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CAST Need to act

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  • what is B20?

    It's a nightclub in Eastenders I think.
    That's E20 ffs, I don't watch mind the Mrs has it on in the background. :wink:
  • Are you the Judean People's Front?
  • Are you the Judean People's Front?

    image
  • PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.
    Perfectly reasonable questions. This is not a CAST forum so I will reply only on the basis that it's my personal opinion, and which i have not yet shared with the rest of the team.

    Indeed the principle concern we had was about timing. It absolutely was not a narrow issue of "we don't want to boycott because we personally have bought season tickets", as was portrayed on here. At the same time, there would have been a question of hypocrisy. Many CAST members are season-ticket holders. We would be asking them to boycott, which would mean that all CAST board members who are ST holders, would need to be convinced that the idea would have the desired effect, at that time, which was mid July.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately. At the time, on balance we judged that the takeover was likely to proceed in the timescales fed to us, and that being the case, we decided that we would look neither responsible nor mature by backing the call at that time. Or to put it more graphically, to avoid getting a message from Gerard Murphy along the lines of "what part of 'two weeks hopefully, please be patient' did you clowns not understand?"

    It now appears that our relative optimism was misplaced and none of us bow to anyone in our dismay at that. Therefore it follows that we will review our decision, not least because there were opinions of, 'well if it were (xxxdate) it might be different."

    Personally I think boycotts are highly problematic, as can be seen on CL every day, but I also believe in multiple activities at the same time to achieve our goals.

    Hope that clarifies.
  • PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.
    Perfectly reasonable questions. This is not a CAST forum so I will reply only on the basis that it's my personal opinion, and which i have not yet shared with the rest of the team.

    Indeed the principle concern we had was about timing. It absolutely was not a narrow issue of "we don't want to boycott because we personally have bought season tickets", as was portrayed on here. At the same time, there would have been a question of hypocrisy. Many CAST members are season-ticket holders. We would be asking them to boycott, which would mean that all CAST board members who are ST holders, would need to be convinced that the idea would have the desired effect, at that time, which was mid July.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately. At the time, on balance we judged that the takeover was likely to proceed in the timescales fed to us, and that being the case, we decided that we would look neither responsible nor mature by backing the call at that time. Or to put it more graphically, to avoid getting a message from Gerard Murphy along the lines of "what part of 'two weeks hopefully, please be patient' did you clowns not understand?"

    It now appears that our relative optimism was misplaced and none of us bow to anyone in our dismay at that. Therefore it follows that we will review our decision, not least because there were opinions of, 'well if it were (xxxdate) it might be different."

    Personally I think boycotts are highly problematic, as can be seen on CL every day, but I also believe in multiple activities at the same time to achieve our goals.

    Hope that clarifies.
    Thanks for your speedy response. It does clarify the past position and I can see the logic you used to arrive at your position.

    However, as I asked in my previous post, now that a takeover in the short term is problematic, has the position of CAST changed - or will it change, and if so, to what?

    Thanks once again.
  • PeterGage said:

    PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.
    Perfectly reasonable questions. This is not a CAST forum so I will reply only on the basis that it's my personal opinion, and which i have not yet shared with the rest of the team.

    Indeed the principle concern we had was about timing. It absolutely was not a narrow issue of "we don't want to boycott because we personally have bought season tickets", as was portrayed on here. At the same time, there would have been a question of hypocrisy. Many CAST members are season-ticket holders. We would be asking them to boycott, which would mean that all CAST board members who are ST holders, would need to be convinced that the idea would have the desired effect, at that time, which was mid July.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately. At the time, on balance we judged that the takeover was likely to proceed in the timescales fed to us, and that being the case, we decided that we would look neither responsible nor mature by backing the call at that time. Or to put it more graphically, to avoid getting a message from Gerard Murphy along the lines of "what part of 'two weeks hopefully, please be patient' did you clowns not understand?"

    It now appears that our relative optimism was misplaced and none of us bow to anyone in our dismay at that. Therefore it follows that we will review our decision, not least because there were opinions of, 'well if it were (xxxdate) it might be different."

