Woodstock Jag

No one is stopping anyone from expressing a view, Denis. You express yours exhaustively, and exhaustingly. I think the fundamental problem here is you seem to expect TJF to set out our intentions and strategy, in excruciating detail and with reference a range of hypotheticals, none of which have yet played out. Such an expectation is both unrealistic and would make any such plan less likely to be effective. This is a public forum. You don't show all your cards before you are ready to play them. As I have repeatedly pointed out to you, there are members of the current Football Club Board of directors who read this forum. TJF is a broad church movement. We will not be making any knee jerk decisions and fully intend to bring the median Thistle supporter along with us. With the best will in the world, those calling for changes in the Board Room, or for TJF-led protests at games, are nowhere near the median Thistle supporter. You start where your people are. Plenty of us have been critical of the record of the current Thistle custodians, but we are also realistic. Any move to fan ownership will not involve wholesale changes to the Club Board. It will involve prolonged transition. Wholesale and overnight change simply is not on the table. No one can put it there. So your calls are pointless and a distraction from the more important strategic goal of delivering a fan ownership model that the fans have some appreciable degree of influence over. The reason TJF was set up was indeed originally to receive the shares. But we have never hidden the fact that it is not the sole purpose of the organisation, and we fully intend to provide the members with a viable option for us to continue as a members organisation even if we do not end up getting those shares. If you want a receptacle for shares that does Sweet Francis Adams else, we could save ourselves a lot of time and throw our lot in with the PTFC Trust. It's the living embodiment of something's purpose being to hold shares without properly addressing the wider point of holding those shares. There are many different potential paths to delivering proper fan ownership. We still think we're the most credible vehicle. But if another vehicle "gets the gig" that's not the end of the story. There is still an urgent and pressing need to mobilise the Thistle support to improve the deeply inadequate model PTFC Trust is presenting. Plan A might then have failed, but that doesn't mean that there is not a need for a Plan B or C. That requires a broad church. That requires patience. That requires flexibility. That requires being more than a protest movement.

I'm not "quashing" or "silencing" anything. Your long, repetitive, and relentlessly negative, posts are just getting a little tiresome, that's all. And I say that advisedly as a perennial writer of long, repetitive and often relentlessly negative posts.

Denis, you wouldn't be happy with anything short of us re-enacting the October Revolution. Gie's peace.

EGM Report and Recording Here's the Report and Recordings from the EGM on Thursday: https://thejagsfoundation.co.uk/egm-report-and-recording/ Opening Remarks and vote on Articles of Association The Articles of Association were adopted unanimously by the meeting. This is an important step forward as we now have robust rules that properly suit our future needs. Fan Ownership Panel We were delighted to be joined by Louise Strutt (current director of the Foundation of Hearts) and David Nicol and Colin Orr, both of whom used to be directors of the St Mirren Independent Supporters' Association. David also used to be a Club Board member at St Mirren, representing SMISA in the board-room. Their reflections, advice and experience was extremely valuable and we hope our members and the wider support can learn a lot from Louise, David and Colin about "what good fan ownership looks like". TJF Board Q&A Arguably the most important part of the evening was your opportunity, as members, to put questions to us, your board. We relish the opportunity to hear what our members think and to set out some of our ideas for the coming weeks and months. It's clear from the exchanges we had on Thursday that our members have lots of ideas about what we can do going forward, and we hope to engage you in key decisions as this situation unfolds. Working together One of the common themes of our members survey was that many of you want us to try to find ways to work constructively with other fan groups. We hear this loud and clear. Although it has proved very difficult to get the PTFC Trust trustees even properly to acknowledge correspondence, let alone reply to it substantively, we have found The Jags Trust to be more willing to enter into dialogue. In many ways, The Jags Foundation and The Jags Trust have shared values in that we both want to see a properly fan-owned Partick Thistle, with robust governance, genuine fan engagement, and democratic accountability. As an expression of solidarity, and a statement of intent to find productive areas of common cause, the Chairs of both The Jags Foundation and The Jags Trust joined each other's respective organisations as members. Below is Sandy presenting Morag McHaffie with her McParland Pin at our EGM. We hope to find ways of working together to better serve the membership of both organisations.

