Leaderboard

Liz, I have thought long and hard about replying to your post in open forum and exacerbating the feelings that you express. I’ve balanced that against the absolute requirement to make points public and open to comment from any quarter. I have to take your post to task on several points. “The current board is only in place at present to protect the 10% shareholding. In my view if the people who are currently listed as board members had not stepped up to resolve all the issues there was a real possibility CJT would fold and the shareholding lost”. This is the first time that this point has been made, despite all of the prior posts on the matter and is not the case. The Board is in place to ensure the proper running of The Society for the benefit of the members. Don Johnstone can make his own points regarding legitimacy (see prior posts) but if the Board of Directors is not properly constituted it is protecting nothing and is in fact endangering the continued existence of CJT if any of the governance bodies decide to investigate and/ or take action. “There has been many appeals for people to step forward to take key roles. There has been letters issued, e-mails sent and also posts on here to try and get people to come forward” Please review all of the posts about this but I recognise it is difficult to recruit to unpaid posts. There has been no widespread appeal. Those who could help you have been actively excluded. Members have been effectively dumped. What you have done is attempted to recruit from a friendly part of the membership, which is understandable but look at the other posts. You have only succeeded in alienating people. “We have been accused of impropritories however, have been working hand in hand with supporters direct who have confirmed that the board is legitimate”. No one has accused you of any impropriety. What they have accused you of (and I continue that) is being wrong. The second part of what you have said here is a case in point. I have spoken to and communicated with Andrew Jenkin of Supporters Direct and his reply was “Yes, we have offered support to CJT by giving them the latest model rules and outlining the process to them (as we do for all members) - but the Trust ought to have gone through the correct procedure to get these approved by the members and voted through at an AGM before submitting these to the FCA. I'm not sure what has been done in respect of this.” I need not point out it’s directly contradicting your points above. You know that you have submitted these rule changes to the FCA without consulting the membership and you have been warned against that on several occasions and refused to respond. You don’t appear to realise the implications of this. They are: section 398 of the Financial Services & Markets Act 2000 (Misleading the FCA or PRA: residual cases) makes it an offence for a firm knowingly or recklessly to provide the FCA with information which is false or misleading in a material particular in purported compliance with the FCA's rules or any other requirement imposed by or under the Act. An offence by a body corporate, partnership or unincorporated association may be attributed to an officer or certain other persons (section 400 of the Act (Offences by bodies corporate etc.)) I don’t know who you are getting guidance from but I would ask you to recheck it for your own sake. “An EGM can easily be called and the current board totally replaced if thats what is required, however, im not wasting my time organising that if only 20 people turn up and nobody is prepared to take on the roles that are required”. Liz, this shouldn’t have been said. You are Chair of a Society registered under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 and as such you and your Board of Directors exist to represent your membership. If they require you to organise an AGM or special general meeting you must do it, no matter how irritating you find that. Just don’t express it in an open forum, again for your own sake. “The roles that are currently needed to be filled with people who have the time on their hands to deal with everything are: Chairperson, Vice Chairperson, Treasurer, Secretary, Membership secretary. On top of these roles, general board members are also required. Ahead of the last AGM which unfortunately I could not attend, there were requests for new board members to stand, we got nobody. So all those people who are quick to shoot me and the other office bearers, please feel free to step, e-mail you intention to stand for board membership and we can put the wheels in motion to get CJT back on track” I’ll deal with this in its entirety. I know the workload required Liz, it’s not easy. I’m sure that your current Board are behind you but I don’t know if I would want to be described as someone “with time on their hands” There are reasons for there being no answers to requests for new board members prior to the AGM because that call was limited to the process I refer to in paragraph 3. Your Board has engaged in a process of refusal to engage with “certain people” (myself included) or give them information that they are entitled to (not granted by favour) as members on the grounds that you believe them to be simply “causing trouble”. It was Kath Fraser who expressed this and it is directly in opposition to the objects of The Society. With the greatest of respect, none of my posts contain any personalised invective and that’s why I have consistently called for the demission of the entire Board, not any one individual. Neither me, nor anyone that I have spoken to on this matter has been quick to shoot you or anyone else. We have put up with months of silence, indecision, backbiting and wrong headedness. Your board has consistently aligned to a position that appears muddled or wrong. Anything that I have said here is backed up by fact and is attributable and that’s the sole reason that I decided to post this publically. Please organise a Special General Meeting at your convenience. We now have sufficient support to mandate this but it would be better for everyone if you instigated it as Chairperson. My apologies for the length of this post.