    Personally I think boycotts are highly problematic, as can be seen on CL every day, but I also believe in multiple activities at the same time to achieve our goals.

    Hope that clarifies.
    Thanks for your speedy response. It does clarify the past position and I can see the logic you used to arrive at your position.

    However, as I asked in my previous post, now that a takeover in the short term is problematic, has the position of CAST changed - or will it change, and if so, to what?

    Thanks once again.
    And to that, I can only reply, you can bet that we will review it, and soon.

    But that said, I would dispute whether CAST recommending the boycott would influence many members who are currently not minded to boycott, to do so. People will make up their own minds on that, as they are doing now, prompting furious debate on here.

  • edited August 2018

    PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.
    Perfectly reasonable questions. This is not a CAST forum so I will reply only on the basis that it's my personal opinion, and which i have not yet shared with the rest of the team.

    Indeed the principle concern we had was about timing. It absolutely was not a narrow issue of "we don't want to boycott because we personally have bought season tickets", as was portrayed on here. At the same time, there would have been a question of hypocrisy. Many CAST members are season-ticket holders. We would be asking them to boycott, which would mean that all CAST board members who are ST holders, would need to be convinced that the idea would have the desired effect, at that time, which was mid July.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately. At the time, on balance we judged that the takeover was likely to proceed in the timescales fed to us, and that being the case, we decided that we would look neither responsible nor mature by backing the call at that time. Or to put it more graphically, to avoid getting a message from Gerard Murphy along the lines of "what part of 'two weeks hopefully, please be patient' did you clowns not understand?"

    It now appears that our relative optimism was misplaced and none of us bow to anyone in our dismay at that. Therefore it follows that we will review our decision, not least because there were opinions of, 'well if it were (xxxdate) it might be different."

    Personally I think boycotts are highly problematic, as can be seen on CL every day, but I also believe in multiple activities at the same time to achieve our goals.

    Hope that clarifies.
    This is not a CAST forum? Are you saying this is a CARD forum then? I thought it was a Charlton forum!
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  • PeterGage said:

    PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.
    Perfectly reasonable questions. This is not a CAST forum so I will reply only on the basis that it's my personal opinion, and which i have not yet shared with the rest of the team.

    Indeed the principle concern we had was about timing. It absolutely was not a narrow issue of "we don't want to boycott because we personally have bought season tickets", as was portrayed on here. At the same time, there would have been a question of hypocrisy. Many CAST members are season-ticket holders. We would be asking them to boycott, which would mean that all CAST board members who are ST holders, would need to be convinced that the idea would have the desired effect, at that time, which was mid July.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately. At the time, on balance we judged that the takeover was likely to proceed in the timescales fed to us, and that being the case, we decided that we would look neither responsible nor mature by backing the call at that time. Or to put it more graphically, to avoid getting a message from Gerard Murphy along the lines of "what part of 'two weeks hopefully, please be patient' did you clowns not understand?"

    It now appears that our relative optimism was misplaced and none of us bow to anyone in our dismay at that. Therefore it follows that we will review our decision, not least because there were opinions of, 'well if it were (xxxdate) it might be different."

    Personally I think boycotts are highly problematic, as can be seen on CL every day, but I also believe in multiple activities at the same time to achieve our goals.

    Hope that clarifies.
    Thanks for your speedy response. It does clarify the past position and I can see the logic you used to arrive at your position.

    However, as I asked in my previous post, now that a takeover in the short term is problematic, has the position of CAST changed - or will it change, and if so, to what?

    Thanks once again.
    And to that, I can only reply, you can bet that we will review it, and soon.

    But that said, I would dispute whether CAST recommending the boycott would influence many members who are currently not minded to boycott, to do so. People will make up their own minds on that, as they are doing now, prompting furious debate on here.

    Don't disagree with your point in para 2, but it would be nice if CARD and CAST agreed tbe same way forward, which isn't the case right now. I look forward therefore to the next positioning paper of CAST, whenever that may be; sooner rather than later
  • edited August 2018



    You may not have criticised and undermined publicly but I'm aware that you've lied about our intentions and methods in order to discredit ROT within the coalition. Why? I do not know, only you know that.

