West Somerset Railway General Discussion

The following post was sent to me today by a friend representing: Totally Fact Free Productions and it contains no facts whatsoever and has no connection with anything or anyone in this universe:

On a Virtual Branch Line far far away, Railway Wars continues as it has done for many hundreds of years. The Empire and the Rebel Alliance have been at war for reasons lost in the mists of time. The railway they fought over closed many hundreds of years ago, in its believed early 2020 due to a plague sent on all their houses.

The war however continues online as keyboard warriors who didn’t get the email saying the railway closed and it was all over have passed their keyboards from father to son/daughter/undetermined/unspecified species (delete as appropriate).

Its Tuesday the 21st of Giveitupandplaynicelyber, year 4110 and Zaphod Beeblebrox of 42 Planet receives an email from Team Propaganda. He feeds it through the Bu****it translator, a small fish called a Bable fish that you put into your ear which translates things into plain English.

Zapoh reads it and sighs, and so starts the next instalment of Railway Wars, Episode, 53,808, Whatever will they do next and think its ok the return, rides again and bites back.

The message reads:

Dear Member

I apologise if you are troubled with unwanted mail from the 10 Candidates seeking elections as trustees at our AGM on the 14th of Destorytheopposionber who are clearly trying to give you their opinion which doesn’t bode well for the current Boards future and the direction we have decided for the WSRFST on your behalf, the details of which we haven’t felt necessary to trouble you with to date. This inconvenience must of course be stopped at all costs.

To date we have tried by every means possible to stop the democratic process and stop Members of the WSRFST standing for election but we have failed so far to avoid our cosy old boys club being threatened with peoples opinion we don’t agree with and that really worries us.

We will continue to use such means as, hiring commercial companies to use encourage people to vote our way, deciding who can be a member of the WSRFST by rejecting new memberships where we see fit and any other means to ensure we get our way, so please bear with us whilst we increase our personal attacks on individuals instead of debating the different views and different options. I’m sure we will win and the status quo will be resumed as soon as possible.

We protect your personal details as far as we can because GDPR is important. Under the companies act we of course have to give any standing Candidates a Members list so they may email Members with their prospectus so you as Members can have full information to make an informed choice when voting at the forthcoming AGM, but of course we refused to do that as the Board.

However as you would expect we, in order to protect you as members from making a possible choice that we won’t agree with and to ensure we carried on doing what we decided to do anyway we tried to stop that happening. But in the end had to release the Members list because our legal team said if we didn’t we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. You will be pleased to hear because we found this out quickly this advice only cost you as Members £10,000 in legal fees.

We did however feel we would openly give out the private email addresses of individuals to everybody so you can harass and intimidate them into giving in. We as the WSRFST Trustees of course do understand that this data breach contrives GDPR in a major way and given the recent fines issued to other companies for accidentally doing it instead of deliberately doing it we expect that you as Members will be more than happy to pay the fines for us doing this expected to be in the order of £500,000.

With my apologies once again. Normal outcomes on the WSFR will be resumed as soon as we destroy the opposition and we can return to the normal downward spiral of the WSFR we all know and love.

Yours

Etc. etc. etc.

ENDS


Some may think what I have made up above in this post is utter stupidity, I agree. Until of course you align it with the recent story of happens on a railway not so far, far, away and then perhaps my story above seems more realistic. Clearly this is just one more sign that one side in this war are going to fight to the death and the other side will most likely have to follow suit.

Interestingly I didn’t get such an email, perhaps yet again I’m on the naughty step ?

A Totally Fact Free Production.

 

I am deeply saddened by the e-mail from Chris Austin - both in content and the tenor of its expression. I have nothing invested in WSR - though would be far prefer that it was the positive beacon that it could be rather than the laughing stock it has become in the wider movement. However, the e-mail - twisting as it does the legitimate right of someone seeking election within a company to the relevant information to contact the members of the company - betrays either a lack of understanding of law and due process or is a deliberate and wilful attempt to portray people negatively for merely exercising their right to express opinions and follow legitimate means to seek election to pursue them. That someone who was respected within the wider railway industry has been tainted in this way is regrettable (to say the least).

