Leicester 1st race walkover

Three jump meetings this afternoon and no AW is ridiculous.

£21 entry leicester  today . if you are over 65 they knock you 2 quid off !

It's quite staggering to have a card with only five races and twenty five runners.
As regards the £21.00 entrance fee, it should be a fiver to boost the attendance but race tracks simply fail to "read the room" with their OTT price structures.

Exactly slippy
If you are a casual race goer living nearby, you'd look at the card and think, no thanks...
But, if you made it a fiver, you'd attract a few on limited budgets who'd fancy a day out
I suppose the only thing is if they've already sold tickets at 21 quid, but those people could be given a 16 quid voucher for future entry?

And another thing... Last time I went to Hereford races the only turnstile was card only... And inside you couldn't pay for food or drink by cash...
Load of nonsense

It's like one of those modern day school sports days where there are prizes for everyone!

Honestly what is the point (apart from media rights for Leicester obviously)?

Reg - what's the problem with card-only? The 'I don't want the government knowing where I spend my money' bit?

Do they still have the place that sells the top-class roast beef sandwiches at Leicester?

Longbridge, I pay cash for everything that I can

And I think people should be given the option
I realise younger people don't even carry cash these days but I shall hang on to the bitter end
I just like knowing what I'm spending
I'm not really concerned with govt knowing my business

I get the 'knowing what you're spending' bit - easier to go to the races with £X in your wallet and when you've spent it all on admission, beer, food, betting, you know you've spent your budget.

But - and it's an age since I worked in hospitality - cash is a pain to take.  You have to have a float, fiddle around with change, trust/hope your staff aren't stealing it, count it, reconcile the tills, store it safely, take time (and some risk) to get it to the bank.  Far easier just to take plastic and let all that take care of itself, even with the card processing charges.

Longbridge, I get the convenience bit for the retailer.
I have a card machine for my business but I still take a lot of cash
So, I like to pay for everything I can with cash as well, not just when going racing

Down here in Somerset, there's still shops displaying "cash only" signs in the window

When (not if) the country goes completely cashless the option to apply negative interest rates to bank balances will apply. No option to withdraw your dough and metaphorically (or literally) hide it under the bed. Think about the implications of that.

That alone is a powerful argument to maintain cash.

@paris that is probably the bizarrest argument I have heard against going cashless, I will grant you that.

longbridge - why?

the idea that the only defence against negative interest rates is piles of cash under the bed.

You misrepresent me.

I'm observing that in the absence of tangible cash and with all "money" being held electronically there is nothing to prevent a government raising money by instructing banks to apply negative interest rates and pocketing the difference.

In simple terms if you can still maintain the value of your notional pound by withdrawing it from the bank if that scenario came to pass. Absent that option a 2% negative interest rate means it's now only 98p.

The big problem with cards is that a bank takes a bite from every transaction. and the smaller the business, the bigger the bite. One way to avoid banks getting richer is to use online bank transfers If we all used cash and boycotted banks apart from for savings, they would soon get the message. I just can't see cash being removed for a long time. In Brazil, the Government came up with the idea of placing a 0.5% tax on every cheque that was deposited in a bank. So of course cheques became a currency and could have 10 signatures on them as they did the rounds before being deposited. The snag was that by time some cheques were presented, the accounts on which they were drawn had closed!

the most alarming thing about card payments only  is looking on line at recent transactions to discover 20 out of the last 21 are from the red lion or dog and duck !

Sageform makes a salient point.

If you keep moving money between people electronically the bank transaction fee levied each time eventually erodes it to zero. A comparison is a poker table where the rake taken every hand eventually erodes the original stakes.

That doesn't happen with  physical cash

As I know all too well, it costs money to bank cash, and also obtain change. There will nearly always be a cost to handling transactions, physical or digital.

But it is possible for us all to use cash without depositing much of it. Then most banks are redundant. The IR might not be very happy but it is perfectly legal if you keep proper accounts. I have a holiday let business and only accept cash or bank transfer. I investigated accepting cards but on my small turnover it would have cost me 6% of my income. They have a fixed monthly charge for a card reader whether you use it or not.

I discussed this on another thread, but physical cash has a lot of hidden costs attached to it. Old style parking meters you needed to pay someone to go round and collect it, then it has to be banked. You've got the security costs, storage costs, alarms, safes, shrinkage, compliance yada yada.

For a business it's a no brainer.

You can pass on the processing fees. It's doable as a side hustle but you still have the cash to handle, the need to bank it, the risk, the insurance.

I'd be a fan of maintaining physical options, but it's not any cheaper than digital when everything is considered.

parispike • March 8, 2024 1:43 PM GMT
If you keep moving money between people electronically the bank transaction fee levied each time eventually erodes it to zero. A comparison is a poker table where the rake taken every hand eventually erodes the original stakes.
That doesn't happen with  physical cash

You're only looking at one side of it. Sure the bank might take 2-3%, but in exchange for that cost the business does not have the cost/risk they would have had of handling that as cash. eg time (cash management, till set-up, pick-ups, change orders, banking), shrinkage (theft/fraud etc), bank handling/account charges etc. These will vary significantly depending on size/type of business but traditionally small businesses should expect the cost of cash handling to add up to anywhere between 4 and 15% of takings. There's a reason why many small businesses have abandoned cash completely.

Back on topic, there are not enough novice chasers in training to fill the number of races programmed so this will only get worse as some of them return to hurdles or get injured. No trainer is going to transfer a decent horse to fences and win one novice at this stage of the season.

Rico wanted 1.02