Resignation fromCommittee

[alwaysinjured]

I have just received a PM thanking the Committee for all our hard work saying :

It must be galling to face trial by forum whilst making our beloved sport safer. I appreciate all you are doing.

The writer used a pseudonym but, as I have often observed, the only time people complain about pseudonyms is when they don’t like what has been posted. Otherwise they appear to be OK and part of the fun of the forum.
~~~
The committee has been criticised because it doesn’t generally address posts on here and to illustrate why I choose just one post from AI to respond to.

The “July rules”: date back to… last July, and as you note Andy Walmsley accepted them without dissent. They preceded the Inquest by 3 months so could never have been the final version which was not agreed until after the Coroner’s letter was received (in late October) and just before the Calendar went to the printers at the end of November so it could be sent out before Christmas.

Consultation: the notice about the review was placed on the FRA website. Clearly some RO saw it because they sent in their comments as did others during the second round of consultation.

The Motion: in my 12 years on the Committee I do not recall a single “motion”. It may be how other committees work (although I think you have said you cannot work with committees?) but it is not how the FRA has chosen to work despite its frequently changing membership. I suggest the 22 people on the committee should be allowed to decide how they wish to work between themselves rather than be told by one member or even a non-member.

The Preston meeting: you assert matter was “removed from the minutes”. The minutes for that meeting were unanimously approved by the committee at the following meeting in Kendal at which Andy Walmsley was present. He did not register his dissent.

Letter to Coroner: I have addressed this elsewhere. With 17 out of 19 members in support the letter could have been legitimately sent that day but instead the Chair and the committee went a long way to achieve unanimity by gaining Andy’s approval.

And so on.

The above are short responses. They are not qualified or convoluted with subordinate phrases but I believe them to be true. I was present at the meetings referred to. You were not. Fortunately all I have said can be proven by documentary evidence.

Now what?

Will you say “OK Graham I accept your points?”

Or will we see you break your declared silence yet again with another opus to which I am expected to reply...and on and on?

Life is short and then we die.

Wynn did not see them , I alerted her to them, demonstrating a serious problem.
One early reason not to have a debate here was "no committee come here" so how then was wynn supposed to have seen them? Graham if you want 300 RO to sign up to rules, a good suggestion is ask them first, because they unlike you carry the can.

The changes that were made were little to do with Coroner compliance, and mostly to do with a lot of problems first found by me, and later grudgingly addressed.

More importantly in absence of the agreed amendments the documents you asked Wynnto sign , for the book, were based on the july rules, so they were certainly not innocuous. Madders saying "so what, the others dont comply either but they are signing up" on the basis of things they have not seen demonstrates irresponsibility, not the best trait for an RO. The correct response was delay a month, in such a situation.

As I said earlier on, Andy is the only one who has owned to holding his hands up, he did not look under the hood, last July, demonstrating a problem with both the consultation and the validity of "so called" unanimous votes. There is clearly something badly wrong when those rules were ever accepted.

It is like a thermometer, once it reads a clearly outrageous temperature, even once, you can never trust it again: so the document acceptance and preparation is clearly a problem, since the "test" of a unanimous committee decision was proven totally fallible on those rules.

Coming to which: how can you have unanimity on things you say were never a motion, ergo were never voted, since unanimity is a vote, resulting from a motion. How then can they ever be unanimous if "motions" as you say are not allowed?? bizarre.

You put Andy in an impossible position. He tried to do it right. He got a consensus at the Preston Meeting and please don't force me to put yours, Mads and Nicks emails in Public domain, that prove even Nick thought that was agreed, but Madders decided she did not want, and you because of a "perceived insult". And yes, we will post them if you disagree again.

So having seen you do not honour consensus expressed, he did the only other thing left to him, Propose a motion, for a vote. You did not let be heard (as you noted, so you are guilty as charged). The bucket of emails proves it.

What you mean is Madders and you decides what was agreed, using just the same murmur of consent, but only the ones you actually like. You are defending the absence of proper democracy, not proving the existence of it. And thats what you are all seemingly happy with. I simply asked FRA members whether they were happy too. The facts are uncontestable. All that was said was demonstrably true.

Andys phrase - and opinion was quite clear before and after that meeting. He did not agree with the principle of that coroners letter nor should he, so the content was largely irrelevant except dangerous. Having got a couple of the worst things out, he agreed only "in the interests of harmony", but only because you said prior that if you couldn't agree you would send it anyway, or words to that effect.

The only difference in the last statement by FRA, he refused to play the game any more of being counted as support for something he could not ethically support.

It is all as I have painted it.

There are two problems you still do not get.

1/ Rules are not safety management, so the entire response was misplaced.

2/ You seem to think rules are the way RO fulfill a duty: you missed the point entirely. Whilst common law has something to say about third parties affected (eg at road crossings) or the risk to that runners knock kids for six down catbells, the duty to runners is to a large extent actually CREATED by the rules, not fulfilled by them, that's why the legal undertakers/ambulance chasers and insurers solicitors you seem to love actually focus on them. So you have created the duty the next generation of RO have to fulfill in our view unnecessarily. Which gives dear old Wynn a problem.

It is your problem.

Me and Andy have given up, at least in the context of trying to persuade you.
Wynn is going elsewhere , where common sense rather than ego reigns.