“I have been thinking about the way we get Twitter into the match day routine,” he writes. “Can comments be moderated so that we can post Tweets onto the Giant Screen?”

Moderation, yes. Because if there’s one thing about Leeds United supporters I don’t believe the club’s actually interested in, it’s what we think. From Yorkshire Radio to LUTV, Ken Bates has consistently sought new ways for the club to say nothing, and they need to know where we are and what we do so they can sell it to us, preferably at arm’s length, or – even better – down a wire.

On Wednesday, the club launched LUTV Box Office, presenting existing subscribers with the opportunity to watch the pre-season games against SK Brann and Wolves on a pay-per-view basis. If the plan was to so entice a non-subscriber with the exciting prospect of “one camera coverage” from Norway that they would peel off the £40 annual fee, plus £5 for each of the ground-breaking broadcasts, it hasn’t.

Instead, existing subscribers reacted angrily to the venture (a “disgrace”, “bare-faced cheek”, “daylight robbery”) and several sought to cancel their contracts. Today brought the third day of unanswered messages to Director of Commercial Affairs Paul Bell on various forums, blogs and on twitter, as the man bringing social networking to Leeds United neglects to use it to engage with critique.

The decision to charge LUTV subscribers extra for pre-season friendlies not only irritates them, but represents a missed opportunity to attract new viewers on a trial basis. On the assumption, of course, that it’s preferable to expand Leeds United’s existing fanbase rather than milk its loyalty.

Just as our New Year’s revolution stated, the internet is enabling the voices of Leeds United supporters everywhere to crescendo into new, entirely authentic forms. According to Felix Wetzel, an associate of Paul Bell, “social media only works within an open and transparent environment.” Perhaps that’s why fans use it effectively, while the club doesn’t? Just a thought.

He may have been a pundit on ITV’s coverage over here, but over there his face smiled from magazine pages and television commercials for First National Bank and, most poignantly, the Hospice and Palliative Care Association of South Africa.

Lucas lost his father, Johannes, to cancer last year. In 2008, his wife, Feziwe, died in the care of Hospice, for whom the ex-Leeds United and Bafana Bafana captain has since become an official voice.

“Lucas has been a fantastic ambassador for Hospice,” Richard Perkins from the association told me last week. “His involvement has been both on a painful personal level and a positive support level as well.”

The Hospice and Palliative Care Association of South Africa has 189 member and affiliated hospices and relies on donations to support its care for all terminally ill patients, regardless of age or ability to pay.

Click here for donation details, noting that bank transfers from the UK require the BIC/SWIFT code SBZAZAJJ.

Issue 11 of the new look, full colour magazine will be on sale for only £1 at squareballshop.com and from vendors outside Elland Road at what had bloody better be the last game of the season on Saturday, against Bristol Rovers.

So today, slotting in alongside the free downloads and rather smashing t-shirt is this 45-second animated trip of a lifetime back inside Mr Chairman’s mind to the LS11 of the future etc…

YouTube | Visit Beeston

Our situation is paradoxical: never have the forces of repression been so weakened, yet never have the exploited masses been so passive. Still, insurrectional consciousness always sleeps with one eye open. The arrogance, incompetence, and powerlessness of the governing classes will eventually rouse it from its slumber.”
Raoul Vaneigem

THE outcome of last week’s unprecedented summit meeting of individual Leeds United fans with existing official and unofficial groups, Ten for Ken offers the best opportunity yet for the devoted and the disgruntled to try to comprehend the goings-on at our football club.

Ten for Ken is the distillation of 5 years of Ken Bates’s Leeds United into 10 core questions we supporters feel duty-bound to ask our football club. Does it feel duty-bound to answer them?

So read them, download them, print and share them. Agree with them or disagree with them. But consider them, talk about them and go to tenforken.com and join them.

Look out for Ten for Ken flyers at Elland Road tomorrow, and listen now to Ten For Ken on last night’s Leeds United Unplugged show on Radio Leeds.

Issue 10 of the magazine goes on sale for just £1 from vendors outside Elland Road at Saturday’s game against Southend United, and also online at thesquareball.net.

10p from each copy sold goes to Candlelighers, the chosen charity of the families of Chris Loftus & Kevin Speight.

As highlighted back in September, not one has survived a second year in charge under the Beeston hotelier. Gary McAllister didn’t even see out his first, after a dismal run of results with which Grayson’s line-ups are becoming increasingly flirtatious. Since marking an extraordinary first year in charge with victory on Boxing Day and another three points two days later, his Leeds United haven’t registered consecutive wins in a 16 game period which has yielded just 21 points. It’s an alarming second-year slump worse than Dennis Wise’s; worse even than that of Kevin Blackwell.

What this means is that in returning Leeds United to where it was when Ken Bates first clapped eyes on it in 2005, avoiding the inevitable fate in the process, Simon Grayson has much trend-bucking to do. But it’s too easy to demand the manager’s head; less so to ask why we must keep plating it up. Cash black holes, escalating ticket prices, expensive courtroom failures, hotel plans and an overabundance of borrowed players all feed into the sense that this regime’s murky pursuit of off-field mediocrity is inconducive to excellence on it, whoever picks the team.

Where our forefathers stood by the finest players of any generation, we do likewise by a club that increasingly feels like Leeds United in name only. Our behaviour is monitored by the Members Club while the club itself continues to harbour the veiled interests of a chairman and his secret associates. But for how long?

With the incoming Football League chairman’s drive for transparency, the growing culture of fan protest and the realisation that we have problems with brass hotel doorknobs on, not much longer, one would hope. Once pacified by Ken Bates-sponsored media, we Leeds United fans are forming networks of our own and assuming positions to demand for ourselves the very best football club the bland old man’s capable of – unless, of course, that’s what we already have.

Instead of striving to copy his own Stamford Bridge template, Ken Bates would be well advised to heed the words of Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck, the man tasked with making the west London development break even. “All a football fan wants,” he admits. “Is football.” Not a hotel.

Then he reached for his favourite Leeds United magazine, opened it to the centre pages and there it was: Ken Bates’s Beeston of the future!

Build us a team, Ken – not a hotel.

See the “Visit Beeston” page for even more freebies, and squareballshop.com to buy the magnificent “Visit Beeston” T-shirt.

Either side of raising season ticket prices (again), he mounted his trusty soapbox (again) on climate change, AIDS and third world water supply and found himself under the the scrutiny (again) of the Guardian’s David Conn.

Phew. All we’ve done is these “Visit Beeston” t-shirts in association with Leeds United fanzine The Square Ball; yours to pre-order now at squareballshop.com.

You don’t have to visit Beeston to wear one – but it helps!