In Tuesday's edition of The Sun, Eddie Jordan pleads poverty on behalf of his team and urges the F1 community to take action before one or more outfits are lost to the sport, forever.

Two weeks ago one of Minardi's sponsors pulled off a shrewd coup by buying up much of Arrows' redundant equipment including five F1 cars.

In recent days we have celebrated milestones in the careers of a number of drivers, 150 Grand Prix for Heinz-Harald Frentzen and David Coulthard, 100 for Jos Verstappen.

Here's another anniversary for you however.

At last year's French Grand Prix the two Arrows drivers Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Enrique Bernoldi were sent out under strict instructions not to qualify, despite their unease both drivers followed orders.

Two weeks earlier the team appeared to be on the verge of collapse and only an eleventh hour deal made it possible for Arrows to take part in its home Grand Prix.

After the cynical qualifying stunt in France things went steadily from bad to worse; the team made it to Germany but then Frentzen jumped ship before the Leafield outfit opted to miss the Hungarian round of the World Championship. Subsequently while the rest of the F1 circus headed to Spa Francorchamps, Arrows issued a statement announcing that a potential buyer had been found but that the relevant paperwork could not be completed in time.

The rest is history.

It's amazing that in recent years the sport has adopted the use of the term 'team principal', we say amazing because so many people within the upper echelons of the sport appear not to have any - 'principles' that is.

Williams is said to be on the verge of announcing a new sponsorship deal, Jordan is suing Vodafone for $150m, Max Mosley wants 'competitively' priced engine packages available for ten-million. Life goes on in 'Planet Paddock'.

In the last few months Tom Walkinshaw appears to have disappeared off the face of the Planet, poor, poor Wee Tam has skulked off to lick his wounds and no doubt count his hidden millions.

The towns around Oxford however are populated with hundreds of people that continued to believe in Walkinshaw and his Arrows team, ordinary people that continued to turn up for work to build the cars, that went to the circuits waiting for transporters that never arrived, or slinked away in the dead of night. People with kids, bills and mortgages.

These are the real victims of F1, the real faces behind the sport's bullshit facade, these are the people that really need a fighting fund.

What follows is an e-mail I received last week in the wake of Mike Lawrence's feature 'Taking Stock'. Reader Danny Kane, a former employee at Arrows, felt that Mike was unfairly singling out Arrows as having poor stock control, though subsequent communications have cleared up this misunderstanding - all teams in F1 waste money, and some waste a lot more than Arrows.

In his e-mail Danny gives his own account of the reality of F1, the human face of the wealthiest, most glamorous sport on earth.

"Fund for the Fleeced"