Also, the lack of a positive narrative in the subsequent message sent to members and copied here betrays a similar strategy of negative campaigning rather than a positive setting out of the alternative vision. If the trustee of WSSRT have integrity about not wanting to get involved, perhaps they should transfer their shares in WSR to another body, such as WSRA, which would remove their responsibility and involvement as shareholders in WSRplc - a responsibility that, in public, they do not seem to want to acknowledge.

As an outsider, it is crushingly sad how so many people seem to have been tainted by the various episodes in the WSR saga over the years.

 

The WSST seem to be a rare example of turkeys voting for Christmas! If a new charity is formed it will be the dominant fundraising organisation on the WSR and the WSST's own fundraising activities will undoubtedly be heavily squeezed. How is that going to benefit them? Better to be part of a larger, co-ordinated, group than a minnow in the same pond as a pike!

 

I find this very curious. I thought this group was promoting a new open collaborative approach. Yet they seem not to want people to be able to contact them direct. It is noticeable that their supporters are winding this up into the alleged crime of the century. While I'm here: Andy, your contributions would be much more likely to be read if they were three or four lines long..

Frank Courtney (whose email is available in all sorts of places, including on the newsletter The Platform, the next edition of which will be published shortly - it seems it gets out of date as soon as the fingers hit the keyboard...)

 

Erm you can contact the WSSRT candidates directly via the email address wssrtcandidates@gmail.com

You can put your strawman away now.

 

Is this not a mis-statement of the position of the candidates - which by my reading of what they have said is to put any decision to the membership of WSSRT and abide by the decision of the members?

 

Absolute codswallop. From the very beginning, we have publicised an e-mail address for people to get in contact, wssrtcandidates@gmail.com. People have used that facility and we have responded to quite a few of them (although time has not allowed to respond to all of them just yet, for which apologies are due, but we will). That is a very different thing from unauthorised publication of personal contact details of individuals, including postal addresses, which is actually against the law if permission had not been first granted. The fact it has to be pointed out to some people, is truly staggering.

 

The email from the WSSRT reminds me of the occasion when the Information Commissioner ordered a financial institution to pay me a modest sum in compensation for failing to take the necessary steps under the then DPA to protect my personal data (namely that they kept sending personal details to the wrong address). When they complied they sent me a updated set of information along with the cheque - to a different wrong address !!! This time they paid me more compensation without even been prompted

I really can not b-e-l-i-e-v-e that the WSSRT wrote what they did....

 

Perhaps if the WSSRT Trustees had asked the the candidates whether they could share their details before doing so, and had not been so adamant that sharing the membership list with the 10 was an intrusion on members' privacy, it might have been more credible. I also find it rather presumptive that an incumbent board would consider themselves so sure of their members' thoughts about what they wish to see, or not see. In any organisation that I have ever belonged to, when faced with a contested decision, I have wished to see what all sides of the debate have wished to say before casting my vote - or not.

At present, my natural instinct would be to vote against anyone crass enough to seek to wrap themselves in a law that they then wilfully breach. Especially when they expose the organisation they claim to be protecting to significant legal risk.

 

How unfair. It's all ok in the north, south and east of the county. <BJ>

 

Absolutely a bugbear of mine. The combination of credentials largely irrelevant to the holder's current role, with paid for fellowships that look impressive from the outside but mean the square root of bugger all in the real world, speaks volumes for me.

When it's in the context of a note like that, I'd usually just assume incompetence and self-interest.

A far more appropriate approach would have been something along the lines of 'It's unprecedented in our organisation for an influx of both potential trustees and new members of the trust to arrive simultaneously. As Trustees for the group, we disagree with the approach and the proposed direction of this influx, and we believe that our strategy of X, Y and Z is most likely to secure the long term success of our group and the WSR as a whole. However, we are also firstly a members organisation, and secondly subject to the rules governing charity trustees. If we are unable to secure the support of our membership, we will ensure we respect the terms of those rules. Irrespective of the outcome, we will continue to do whatever is within our power to support the line in the future.'

Far easier to back people who are prepared to trust the membership and put their ideas and values to the test, rather than those that try to denigrate the 'opposition'.

Simon

 

I have just sent an email to Don Fraser of the WSSRT including the following paragraph:
"You and your fellow WSSRT Trustees have previously made all your members aware of your opinion of the suggested merger with the WSRA. That is perfectly fine -- but what is your objection to the new candidates' request for members' addresses, which they need in order to put their case? Should all members not have clear explanations of both positions before they vote for or against the new candidates?"