website he has managed to draw Norwich City supporters from the sports section of the newspaper and instead to access his website to get their teams latest football news.

During the financial meltdown Peston seemed to be on almost every BBC news bulletin. Love him or loathe him as a broadcaster with a rather excitable style of “ I have another extraordinary, exclusive” he was the man that everyone turned to in order to get the latest financial news. Overnight it seemed he had built up the trust of the people. Currently he has about six hundred and fifty thousand people reading his blog, which is another platform which Peston has successfully used to break stories. Although he is trusted and respected by his people, in no way can he be considered as being bigger than the BBC.

Indeed it can be argued that it is due to the reputation that the BBC has that Robert Peston managed to become such a success. If he was to up sticks and move to another channel I would hazard a guess that the BBC would find another suitable replacement, another personality that people would turn to and Robert Peston would become somewhat of a distant memory akin to the demise of Bradford & Bingley. It’s happened in the broadcasting world time and again, - Richard & Judy who!?

During his meteoric rise Peston has not escaped criticism.
Some have even gone as far as to say that he has taken the dangerous step from merely being a reporter and become an agent in the events that took place in the banking world. Peston’s reporting on Northern Rock caused the first run on a bank in 100 years. When he blogged the news that three of Britain’s biggest banks were in bail out talks with the government, a matter of the highest sensitivity, wasn’t he thinking about the impact his reporting might cause on Britain’s banking confidence? He was merely interested in savouring the opportunity to again show the world that he had the breaking news story.

When personalities get as big as Peston I think it becomes somewhat of a problem. In an interview in the Panorama Special: 'the year Britain’s bubble burst' it was interesting to see Peston admit that he had not anticipated the reaction to the story he broke on Northern Rock.

As a journalist should he not have considered the implications and the impact it would have on the public at large? I am in no way condemning him but do feel that this is verging on irresponsible journalism. On the flip side it is comforting to be reassured that Peston is not making these editorial judgements alone and that everything, blogs included are checked by a senior editor before being published. It probably is safe to say that within his own niche of financial news Robert Peston has managed to develop his own brand, if a brand is a name we associate instantly with something or someone. But this seems to me to be what inevitably happens. Jeremy Clarkson = the guru of British motoring or Jamie Oliver = school dinners. Branding shows success both for the individual and the corporation for which they work. I don’t believe it makes them bigger than the corporation it just gives them more authority to speak on their topic.

In the New Year the treasury select committee will be looking at the role the media played in the financial crisis. It’ll be interesting to see how much of the inquiry is centred upon ‘Aunty’s’ man of the moment - Mr Robert Peston.