    Our meeting of 10th October 2017 with you and one other member of CARD was positive and we left on the understanding that we had a collaboration. You were tasked with investigating the requirements on the Belgian municipal election system, whilst the other CARD member was tasked with exploring ideas for a party name and logo, and to commission a party promotional video for the agreed launch date of 5th December 2017. I emailed the notes to you on 12th October 2017. On 1st November you expressed the view that we should delay the launch and that waiting another month or so would not jeopardise the campaign, that was the last communication I had from you on the matter.

    We continued preparations for the launch, but in mid November I was contacted by another member of the coalition to say that CARD would not support us because it was thought a takeover was imminent and our activities might negatively affect that. Based on that premise, at around that time we were also told the protest fund could not be used for something that might impact on the takeover and therefore would not be available to ROT.

    A week or so after the launch you asked if you could write something about ROT in the VOTV and I agreed. The result was a few lines in the news roundup - thanks for that.

    We have consistently believed there is a need to keep the pressure on in all possible ways until Duchâtelet has left the building, and that is what we will continue to do. You can have whatever opinion you want on whether the amount of effort required is worth it, but since it's not you making the effort why should you care? I just find it extremely sad that this opportunity may well fall short simply because for some reason YOU don't approve.

    As for B20? Like it or not, ROT are not answerable for their views. If the tweets were in tweeted from the ROT twitter account that would be different.


    I haven't lied about your intentions to anyone - we made our concerns clear to you at the meeting and it then became apparent to us that you had a view about how you wanted to proceed regardless of them - the launch without a candidate being the obvious example. To be honest I haven't spoken to anyone in CARD about ROT for months, probably since then. We were tasked to assess your plan for the group at that stage and feed back. We did so; you didn't like the conclusion we reached but it was never a blanket refusal for all time. We mainly felt it would be very difficult to take forward successfully and likely wouldn't be needed.

    It's disingenuous to say we didn't get back to you because @davo55 did, on behalf of CARD. But that was nine or ten months ago.

    You've had numerous discussions with @davo55 since then and he is supporting you. So are others, but you are struggling for numbers because you were always going to struggle for numbers, in my opinion.

    Even last week I got an email from someone in ROT asking to know why I wasn't actively supporting it, and replied knowing full well it would be shared and followed up and turned into personal criticism, even though it was a private response. And here we are.

    At no stage have I aired my reservations publicly, but your mate with the B20 twitter account wanted to stir it as usual. It's massively tedious.

    As with previous experience with the B20 and ROT, you ask for advice and help and then ignore it (two CARD comms people had spoken at length about the best way to use the original Duchatelet video for example, but your group went your own way). That's fine, it's advice, but it's not unreasonable if people stop giving it if they don't feel it's valued. Why not just get on and do what you want to do? It's not CARD or the protest fund or me that is holding you back.
  • We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately.

    New owners will see our passion for the club, how fans have been hurt, and our desperation to return our pride to support our club. If new owners don’t see that then they might as well fuck off!

    #PragueAddick
  • edited August 2018
    They are. (Reply to AB).
  • Mrkinski said:

    PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.
    Perfectly reasonable questions. This is not a CAST forum so I will reply only on the basis that it's my personal opinion, and which i have not yet shared with the rest of the team.

    Indeed the principle concern we had was about timing. It absolutely was not a narrow issue of "we don't want to boycott because we personally have bought season tickets", as was portrayed on here. At the same time, there would have been a question of hypocrisy. Many CAST members are season-ticket holders. We would be asking them to boycott, which would mean that all CAST board members who are ST holders, would need to be convinced that the idea would have the desired effect, at that time, which was mid July.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately. At the time, on balance we judged that the takeover was likely to proceed in the timescales fed to us, and that being the case, we decided that we would look neither responsible nor mature by backing the call at that time. Or to put it more graphically, to avoid getting a message from Gerard Murphy along the lines of "what part of 'two weeks hopefully, please be patient' did you clowns not understand?"

