Jason in Wonderland.

Morecambe MP Lizzi Collinge implored the hated owner of the town’s football club in parliament on Tuesday:

“I say to Jason: “Come on – sign the damn’ paperwork!””

Jason Whittingham has being playing fast and loose with the future of the club – and the futures of the many people who work for it in whatever shape or form – as he desperately tries to find ways to avoid signing it over to EFL-approved Panjab Warriors.  If he did sign the paperwork – as he first publicly committed himself to doing almost a week ago – staff and players who haven’t been paid for almost a month now would immediately receive the money already owed to them; the Administration that is facing the club in the face would be avoided and the uncertainty about them being able to actually begin to compete in the National League next month would all disappear literally with a stroke of a pen.

But he still won’t do it – and it’s pretty clear he doesn’t intend to do so either as he makes increasingly bizarre attempts to cling onto the Cash Cow – our club – which has been keeping his other businesses in the Bond Group afloat for the last few years. Instead, he revealed the latest fantasy he has concocted to avoid facing reality on the official Morecambe website yesterday:

Bond Group are pleased to announce that agreements will be signed this evening in relation to the sale of Morecambe FC.

A last-minute bid came through from a UK Buyer after learning about the club’s situation. That buyer has worked over the last 24 hours to turn around a payment to his solicitors for wages to be paid and agreed contracts pending approval of the sale by the National League. 

He has already started preparing documentation for National League to give their approval for the sale and confirmed his financial support for the club this coming season, provided his takeover is approved.

This buyer will make their own statement shortly to introduce themselves and set out their plans for the club over the coming seasons.

Further announcements to follow tomorrow.

Jason Whittingham,
Bond Group Investments LTD

It’s Wimbledon fortnight currently so there’s no better time to quote the immortal words of `the Brat’, John McEnroe:

“You can’t be serious, Man! – you CANNOT be serious!”

Even by Mr Whittingham’s extremely low standards, this statement is so fatuous as to be not even worth analysing any further. The obvious huge hole in it is that – even if it was true – the necessary approval of this fantasy `last-minute’ bidder would have to be sought from the EFL and the National League before the deal could go ahead. This certainly won’t happen overnight as he tries to pretend it could in his statement.

The following was the Shrimps Trust’s­ immediate response to the latest twist in this fantasy:

Dear member,

Following today’s statement from Bond Group, we can confirm to members that the National League have not been made aware of an alternate buyer.

The Trust will provide a substantive update when we have a clearer understanding of matters.

The Shrimps Trust

Panjab Warriors have also made a statement about this – as we shall see in a moment, But – as we saw on Tuesday – their cynicism even at that time was clearly approaching breaking point when they told us:

“Only now – at the final hurdle – do we hear claims of unspecified investors (which were never disclosed to anyone until this final stage) needing to approve the sale. Our investigations do not support this narrative. It appears to be yet another tactic to stall progress and evade responsibility.

We believe the undisclosed mention of so-called investors at this late stage is misleading and potentially fraudulent.”

The final words which I have highlighted in bold print seem to be a pretty large hint that the Warriors are thinking of going to go down another route to deal with Jason Whittingham – a judicial one. Unfortunately – although this may be fruitful (eventually) from their point of view, it will do nothing in the short term to save our beleaguered club.

So a long-term farce is continuing to develop into further tragedy with every day that our unreliable owner from Essex drags his feet. Depressingly, this means that  everyone with the thankless task of trying to negotiate an end to the current impasse faces wasting even more of their very precious time dealing with another Red Herring that has been injected into the script. Assuming – of course – that Mr Whittingham actually bothers to come up with the details of the last-minute hero of the plot who is apparently going to come racing over the hill like the Cavalry in an old-fashioned Western to make sure everyone lives happily ever after.

On past form, this is unlikely to happen today, despite his worthless promises that it will. After all – a fantasy as spectacularly unorthodox and completely unlikely as the one he is currently trying to sell to people can’t be easy to cobble together in just a few hours, can it?

Pre-empting the latest Bulletin from Jason, Panjab Warriors issued the following statement to the media this morning:

Elsewhere, Lizzi Collinge stood up again in parliament at virtually the same time and asked the House of Commons to urgently debate new legislation which could stop rogue owners riding over the rights of their employees in any situations like the one currently facing the Shrimps. In a separate move, she also attempted to appeal to the Better Nature of a man who doesn’t seem to have one:

Lizzi Collinge did both of the things referred to above the day after Jason’s latest missive from Wonderland. In the meantime – and only too predictably – no buyer had made any statement to introduce themselves at all (let alone `shortly’ as promised). Just as predictably, no updates of any sort by the man whose pants must be completely burnt-out by now (not just `on fire’) had been made by Mr Whittingham even as the early evening arrived.

Seeking further updates, I tried to view the Bond Group’s own website this afternoon:

bondgroup.co.uk

All the bells and whistles went off on my computer and a warning told me not to attempt to go any further because the site is `Not Secure’. (Well, I think that’s what was happening: maybe it was flashing-up the Company Business Model or Corporate Slogan at me…)

But I persevered and was eventually presented with a completely empty screen – as empty as its owner’s promises to everyone else involved in the current scandal have been over the last week or so – and actually much longer.

It is now way after six o’clock in the afternoon on Thursday, 10^th July 2025: the end of the conventional working day for most reputable financial business investment companies in this country. Sadly, and just as predicted – neither of the statements Jason Whittingham promised us all yesterday – one from the genie he’s found to buy the club; the other in which he promised  more details about this dramatic development in the ownership saga – have materialised.

The situation is absurd beyond words. Mr Whittingham needs to have the gumption – and the honesty – to face the media and explain to everyone exactly why he has constantly lied about what he is going to do next for almost a week now.

But gumption and the ability to simply tell the truth seem quite elusive in the fantasy world this man appears to live in.  He has told us that a Magic Mr Morecambe as an alternative to Panjab Warriors will not only emerge from his Magic Lantern at any moment but actually buy our football club from him at the very last last-minute. No doubt he believes in the Magic Dragon; the Magic Money Tree and Magic Carpets as well. Which makes me wonder – as his latest fantasy fails to materialise and we think about Alice in Wonderland and its association with hallucinogenic substances:

Do Magic Mushrooms grow widely down there in rural Essex?