West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Correct and regarding the 6+1, insisting on negotiation when the only viable option was removal.

 

The classic Roman philosophy of Divide and Rule.

 

Gosh - who got you out of the wrong side of the bed?

 

And briefing against voting them out at EGM1, when only a few more votes would have carried the day and put matters on the right track with a fraction of the heartache and trouble that followed, including the jiggery-pokery with 4160 shares,

Robin

 

The most significant thing to consider, should the Plc fold, is that the LRO that the company holds lapses at the same time. Therefore no one would be able to run any public trains until a new LRO (or would it be a Transport and Works Act order these days?) could be obtained. This could easily take a year or more as it has to go to Secretary of State and even if a public enquiry is deemed unnecessary time still has to be allowed for responses or objections to the proposal.

Far better to sort out the existing company than allow it to fold and have to go though the rigmarole and delays getting a new order would require.

 

Have we heard any opinions from the other 66.6% or 75% of the Plc Board?

 

My abiding recollection from EGM1, apart from the sheer disappointment and sadness at the outcome, was the then Chairman stating - or at least giving the strong impression - that he recognised that he was not wanted and would be leaving the Board altogether, only to turn up 48 hours later as the new Vice-Chairman.

 

I'm not going to get into a toing and froing on this, but trying to summarise the complexities of something four years ago in a few words, seems to me to inevitably lead to some historical revisionism, sometimes in favour of the author.

As for the more general discussion that has been going on, I think the attempted character assassination of JJP, which is unpleasant and uncalled for, seems to ignore the fact that if Jon had not led various of the actions over the last twelve months, having myself seen the detailed accounts last January, the railway simply wouldn't be here by now. The Washford matter was not the PLC PR machine's finest hour, but there are certainly two views about the issue itself.

Trying to construct parallels with the WSRA saga four years ago is simply fanciful.

Frank

 

All you ever wanted to know about the DEPG but were afraid to ask.



A really excellent piece of work by one of the WSR family.

 

I don’t go in for historical revisionism. I have a long and accurate memory.

Robin the elephant.

 

The question I, and I suspect others, ask is not whether the measures have been necessary for the survival of the railway, but whether the collateral damage from those measures has been proportionate to the results, or that the medicine will cure the patient before it kills it.

The more skeletons that come out of various closets, the less clear it is either that the costs have been proportionate, or that the medicine is one that will cure before it kills. Washford, in that context, is the canary in the mine, and playing down something that, if not rescinded, seems destined for significant legal and other expenses as a PR matter (whatever the issue itself may be) suggests that something is rotten in the WSR.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

The issue isn't the steps taken to save the railway, but even there, there has been some aspects that clearly have some people concerned, but its the serving of the eviction order, Now two scenarios, here, either the board debated this, came to a decision, and acted without informing either the Steam Trust, and WSRA , So they were out of the loop, not a wise move, when they are majority shareholders, , Or , And this is if anything even worse, they did inform both the Trust, and Association, who did not protest, or if they did, were advised to not fight it by trustees who clearly were ill informed, , or their protests were brushed aside, but in that case, you would think that something would have become public, But the damage has to be towards the various groups on the line, Will the S&Djr Museum trust, now trust its fellow counterparts, why should they, if they abandon them, did not fight for them?

 

Having used both heavily recently, my experience is that Zoom is more straightforward to use and copes a bit better with low-spec situations. Teams is less likely to break up the audio but suffers sometimes from unresponsive controls, and for video lagging a number of seconds behind audio. Of course other videoconferencing tools are available!

 

I am reminded of the words of Thucydides (speaking of the response of the Athenians to the disaster at Syracuse): "In short, as is the way of a democracy, in the panic of the moment they were ready to be as prudent as possible." Perhaps people weren't ready to vote for the ouster until the true scale of the problem was all too painfully obvious. Locking the stable door perhaps, and at a considerable increase in cost over the earlier declined action, but that's human nature for you (and a pattern oft repeated in history)

The implications of this for the current situation I leave to the reader...

Noel

 

Two points:

1. In the context of the WSR as a whole, it isn’t just Washford, even if that was the trigger for some of the current concerns.
2. “Saving” the railway involves more than just protecting the metals.

As regards process, it’s as well to keep facts in mind. Based on what’s reported here, the supporting charities are minority shareholders, with less than 20% of the shares between them. So it’s not necessarily surprising that the board took action without consulting them. Whether it was wise, and what that says about conditions in west Somerset, are different questions.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I doubt corporate IT people would allow the flakey Zoom, but you never know. Getting all participants to have access to the same video conferencing software will be a challenge

Steve

 

It's not favoured - I've received strong messages at work about only using it if clients insist on it, and then not from phones.

 

I’ve recently taken part in a number of Zoom conferences organised by the Government so it’s good enough for that Corporate body The number of speakers was limited to 3 or 4 and the ‘audience’ could submit questions and comments via the text facility so it worked quite well.

The first times I used both Zoom and MS Teams the organisers sent a meeting invitation which invited participants either to download the app or to participate within a web browser so it’s not essential for everyone to have the same software before the meeting.

 

Try jitsi.org - open source solution which we are using in preference to any of the big names

 

As I understand it though, it's not good enough for the military....Zoom collects and uploads a lot of data from your local machine, in theory it may not be personal, but it's still not actually necessary for the video conference to work, so we choose to use something less intrusive. All of them allow you to screen share though, so caution is recommended before you let everyone see your desktop