    It now appears that our relative optimism was misplaced and none of us bow to anyone in our dismay at that. Therefore it follows that we will review our decision, not least because there were opinions of, 'well if it were (xxxdate) it might be different."

    Personally I think boycotts are highly problematic, as can be seen on CL every day, but I also believe in multiple activities at the same time to achieve our goals.

    Hope that clarifies.
    This is nor a CAST forum? Are you saying this is a CARD forum then? I thought it was a Charlton forum!
    Prague clearly did not say that or even infer that. Not helpful.
  • They are. (Reply to AB).

    Sorry, what do you mean?
  • Mametz said:

    How about supporting something that is already working to get Roland out?

    It's a one off, extremely timely initiative - ROT.

    Don't think we can just wait for that, to be honest. More needs to happen and more quickly, in a place where many people can get involved more easily. We need to make the football authorities and the local authorities uncomfortable here.
    Not at all sure I understand this comment.

    ROT are asking for support from people acting immediately by becoming members and thus giving financial support. They are also asking for volunteers to go to Belgium in less than two weeks time to deliver leaflets and other propaganda.

    Have you a plan to make the football authorities and the local (?) authorities uncomfortable quicker than that?
    I wish you well with it, but it’s not a solution of itself, which I think some of you are in danger of mistaking it for. It’s just another protest and one that’s difficult for 99 per cent of fans to participate meaningfully in and hard to get a critical mass of local people to engage in, beyond the bubble of publicity you will create around it.

    Already there is a narrative being set up that it would have been more successful if only CARD or me or someone else had done more to make it work, complete with the usual look-at-me tweets from the B20 account, often factually mistaken as this weekend and taken down when others involved point that out. How does that help anyone? Do you think it encourages those being dug out to get involved, two and a half years into this?

    No, i don’t have the answers but it would be foolish to rely solely on one tactic, which is difficult to pull off, very far away, when the biggest resource we have is weight of numbers and passion here in England. We need to find a way to harness that.


    Then why advocate a boycott of home games? That carries risk of fans not gathering at all.

    I also see you say you still believe RD will be gone by October. If you have this faith why are you supportive of non attendance at the Valley?

    My concern is with 5k season tickets a boycott is less meaningful.
  • PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately.
    The desire for a place in the boardroom is exactly what is holding CAST back, imo and is why I've never joined, the focus should be protecting the club and for the last 4 years has meant getting RD out, not protecting future relationships that may never exist.

    Also, surely any future owner will understand
    the situation that caused the call to do something, I know I'm biased but I can't think of any other clubs that have relied on their fans like ours.

    If I was looking to buy the club the dedication and passion shown by fans during protests would impress me, not worry me.


    It would be a massive benefit if the Trust, or any competent Charlton fan had a place in the boardroom,.
  • PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately.
    The desire for a place in the boardroom is exactly what is holding CAST back, imo and is why I've never joined, the focus should be protecting the club and for the last 4 years has meant getting RD out, not protecting future relationships that may never exist.

    Also, surely any future owner will understand
    the situation that caused the call to do something, I know I'm biased but I can't think of any other clubs that have relied on their fans like ours.

    If I was looking to buy the club the dedication and passion shown by fans during protests would impress me, not worry me.


    i think i have just posted the same - thanks for agreeing
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  • Mametz said:

    How about supporting something that is already working to get Roland out?

    It's a one off, extremely timely initiative - ROT.

    Don't think we can just wait for that, to be honest. More needs to happen and more quickly, in a place where many people can get involved more easily. We need to make the football authorities and the local authorities uncomfortable here.
    Not at all sure I understand this comment.

    ROT are asking for support from people acting immediately by becoming members and thus giving financial support. They are also asking for volunteers to go to Belgium in less than two weeks time to deliver leaflets and other propaganda.

