Kmcalpin

Red lights began to flash for me some months ago, when the Society released a statement saying that it wasn't actively engaged in negotiations. I thought at the time "Why not, you should be as you are the club's major shareholder". It would now seem that lines of communication were not what they could have been with Erik Barmack. Irrespective of how its done, I think there's mileage in continuing negotiations, taking into account major concerns we have.

It's not unreasonable to assume that an alternative plan to "outside" investment is "internal" investment- no? The source of any confusion. As I understand it from comments by Derek Weir and Jim McMahon the aim of the former is to keep the club competitive at its currently broad level. The aim of the latter is somewhat narrower by aiming to build up a rainy day fund. Therefore the two are not mutually exclusive in theory. Some clarity for the benefit of members to correct any misunderstandings and temper expectations would be useful at this stage.

I quite get the different remits of the Club and Society; so no argument from me whatever on that front. I'm quite clear about that. However, until a few minutes ago, I would have said that despite that theoretical separation of roles, the Society was not following that in practice, as it was indeed working on an alternative investment proposal, rightly or wrongly. However Steelboy has now placed extremely serious doubt in my mind by saying that my understanding simply wasn't accurate and that the Society has never been doing that. Its only ever been working on a strategic plan for the Society. Big Wispy Flossy has just confirmed that. In short there is no emerging alternative to the current external investment plan, except the status quo. My thoughts align with Wellgirl and I suspect also with a significant proportion of our fanbase which would also seem to be confused as to what exactly the Society Board is working up. She rightly quotes the BBC "An alternative plan to outside investment is how the BBC reported it in February." So, there is some logical basis for our confusion.

The matter of the smaller private shareholders is one that has been largely overlooked in the past day or so. They/we make up about 28% of the total shareholding. From memory, there is one "large" shareholder, whose name hasn't cropped up on these boards, with several "medium" sized ones. As you say shareholdings did become more concentrated as people died off. But, against that the more recent Society sale did increase the number of small shareholders. Other things being equal, existing small shareholders would have the right to increase their holding, under the Executive Board's favoured plan. As someone else rightly posted on social media, some small shareholders could sell/give some of their their shares to the Society, although the club directors would have the right to block any such transaction (rarely if ever exercised) if it was deemed to be not in the best interests of the club (or something like that; I don't know the exact wording). Just another thought to toss into the bubbling soup pot.

Time will tell Allan. The proof of the pudding and all that. I agree 100% that raffles and bucket collections won't cut it. Big thinking is required.

Whether it is or it isn't their responsibility, they are actively doing this and have publicly said so. On that basis, expectations will have to be met Yes it does.

It is and the pressure is now on the Society board to produce and publish an alternative investment plan. Its not unreasonable for members to expect this by 1 July.

Does it matter? We must avoid getting involved in witchhunts. I'll be emailing the Society to ask for the reasoning behind the 3 board members' vote. I have no wish to know their identity. I simply want to understand their thinking. We know the reasoning behind the other 6, I just want to know theirs to inform my thinking.

They might well have been, but surely they kept other Society board members informed? Given the Society's public response, you'd think Messrs Dickie and Feeley were given other board members' responses to feed back into the official negotiations no? How did the Society board let things go this far if they were totally opposed to the details we've been given? It doesn't make sense.

Where did you see this?

One issue that's baffling me, is the substantial reference to the Society in the external proposal. Surely the Society would have been actively involved in discussing this, despite previous comments to the contrary?

Agreed. I have not read the external investment proposal in detail yet. However, I do have concerns. I'm going to digest it in more depth in the coming weeks. It transpires that the Society Boards vote was not unanimous, being 6-3. I would genuinely like to know the reasoning behind those 3 members voting yes. They must have some justification. The Society now needs to finalise and publish its proposal, as promised. When it does that I'll make up my mind. One thing is for sure, simply trying to increase membership, although admirable, is no solution. A final plea. Please keep the online discussion respectful. We've already seen some "poor" posts on P & B and on X.

100% agree. Rather naively, I assumed that both proposals would be made available at the same time.

Having skimmed through Jim McMahon's statement and the Well Society email, I'm equally baffled by both, for different reasons. I raised the issue of potential conflict of interest some time ago, but no one bar a couple of posters (and they know who they are) seemed to think it an issue.

Not a big issue in the grand scheme of things, but do you know this for a fact? In order to access those monies of course, we had to extend his contract, thereby forking out another £15-20K in employment costs. Still well worth it though.

It sounds a bit complicated to me Ropy. Does that mean that a player can sign for another club, be employed by it and be paid by it, but can't actually play for it until the window opens?

Yes credit to him. He could simply have left us. However he couldn't sign for Rangers until next Friday when the window opens. That would have been 2 weeks without pay. I don't know which, if any, club would have been entitled to a UEFA payment until that date. He'll still get a signing on fee from them. We should be grateful to him though. As I say the arrangements benefit us and him.

By signing on for an extra month, he'll earn 4 weeks or so of wages, he wouldn't have otherwise received plus, I suspect, a slice of the UEFA payment. A win win situation.

How do we know that Liam Kelly has signed on until after the Euros? I've seen references to this but can't find the official source. How much is it worth? Presumably we'll split any monies received with Kelly himself.

A nice guy by all accounts. Good luck to him. I wonder where he's heded to next? Another defensive vacancy and that provides some clarity.

I've just had another look at the survey and I really do think the results will be of very limited use indeed and perhaps even be misleading. A few examples: Many of the multi option questions are inadvertently worded so as to be not mutually exclusive eg disabilities. There isn't any question on where the participant lives or their postcode sector (I know we have to be careful about data protection issues). If the club wants to know how fans travel to home games then its essential to relate their answers to where they live, or at least their distance from Fir Park. The question on catering: are the food options tasty? They might well be but a fan might not like them. For example, I know that a spicy food will be tasty but I don't like/can't take spicy foods. Availability of parking: will those who don't drive know? Does this only relate to club parking or does it relate to general street parking as well? The idea of the survey is good but I think its needs to be changed and relaunched. There's little to be gained from expending a lot of time and effort to lift results and draw conclusions from unreliabale data.

Well said. I just don't get this recent communication release. This particular one irritated me no end. The timing is terrible as you say.

A lot of older folk do struggle with online transactions. However, if clubs are going down this inevitable road then they have to make it easier for folk to complete their purchases. We have cases of scanners not working properly. There's also no excuse for clumsy confusing sites.... are you reading this Livingston FC?

100% agree. I began filing in the questions but then gave up. A missed opportunity from the club to gain some much needed information. My biggest grouse was the single option questions. Also there should have been "don't know/have an opinion" options. It was also a bit woke and to some extent a box ticking exercise. I found the ethnic question impossible to answer as there was no option to simply tick British, although there were other Britsh options. - and thats not making a political point, its true in my case. I simply don't understand why religion was included as we've always been a non denominational club and I hope we stay that way. A poorly put together survey, I'm sorry to say.

OK Texan. I hold my hands up - missed that mate. 😉