Amusingly, if Mhairi Black is so minded to introduce such a private member's bill, I am duty bound (in my day job) to recuse myself from assisting her or her colleagues with it, on account of a conflict of interest.

That. Is. A. Dis-grace. Best wishes to Mrs eljaggo!

Members survey results day: https://thejagsfoundation.co.uk/the-tjf-members-survey-the-results/ In short, it's not just 20 people shouting loudly on social media.

The thing about trusts is that they are generally very poor vehicles for transparency. There are not, for example, specific provisions about how quickly information must be provided to beneficiaries. However, the specific information we asked the Trust to provide were minutes of meetings of the trustees. As recently as March 2022, these were routinely published on the Club website. It was an established precedent and expectation that beneficiaries should be able to inform themselves as to the matters being discussed by the (then) 6 trustees. For reasons as yet unexplained, subsequent minutes have not been put into the public domain, or otherwise provided to beneficiaries in a timely manner. What we were asking for should really be a quick 5 minute job, for a trustee to dig out the minutes, which are official records of the trust, and to attach them to an email. We formally requested them, on behalf of 200 beneficiaries, a week ago. We repeated the request on behalf of 300 beneficiaries, when more people had answered our members survey. We have not received a substantive response.

UPDATE: TJF have examined the PTFC Trust proposal document, and have taken into consideration the comments from the PTFC Trust trustees in their interview with James Cairney and the Club Board Q&A posted yesterday. Simply put, we're not impressed. We are left with more questions than answers about this deal, how it was arrived at, and what it will mean for fans. It's a bad deal, it's not in the interests of the fans, and it should not proceed. Read more here: https://thejagsfoundation.co.uk/further-thoughts-on-the-ptfc-trust-proposal/ Detailed document here: https://thejagsfoundation.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TJF-review-of-the-PTFC-Trust-Proposal.pdf

The goal was off-side.

Yeah it's offside because the keeper is off his line. The offside line is the defender on his feet, rather than the one on the ground. Marginal though.

This presupposes that they have legitimacy right now.

People asking not to be a member of this Trust would be cutting their nose to spite their faces, for what it's worth, especially if it already has the shares.

I think that's my reading of the explanation on elections too, PTD, though I struggled to parse it the first time of reading. Under this proposal, the trustees will not be fully elected until at least May 2025. By which time, of course, TJF would have held its fourth set of elections.

St Mirren's Board has four SMISA representatives, and two from Kibble, the only other major (but minority) shareholder. In theory I think they could co-opt further board members, but it would likely be linked to a major change in the shareholding of the company as all the other shares are held by very small shareholdings and (from their shareholders' agreement summary) I think both SMISA and Kibble would have to agree to the appointment of Directors other than the default six. ETA: All members of The Jags Foundation can of course come along to our EGM on Thursday, and find out from two of the people who helped deliver the SMISA deal how they did it and what was important for them and their fans!

I think you all need to go to Lush, buy a bath bomb, use it, and chill the foxtrot uniform charlie kilo out. I would have recommended the Dark Arts one but they stopped selling that several years ago. An acceptable substitute is Black Rose, but stay away from Intergalactic as the glitter goes everywhere. Different people will express their discontent in different ways. No one wants to harm the Club, but equally the Club has no god-given right to expect people's blind financial loyalty or for people to attend games. Especially in a cost-of-living crisis, but also frankly "all the time anyway", people have the right to spend their free time and their money however they please. I personally hope that people continue to get behind the team, in whatever way they feel comfortable doing. I wish I were in a position to be attending Firhill week-in-week out, but living 450 miles away that's just not practical. I can recommend, if you're a Thistle fan starved of entertainment living in London, Craven Cottage and Brisbane Road for a good day out. My local, The Valley, is a little bit soulless.

No, I would have to assess the situation at the time, with the benefit of the full context and sentiments of others.