    Have you a plan to make the football authorities and the local (?) authorities uncomfortable quicker than that?
    I wish you well with it, but it’s not a solution of itself, which I think some of you are in danger of mistaking it for. It’s just another protest and one that’s difficult for 99 per cent of fans to participate meaningfully in and hard to get a critical mass of local people to engage in, beyond the bubble of publicity you will create around it.

    Already there is a narrative being set up that it would have been more successful if only CARD or me or someone else had done more to make it work, complete with the usual look-at-me tweets from the B20 account, often factually mistaken as this weekend and taken down when others involved point that out. How does that help anyone? Do you think it encourages those being dug out to get involved, two and a half years into this?

    No, i don’t have the answers but it would be foolish to rely solely on one tactic, which is difficult to pull off, very far away, when the biggest resource we have is weight of numbers and passion here in England. We need to find a way to harness that.


    Then why advocate a boycott of home games? That carries risk of fans not gathering at all.

    I also see you say you still believe RD will be gone by October. If you have this faith why are you supportive of non attendance at the Valley?

    My concern is with 5k season tickets a boycott is less meaningful.
    There are no perfect answers, but standing aside and doing nothing different won't help either. CARD voted to support a boycott; ROT wants to campaign in an election. It doesn't mean everyone has to boycott or that everyone has to go to Belgium to be right or that those who do either are wrong.
  • PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately.
    The desire for a place in the boardroom is exactly what is holding CAST back, imo and is why I've never joined, the focus should be protecting the club and for the last 4 years has meant getting RD out, not protecting future relationships that may never exist.

    Also, surely any future owner will understand
    the situation that caused the call to do something, I know I'm biased but I can't think of any other clubs that have relied on their fans like ours.

    If I was looking to buy the club the dedication and passion shown by fans during protests would impress me, not worry me.


    It would be a massive benefit if the Trust, or any competent Charlton fan had a place in the boardroom,.
    I agree, but focusing on that now is a mistake, imo.
  • PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately.
    The desire for a place in the boardroom is exactly what is holding CAST back, imo and is why I've never joined, the focus should be protecting the club and for the last 4 years has meant getting RD out, not protecting future relationships that may never exist.

    Also, surely any future owner will understand
    the situation that caused the call to do something, I know I'm biased but I can't think of any other clubs that have relied on their fans like ours.

    If I was looking to buy the club the dedication and passion shown by fans during protests would impress me, not worry me.


    It would be a massive benefit if the Trust, or any competent Charlton fan had a place in the boardroom,.
    I agree, but focusing on that now is a mistake, imo.
    I don't think they are focussing on that, their focus is currently on the ELF.

    Most clubs like to have a dialogue with fans, and some let them have a (small) voice in the decision making process. It would be odd if CAST didn't want to be involved in that process wouldn't it?
  • Blimey, @lancashire lad what have you started? :-)
  • Mametz said:

    How about supporting something that is already working to get Roland out?

    It's a one off, extremely timely initiative - ROT.

    Don't think we can just wait for that, to be honest. More needs to happen and more quickly, in a place where many people can get involved more easily. We need to make the football authorities and the local authorities uncomfortable here.
    Not at all sure I understand this comment.

    ROT are asking for support from people acting immediately by becoming members and thus giving financial support. They are also asking for volunteers to go to Belgium in less than two weeks time to deliver leaflets and other propaganda.

    Have you a plan to make the football authorities and the local (?) authorities uncomfortable quicker than that?
    I wish you well with it, but it’s not a solution of itself, which I think some of you are in danger of mistaking it for. It’s just another protest and one that’s difficult for 99 per cent of fans to participate meaningfully in and hard to get a critical mass of local people to engage in, beyond the bubble of publicity you will create around it.

    Already there is a narrative being set up that it would have been more successful if only CARD or me or someone else had done more to make it work, complete with the usual look-at-me tweets from the B20 account, often factually mistaken as this weekend and taken down when others involved point that out. How does that help anyone? Do you think it encourages those being dug out to get involved, two and a half years into this?

    No, i don’t have the answers but it would be foolish to rely solely on one tactic, which is difficult to pull off, very far away, when the biggest resource we have is weight of numbers and passion here in England. We need to find a way to harness that.


