“Yes Mr Price I get it very clearly”

Peter Price asks me if I get it? Yes Mr Price I get it very clearly. You are putting up a smoke screen of jargon and unrelated facts to confuse people who actually believe what you say is correct.

Lets first of all let us consider the costs of The World Student Games (WSG). The overall cost of staging the games was £658m. The initial estimate was £147m. We are continuing to repay at £25m per year with the final repayment due in 2024.

Now Mr Price, what part of these figures are wrong, or do you choose to ignore them? To try and hide behind a cost of £10.2m for the two weeks when the games were staged is at best misleading but it puts into perspective the rest of the fiction you write. These figures are obtainable to any member of the public, and I urge the people of Sheffield look into this and see what a financial catastrophe it was for our city. Imagine in these times of cutbacks and austerity what we could have done with £25m a year.

When Sheffield was awarded the games in 1991 (we were the only city who offered to stage them, the rest of the UK had more sense), we were told that the costs would be covered by sponsorship. More nonsense from a financially stupid administration.

The council then set up a company called Universiade to oversee the spiralling costs, and of course it went bust with debts of over £3m.

Do you think it made the people of Sheffield feel proud because we staged a two-week games that nobody had ever heard of in return for an enormous debt for the next 33 years?

Mr Price likes quotes so I will him give one, the BBC in 2011 said hosting the World Student Games was a financial disaster for Sheffield.

Lets look at the facilities. The Don Valley stadium has never paid for itself. Even the British Athletics Association said it was madness to build a 25,000-seater stadium as no crowds of that number attend athletic events in this country unless for World, Olympic, or Commonwealth games. A recent correspondent to your pages said the facilities were pathetic.

The commendable Sheffield Eagles soldiered on there before the financial millstone was knocked down. Waltheof sports centre ceased to be when Park Springs was built in 2006. Every other facility has either gone or been upgraded at a huge cost and yet we are still paying £25m a year for them. Great value.

I find it unbelievable that Peter Price is desperately trying to link World Championships in Sheffield with the WSG fiasco that he was a part of.

Is he trying to associate himself with the World snooker championships which began in 1977 thanks to the vision of Mike Watterson? That’s 42 world championships, and that is where the real tourism comes to this city.

Football and snooker have put us on the sporting map. Mention Sheffield to anyone in the world and those are the two sports people associate with us. The WSG has nothing to do with the tourism to this city, nothing to do with the building of hotels, or investment in the city, nothing to do with the winning of world championships, to state otherwise is self delusion or worse.

Is he really suggesting that the building of the English Institute of Sport was awarded to Sheffield because of the success of the World Student Games?

I will give you the facts of the tender process Mr Price, if you want to be embarrassed anymore.

So I get what you trying to do, Mr Price. You are trying to rewrite history for those not old enough to remember you and your merry band of financially inept administrators.