West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Unlimited, having just found and checked the articles. I presume the elections will be along the lines of a yes/no vote for each candidate, every candidate that gets more yesses than noes is duly elected.

 

Not really interested in the whys and where alls, but launching 14 candidates onto an organisation with only 7 existing trustees does have an air of parking ones tank on the lawn, its all rather Mike Ashley!

 

I fnd it hard to disagree with that, despite my conviction that they are generally on the side of what is right.

 

Thanks. Sounds like democracy. Somewhat unusual on this thread.

 

I discovered that earlier today. Very unusual, Constitutions usually specify a maximum as well as a minimum number of Trustees. I agree that nominating 14 does seem a bit OTT for a relatively small organisation. However the members will have the final say, which is as it should be.

 

I find it ironic that I am penning this contribution within 24 hours of a candid admission by a cabinet minister that HMG intends to table legislation capable of giving rise to a breach of its obligations under international law and the withdrawal agreement it concluded with the EU. Parallels with the WSR plc-S&DRT dispute seem plain to me.

Assuming the S&DRT vacates Washford in the near future, I suspect that it will, quite unintentionally, bequeath to the WSR a bitter legacy. If the WSR plc manages to ride out Covid then the time will come when it will want to form commercial relationships with other heritage railway players, whether for locomotive hire or some other purpose. And those other players will call to mind the plc's readiness in 2018 to enter a binding agreement that the S&DRT's stay at Washford was to be extended until 2070, only to decide some two years later that it was no longer prepared to fulfil that commitment. The ruling sentiment then underlying the other side's conduct of negotiations will likely remain unspoken, but it will still be there: “We saw how the plc refused to honour the terms of its 2018 agreement with the Somerset & Dorset Trust and the damage that did to the Trust, and we are not about to let the same thing happen to us.”

 

"Loose confederation of warring tribes" springs to mind.

 

Perhaps they foresaw the flak they were going to be on the receiving end of and knew they would be taking losses.

 

I'm quite prepared to accept that as a reason!

 

If true it is a terrible reflection on some of their opponents, who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. In fact, if any of the nominees were actually abused or threatened, as reported, I trust that such criminal behaviour has been reported to the appropriate authorities.

 

Anyone happen to know the original source for that (very apropos) line? I know that 'Yes, Minister' made it famous, but it sounds like something that would have been said about the Pashtuns circa 1800 - or perhaps the Germans, in the time of Caesar. Alas, a Web search was un-informative...

Noel

 

Sadly adopting abuse as a form of 'argument' is very common today in far more areas of life than what we consider on this forum. The anonymity offered by modern preferred means of communication and its lack of genuine human interaction in the process presents huge problems. Have a little read at Making Evil by Dr Julia Shaw, believing that you can act anonymously is a tool that allows you to view your targets as less than human. It doesn't stop at being abusive.

 

Purely out of curiosity and genuinely not wanting to take sides, would a merger of WSSRT and WSRA (which would bring some advantages) have an adverse effect on any HLF or other bodies grants awarded recently to WSSRT?

 

But posters on Facebook and the like are NOT anonymous, even if they may think they are. If the actions are criminal then the appropriate authorities can track them.
In any case one would expect any reasonable site-holder to ban this sort of behaviour. How about a "name & shame" policy for offenders ?

 

Sadly I have to suggest that, having seen the behaviour of some in power during previous disputes, they my also have done so to address the possibility of those disagreeing with them trying to 'load' the election by lots of nominations. Well, nominations have closed but there has been no announcement about voting - so I assume we are still all waiting for the WSSRT board to announce how the vote will be taken as we cannot vote without any proposal being formally 'put' at a meeting.

In the interests of even handedness and to prevent any accusations relating to irregularity in counting the postal or proxy votes I would like to see two, independent tellers appointed to receive the votes and do the formal count.

I am afraid the Chairman of the WSSRT Board has been so openly and viciously opposed to allowing the elections to take place that I feel he is no longer impartial in this matter and therefore no longer suitable to carry the proxy votes without accusations of bias being levied.

 

It is not so much the reality of the situation when it comes to the anonymity, it is what people believe it to be. And sometimes you might feel the need to afford yourself a little shielding but you have to be aware of how it can change your behaviour. Depends on the circumstances. You might feel the need to have an input with respect to a situation that you are concerned with but given the nature of people and their outrageous and disproportionate reactions to anyone who has an even slightly contrary view to their own you may well feel safer, unless your name is either Sykes of Fairbairn, avoiding anything which might escalate.

Again if you are of a nature where you are interested in various things but really want to maintain a low social profile because it is very much a part of the way you are that is not a problem so long as you are aware of potential issues.

"Name and Shame", is an interesting one. There are in excess of 170,000 words in the English language. Do people actually know the meaning of the words that they use? The answer is, not always. I once insulted someone quite by accident. It was not an error on my part but the meaning of one of the words that I happened to use was understood in a rather different way to that which I intended. It turned out that the individual in question understood the meaning of the offending word to be quite the reverse of the reality. So a bit of defusing later and the support of an OED all was resolved. People do not always communicate very satisfactorily, but I would be very wary of using naming and shaming. The obsession with labelling others (or deliberate and sometimes toxic mislabelling) is something to be avoided.

 

A Chairman defending the indefensible. How predictable in the circumstances, someone else jealously guarding a Fiefdom.

 

I referred to this in my post 30600. There were no comments, but given the volume of posts it is not surprising.

 

I suggest that certain individuals should be much more careful before posting accusations on here about the motives and competence of the WSSRT Chairman. Nat Pres is not a medium that provides immunity from liability for defamation.
As I have observed previously there are doubts about the legitimacy of the nominations for Trusteeship given that the stated motive is to use the Trust as a means of forcing change in the PLC. Any responsible Chairman would seek advice in those circumstances.
There is at least one contributor on here who I understand is an expert on Charity Law. His opinion would be instructive. At the end of the day the question of whether the nominations should be allowed to proceed , and whether if a majority of members vote in favour of merger that can bind the Trustees to pursue that course, is a legal issue on which the Charity Commission may well have a view.

 

Probably the announcement today about restricting the numbers of people who can form any assembly will have some bearing on any form of voting and its date.