MarciaBlaine

Reading up on this a bit and it seems the club/Weirs never really funded the grassroots teams. I’m not sure why, but apparently they’ve always had to fundraise to stay afloat.

Jesus. I hope at least someone in the media picks up on this even if the club are keeping it quiet.

If I had the PTFC Trust’s gift for communication, I wouldn’t do it much either.

“A big Colin Weir did it and ran away”

Perhaps the apology could be entitled “hurrah for the red and yellow shirts”? As Stewart Lee once said, “They’re very keen on balance at the Daily Mail. It’s been a watchword for them going back to the 1930s”

On a night when nobody looked good, Mullen was a stand-out as the worst player on the park. Clearly couldn’t be arsed.

I think for most of us who know the ins and outs of the story it was a recap, but the Jags Foundation guys came across well and importantly it was refreshing to have a relative outsider (Spiers) giving an unbiased view on the ridiculousness of it all. He was very clear that the whole transfer stinks. If I had a criticism it would be that Spiers could perhaps have sketched out the full timeline a bit better to make the narrative easier to follow for newcomers. Hard to do though, when it’s such a murky tale. And of course having representation from PTFC Trust or the club board would have been ideal but they didn’t respond. He wants to get their view too and I’ll certainly be tuning in to that if he manages to track them down, though I don’t hold out a lot of hope.

Was a good listen. I hope Spiers and others stick with covering the story.

Politicians up and down the land will be fascinated by this new definition of a conflict of interest: "When I awarded that lucrative contract to my pal's company, I wasn't doing it as the Minister of Transport, I was doing it as myself."

He’s apparently doing a podcast tomorrow about this. Think it’s behind a paywall on the Press Box page at Patreon though. https://www.patreon.com/pressbox

I think that because that question invites evasive answers, it’s not the right one. ”When will we get fan ownership?” seems more pertinent to me. Maybe less likely to be answered, mind.

Hmm, it depends on fitness. Browlie's comeback has been notably slow.

The tone is strikingly reminiscent of things the club have put out - snide, defensive, evasive and selective with the truth. I'd be amazed if that was a coincidence.

Having a summary and a longer detailed version is an excellent idea. Much more accessible for some who could struggle with a longer read for any number of reasons - eyesight, literacy, time and others. On that note, has the Trust considered using anything like Biteable for short videos? It’s free, very easy to learn/use and makes content really accessible for people. Social media engagement increases by something like six times when images and video are used.

“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Jacqui.”

Ultimately it reads as a document about power, and where that power lies. Not with the fans, it seems.

I get what you’re saying but the owner and chair’s actions are acting to the detriment of the club. Telling them lets them know how the club is being adversely affected, and I’ve no doubt that information is then shared around employees, board and owner.

Something to add: I think it’s just as important to contact the club (or trust or whomever) when they get something right through all this. For example, I contacted the club when the decision to ban TJF was reversed to say I was really pleased they’d done this. (Of course it was a terrible decision to start with but nonetheless, it was the right thing to do.) Engagement doesn’t always have to equal grumbling.

It’s definitely open because the PTFC trust are hoping to chat with fans in there from 6pm

I think McCall says about as much as he can say, realistically. It's a shame that one of the sponsors has received a nasty letter. Don't think that's productive. But McCall mentioning it in the times a) keeps fan discontent in the public eye b) thereby puts public pressure on the board and c) publicises the fact that sponsors are uneasy about the ramifications of the situation. I don't think McCall is daft and would know these are the effects of him mentioning it in the press.

If I was a BBC director I'd have someone set up with a camera in the Aitken Suite at 5:59pm tomorrow. You'd have to imagine the Trust guys will be talking to some pretty stony faces at best. Another way to get a visual and some publicity, for those who feel they can go? It doesn't take many people to fill a camera lens.

I think you're right about overt protest, at least for now. It really needs a tipping point to be meaningful and not look daft. Shame, I'd be up for it!