    Then why advocate a boycott of home games? That carries risk of fans not gathering at all.

    I also see you say you still believe RD will be gone by October. If you have this faith why are you supportive of non attendance at the Valley?

    My concern is with 5k season tickets a boycott is less meaningful.
    There are no perfect answers, but standing aside and doing nothing different won't help either. CARD voted to support a boycott; ROT wants to campaign in an election. It doesn't mean everyone has to boycott or that everyone has to go to Belgium to be right or that those who do either are wrong.
    But if you believe he will be gone by October why is ‘do nothing’ not the appropriate way forward?

    Your response ignores I feel that on one hand we need to use our weight of numbers but then encourage people to stay away.

    I can only see that working if we could get a very significant volume of supporters at an away game to visibly show the media and others suppporters are their for the club but not when at the valley. If you like a ‘project’ style mass away support. But that I don’t think is achievable.


  • You may not have criticised and undermined publicly but I'm aware that you've lied about our intentions and methods in order to discredit ROT within the coalition. Why? I do not know, only you know that.

    Our meeting of 10th October 2017 with you and one other member of CARD was positive and we left on the understanding that we had a collaboration. You were tasked with investigating the requirements on the Belgian municipal election system, whilst the other CARD member was tasked with exploring ideas for a party name and logo, and to commission a party promotional video for the agreed launch date of 5th December 2017. I emailed the notes to you on 12th October 2017. On 1st November you expressed the view that we should delay the launch and that waiting another month or so would not jeopardise the campaign, that was the last communication I had from you on the matter.

    We continued preparations for the launch, but in mid November I was contacted by another member of the coalition to say that CARD would not support us because it was thought a takeover was imminent and our activities might negatively affect that. Based on that premise, at around that time we were also told the protest fund could not be used for something that might impact on the takeover and therefore would not be available to ROT.

    A week or so after the launch you asked if you could write something about ROT in the VOTV and I agreed. The result was a few lines in the news roundup - thanks for that.

    We have consistently believed there is a need to keep the pressure on in all possible ways until Duchâtelet has left the building, and that is what we will continue to do. You can have whatever opinion you want on whether the amount of effort required is worth it, but since it's not you making the effort why should you care? I just find it extremely sad that this opportunity may well fall short simply because for some reason YOU don't approve.

    As for B20? Like it or not, ROT are not answerable for their views. If the tweets were in tweeted from the ROT twitter account that would be different.


    I haven't lied about your intentions to anyone - we made our concerns clear to you at the meeting and it then became apparent to us that you had a view about how you wanted to proceed regardless of them - the launch without a candidate being the obvious example. To be honest I haven't spoken to anyone in CARD about ROT for months, probably since then. We were tasked to assess your plan for the group at that stage and feed back. We did so; you didn't like the conclusion we reached but it was never a blanket refusal for all time. We mainly felt it would be very difficult to take forward successfully and likely wouldn't be needed.

    It's disingenuous to say we didn't get back to you because @davo55 did, on behalf of CARD. But that was nine or ten months ago.

    You've had numerous discussions with @davo55 since then and he is supporting you. So are others, but you are struggling for numbers because you were always going to struggle for numbers, in my opinion.

    Even last week I got an email from someone in ROT asking to know why I wasn't actively supporting it, and replied knowing full well it would be shared and followed up and turned into personal criticism, even though it was a private response. And here we are.

    At no stage have I aired my reservations publicly, but your mate with the B20 twitter account wanted to stir it as usual. It's massively tedious.

    As with previous experience with the B20 and ROT, you ask for advice and help and then ignore it (two CARD comms people had spoken at length about the best way to use the original Duchatelet video for example, but your group went your own way). That's fine, it's advice, but it's not unreasonable if people stop giving it if they don't feel it's valued. Why not just get on and do what you want to do? It's not CARD or the protest fund or me that is holding you back.
    Rick, I'll not persue this further here but will email you later. One point to put straight though is that I did say someone from CARD contacted me to say our campaign couldn't be supported. That was indeed Davo55.
  • JamesSeed said:

    PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately.
    The desire for a place in the boardroom is exactly what is holding CAST back, imo and is why I've never joined, the focus should be protecting the club and for the last 4 years has meant getting RD out, not protecting future relationships that may never exist.

