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Step Three of the Football Supporters’ Federation’s Six Steps for Safe Standing needs fans to contact their local MP and ask: “Are you backing Don Foster MP’s Safe Standing Bill?” The more MPs back Foster’s Bill, the better. (It’s due for a second reading in Parliament on Friday 21st October 2011, deferred from its original 17th June date).

The FSF’s Safe Standing Petition now has more than 12,000 signatories – click here to sign the petition if you haven’t already done so. If you’ve signed the petition, that’s enough, right? Wrong. There’s plenty more to do – we hope every fan in the UK sees our petition and for that we need you, the FSF member and football fan, to get cracking.

The Football Supporters’ Federation welcomes the willingness of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC to engage in dialogue with its supporters over the issue of standing. This contrasts with the attitude of some other clubs and football authorities to this difficult issue. The FSF will be pleased to accept the invitation to attend a future Fans’ Parliament at Wolves to look at this issue in detail.

The FSF’s Safe Standing Petition now has more than 10,000 signatories – click here to sign the petition if you haven’t already done so. If you’ve signed the petition, that’s enough, right? Wrong. There’s plenty more to do – we hope every fan in the UK sees our petition and for that we need you, the FSF member and football fan, to get cracking.

The Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) believes that football supporters should have the choice to watch football from a safe standing area, if they so wish, at matches in England and Wales.

The FSF is leading the Keep Scunthorpe Standing campaign at Scunthorpe United, which aims to retain the standing area at the club’s Glanford Park stadium. The campaign is being launched at this weekend’s home fixture with Ipswich Town, and will continue at Tuesday’s game with Barnsley.

Following May’s election the new Government launched the Your Freedom website with the idea of “working to create a more open and less intrusive society”. The concept is that there have, in recent years, been far too many unnecessary laws and pieces of legislation foisted upon the British public. Your Freedom gives the public the chance to propose, vote, and comment upon ideas for cutting these back.

Given England’s woes the news that Fortuna Düsseldorf have decided to increase their stadium capacity from 51,500 to almost 55,000 won’t exactly make waves in Britain. If we started posting news stories every time a German club made a ground modification we’re sure our web hits would crash pretty swiftly. Nevertheless the planned extension of the Esprit Arena should matter to fans in Britain as the stadium’s extra capacity is effectively made up of safe standing spaces. In the home section the number of standing spaces available is now 8,199 – an increase of around 3,000.

As reported in the latest edition of the FSF’s magazine, The Football Supporter (tfs 016), there has been some controversy surrounding the Football Licensing Authority and their use of statistics. The FSF is delighted that the FLA are now engaging in meaningful and constructive dialogue with us on this subject. Nevertheless, we have decided to publish the following information for members and interested parties… largely because we said we would!

Interesting news from Germany this week where Hamburg SV announced they are going to increase their ground’s capacity from 57,000 to an even more impressive 61,322. Now what has this got to do with me, we hear you ask? If we posted a news story every time a German club expanded its ground we’d soon start losing hits, that’s for sure. The reason it should matter to fans in England and Wales is that of the 4,322 increase 3,000 of those spaces are going to be accounted for by safe standing spaces. Despite the Independent Football Commission, Liberal Democrats and 90 per cent of fans regularly backing safe standing, the authorities in this country still won’t enter into an evidence-based debate on the matter.

 Eurostand 08 (September 13-14) will see fans across the continent stand together against UEFA’s ruling that all venues hosting European and international fixtures must be all-seater stadiums.

For those among you interested in bringing back the choice to stand at your local ground, there’s an important event coming up.

Encouraging news as it’s came to our attention that the Lib Dems intend to debate safe standing at their conference (follow this link to their conference paper, page 23). This means that it could become part of an election campaign. Well how can I have any influence on this you may ask? Easy.

Here at the FSF we were interested to read Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe’s comments yesterday in response to Denis Murphy MP’s question on the issue of safe standing, a campaign we have been running for some time.

A nationwide survey held by the FSF in conjunction with The People newspaper has shown that nine out of 10 football supporters believe Premier League tickets are too expensive.

One of the bitterest rivalries in British football will be put on hold on Saturday, when Newcastle United and Manchester United fans will stand shoulder to shoulder to demand Safe Standing areas in Premier League.

Newcastle United are reportedly considering consulting their supporters over a bold bid to introduce safe standing accommodation at St James’ Park.