Some more practical suggestions for people are (apologies if I'm repeating myself here from earlier): Contacting the club as much as possible. Here's the thing: A single complaint about 10 things is brushed off as easily as a single complaint about one thing. 10 single complaints are ten times the work, hassle, pressure. I know this from an awful former existence answering complaints! So each time you don't spend money, contact them. Each time you have something new to complain about, communicate or ask, send it in. Just about every organisation (and hopefully PTFC) have a system for managing the huge amount of contact they get. It needs to be logged/referenced, handed over/between people, signed off and completed. They need to be able to look back on this and have a record of how it was dealt with, and that takes work. Equally, they need to know who's dealing with item X or Y at any given time, which is again a major hassle for them. They're not mass-deleting emails in a shared Outlook box (at least I really hope they're not!), they're trying to run a CRM-style system where every one of your messages goes onto the big 'to-do' pile whether they like its content or not. So multiply, multiply, multiply. Don't make yourself easily ignorable -for example: if they can spy one of your CAPS LOCK EMAILS, sweary f*****n letters or shouty phone calls from twenty paces, each one of them will be easy to dismiss. So be firm but polite. Don't get personal. Ask genuine questions. Be a horde of midges, not a Tasmanian devil. Reply to previous messages - this can often get you to the front of the queue and will also somewhat validate your contact as legitimate rather than ignorable. It also often obliges people to respond because it's part of an ongoing conversation. Try not to be 'cookie-cutter' - for example 20 people sending in an identically-worded email with the signature changed. It's again easily dismissed because whoever has to deal with it has already decided what to do with it when they read the first one. I know it's more effort but it's worth it. Worth noting that you can make your emails extra midge-like by attaching a picture (say, a picture of the tenner you didn't spend - also an effective visual [see below]). This makes the email literally 100 times bigger in size for their servers and the mailbox size is likely limited in some way. So gumming up the mailbox is an option and it may also put your emails to the front of the queue by default As it's a numbers game, it's also imperative that you stack up the numbers by not giving up! You'll absolutely be expected to tail off after a while ("Och, it'll die down by tomorrow"). Anyone can handle a wee spike in workload. Nobody can handle it perpetually. Visibility is everything, so try to find ways to let others see the discontent mount up. Basically, find ways to hang this dirty laundry in public, otherwise it's just you talking to a screen. An invisible crisis isn't much of a crisis. This is tricky but things like social media are an obvious one. The press can be awfy lazy these days and will take social media messages and reactions as indicative of the whole support. *edit to add on visibility* Press attention is huge. There's a saying in the Cooncil that half a page in the Evening Times is worth a couple of thousand complaints! People care deeply about how they're portrayed in public. Still on visibility, any kind of repeatable image is gold dust. I used the example earlier of chants at games versus a visual, though equally a video clip of a disgruntled stand chanting is 1000 times more effective than a sentence about it. But for example there's a reason why companies always (ALWAYS) include an image in their tweets - people are drawn to a a visual and the data behind social media engagement backs this up by an order of magnitude. So always remember that visuals (particularly shareable ones) win over words. (I'll note that t-shirts are visual Phil...) Seize the memes of production! A simple slogan wins the war of the story - something that encapsulates our message succinctly. There are actually fairly scientific ways to do this (the book I read on this was from the Centre for Story Based Strategy in the US), and countless examples of it working well. In my view this messaging is best arrived at by having a wee group of folk to talk through the issue. But the key messages/slogans can also self-germinate if they hit the mark and are shared widely. Some thoughts anyway. I realise it looks like I'm putting myself about for leading the charge but I literally don't do leadership! I'm a firm believer in the means matching the ends - in this case bringing about group ownership by working as a group. So I'd be happy to work with others on this. ETA: I know I've repeatedly said "the club" above but the same holds for contacting the Trust (or the media) etc too

Or look at it the other way - the new arrangement effectively inflates the remaining 25% of shares to the full 100%

I hope you feel better soon! I'm still waiting to see what the broader approach is for TJF - if they are to be a vehicle for protest then I'll support that 100%, but if not I'm certain another body will evolve (and I'll gladly be in it).