    Also, surely any future owner will understand
    the situation that caused the call to do something, I know I'm biased but I can't think of any other clubs that have relied on their fans like ours.

    If I was looking to buy the club the dedication and passion shown by fans during protests would impress me, not worry me.


    It would be a massive benefit if the Trust, or any competent Charlton fan had a place in the boardroom,.
    I agree, but focusing on that now is a mistake, imo.
    I don't think they are focussing on that, their focus is currently on the ELF.

    Most clubs like to have a dialogue with fans, and some let them have a (small) voice in the decision making process. It would be odd if CAST didn't want to be involved in that process wouldn't it?
    As Prague stated earlier, that desire shapes their decisions, I'd call that focus.
  • They are. (Reply to AB).

    Sorry, what do you mean?
    You said 'why not just get on & do what you want to do'.

    And I said 'they are'

    You're welcome.
  • Mrkinski said:

    PeterGage said:

    Of course CAST is "doing something". Three of us (one of whom is supposed to be on holiday) have spent most of our weekend on it. But it's the nature of Supporter Trust stuff that it is prepared with care and below the radar until such time as we have something concrete to report.

    There is absolutely no point in the Trust trying to duplicate either CARD or ROT efforts to generate public attention to our plight. Indeed we are part of CARD, that is the whole point of it. Within the CARD team you have at least two people who are media professionals, and better placed to understand and activate the media than anyone within the Trust Board. That is the strength of the Coalition.

    And as for ROT? Well, see you in Sint-Truiden sometime soon.

    Roland Out Today.

    Thanks for your post.

    CAST recently announced that it does not support the proposed actions of CARD, due as I recall to the impending sale of the club. Now that it seems that the sale is far from certain, does CAST retain their previous stance? Furthermore what actions are CAST recommending to it's paid supporters to help bring forward the sale?

    Thanks in advance for your response.
    Perfectly reasonable questions. This is not a CAST forum so I will reply only on the basis that it's my personal opinion, and which i have not yet shared with the rest of the team.

    Indeed the principle concern we had was about timing. It absolutely was not a narrow issue of "we don't want to boycott because we personally have bought season tickets", as was portrayed on here. At the same time, there would have been a question of hypocrisy. Many CAST members are season-ticket holders. We would be asking them to boycott, which would mean that all CAST board members who are ST holders, would need to be convinced that the idea would have the desired effect, at that time, which was mid July.

    We also always have to ask ourselves, about any call for our members to do "something", how would the next owner view our actions? Are they the actions of responsible mature people with whom they could in future have "structured dialogue" a permanent fans voice in the boardroom ultimately. At the time, on balance we judged that the takeover was likely to proceed in the timescales fed to us, and that being the case, we decided that we would look neither responsible nor mature by backing the call at that time. Or to put it more graphically, to avoid getting a message from Gerard Murphy along the lines of "what part of 'two weeks hopefully, please be patient' did you clowns not understand?"

    It now appears that our relative optimism was misplaced and none of us bow to anyone in our dismay at that. Therefore it follows that we will review our decision, not least because there were opinions of, 'well if it were (xxxdate) it might be different."

    Personally I think boycotts are highly problematic, as can be seen on CL every day, but I also believe in multiple activities at the same time to achieve our goals.

    Hope that clarifies.
    This is nor a CAST forum? Are you saying this is a CARD forum then? I thought it was a Charlton forum!
    Prague clearly did not say that or even infer that. Not helpful.
    I wasn't trying to be unhelpful. I come here as I think this is a Charlton Forum that allows (and encourages) all viewpoints - protesters and non-protestors, Card, ROT and everyone who loves CAFC. Sorry if I misunderstood the meaning of the "This is not a CAST forum" line from PragueAddick.
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