That's not what I said! As I have always said, it is a matter for individuals how they spend their own money, and if they don't want to go to football matches, that's up to them. I do not foresee a situation in which the TJF membership is balloted on "should TJF endorse people boycotting games". I also do not foresee a situation where such a ballot would provide the answer "yes". But if it did, I would, as a matter of conscience, find it very difficult to continue to serve on the TJF Board in those circumstances.

Fan-centric.

Denis I don’t understand why you think it’s even remotely a wise idea for me to list to you the things I would be prepared to back. This suggests you fundamentally don’t understand the dynamics that are currently at play. The thing that kills this movement is if people are able to portray anything we do as “divisive”, “intimidating” or “attacking the Club” etc. Those lines are their secret weapon with the media, with the not-as-online fans, and with those who want to see a sensible, professional and pragmatic members organisation fit to form a proper part of the governance jigsaw at our club for decades to come. The people you want TJF to endorse protest against read this forum. They scour it forensically, looking to misquote, contort and misrepresent to others. By the time the truth gets its shoelaces tied, the myth has spread to hundreds of Thistle fans and the message discipline and goodwill is lost. Those people are probably reading this thread right now. Because they aren’t stupid. And you want me to set out a Schlieffen plan of action points? If the Foundation membership wants to pursue a path that I cannot in good conscience go along with, I will offer my resignation, TJF will likely seek to co-opt someone else in my place under the new Articles of Association, and the next set of TJF elections would have three three-year vacancies and a vacancy for a two-year term. Which is exactly as it should be in a well governed members organisation.

Denis, we're clearly not going to agree on this. You seem to want TJF to commit to indiscriminate and futile acts of defiance, which will alienate precisely the sort of people who can move the dial in this dispute. Ultimately the direction of travel is for the members of the organisation, and we think that they will trust us to make the right call within the broad parameters that they set us through expressing their views and continuing, or not, to pay their monthly subs to us. But if the approach is to be to play into the hands of those who want to dismiss the largest organic members organisation in Thistle memory as a rabble pursuing personal vendettas, you can count me out.

For the avoidance of doubt, the EGM does not have an item marked "Official Protests". The formal business is the approval of the draft Articles of Association. We suspect that won't be the main point of interest for those in attendance, and we suspect that the AOCB will be rather more wide-ranging. As advertised, the evening will encompass a Q&A segment, but we are also hoping to provide something of interest with a little more structure to inform discussions and to get a clear feeling for where the membership are on the way forward. I know someone who was closely involved in the St Mirren Independent Supporters Association, and one of the things he said to me in the last fortnight or so was that they too had dark times in their journey. Some real lows, albeit not as profound as ours. But as he told me "six months later, we were in the room". Showing that we are the adults, the ones who know what we're talking about, and who have the most credible plan for the future will always be an essential component to delivering the right outcome.

For the avoidance of doubt I do not support a boycott of the football club, whether with feet or wallet. Such action, as things stand, would play right into the hands of those seeking to discredit TJF and the incredible fan momentum it is building. How do I know this? Because there are people, and they know who they are, who have tried to claim that I personally, on this forum, was encouraging fans to send correspondence to sponsors that would cause nuisance or distress, when in fact, as you will all see, I did exactly the opposite of that. Michella Obama had an excellent phrase for it, that I’m sure doesn’t require repeating.

Update: today we wrote to the PTFC Trust, on behalf of more than 200 TJF members who (also being season ticket holders) are beneficiaries of the Trust, to disclose and publish the minutes from all of the trustee meetings since March 2022. We will let you know if and when we hear a response. You can read our letter here: https://thejagsfoundation.co.uk/letter-to-the-ptfc-trust-trustees/

Yes, that's a fair point. We intend to consult of a range of other matters as well. This is very much just the beginning of that scoping exercise. The point I was making is that PTFC Trust doesn't (or at least, shouldn't) know who its beneficiaries are and their contact details, because it doesn't hold the season ticket database. It would have to rely on the Club contacting their beneficiaries to conduct the sort of exercise we are now carrying out. We can do this because our members all "opted in" whereas their beneficiaries were essentially just "claimed" without so much as a how-do-you-do.