How many times has there been horrible conditions on the A9 at the high passes whilst no concern at sea level, plenty. How many times has there been a concern for RCFC or ICTFC staff and fans during these times....not many. I'm not saying either situation is correct but double standards are in play. If the weather warning is less than amber then the game should be played.

This is complete nonsense. As Davie says, the holding of a General Meeting isn't something that can be rejected by a self-appointed body, arguably motivated by self interest/preservation, simply based on convenient speculation that enough people MIGHT not turn up. It's a constitutional necessity for goodness sake and, according to Davie's post, apparently a legal one as well! What is being suggested is, incredibly, that a self-appointed body should be allowed to continue to operate by way of deliberately withholding the members' right to elect a constitutional one. What decides the validity of a General Meeting is whether a quorum turns up, not claims from the members of a self-appointed body that this potential challenge to their current status is a waste of time. If, at such a meeting, it did emerge that "nobody" was "prepared to take on the roles required", then if the 10% voting power was the absolute priority that has been stated, there are ways and means of preserving it. My first thought would be pre-specified agenda item for a constitutional amendment to allow trusteeship of the 10% vote to be invested in a small group appointed by the meeting. My interest in this CJT issue was sparked several months ago by the ongoing lapse in CJT's important activities as a supporters' organisation. Unfortunately subsequent events - or lack of them - have caused my previously neutral viewpoint to evolve into something rather different. I now find myself completely dismayed at what looks like an ongoing strategy of silence and of the exclusion of the membership, alongside ambiguous and misleading statements apparently aimed at keeping a self-appointed board of directors in control of such affairs as still exist. That sort of approach, I would prefer to leave to Putin.

It has been announced that ex-Provost Allan Sellar died yesterday at the age of 93. Clearly , as Provost for 12 years from 1980-92, Allan's overall contribution to public life was considerable but on this forum, I think it's important to acknowledge what he did for Inverness Caledonian Thistle, especially in the early days. He had been succeeded as Provost by Bill Fraser by the time the ICT formation process even started, but he was hugely supportive of the campaign to have an Inverness team playing in the SFL. This was so much so that he was chosen by the club to kick the first ceremonial ball at the official opening of the Caledonian Stadium in 1996 (a wonderful lob towards the goal at the North end which even Barry Wilson - I think - had some difficulty taming!) A few years later, in 2001, he became one of the founding trustees of the Inverness Caledonian Thistle Charitable Trust which saw the club out of its extreme financial difficulties at that time.

Surely, after the effort pit into this excellent and very measured post, it deserves a comprehensive response. The ostrich approach will no longer suffice.

I am actually saddened by the incompetence of these recent CJT attempts at communications. Awful, just rank awful standards. Talk about operating in ever decreasing circles!! These are the very same people on the board, pretty much. They have just jiggled about a bit, so to speak. Dear oh dear, the collective arrogance and contempt they must have for supporters and values are starkly obvious. It is embarrassing for the Club and for it's proud supporters and just about everything connected to ICT to have a Supporters group run in such an odious and in a fashion akin to a insular clique. Perhaps people are unwilling to offer their services as anyone who seems to do so and makes it known are seemingly viewed by the board as an usurper, a malcontent or as an integral threat to their own coveted position. I beggars belief how they can make such a farcical hash of even such run of the mill communications and administration matters. For goodness sake, how do they fair when having to deal with more complex and challenging affairs of CJT. They obviously just don't cope, can't cope, fingers in the ears and la la la la la la, "we are the only people that can be on the board" type of complex. Another thing, ( a bit Colombo there ), didn't some of these board members leave, step down at AGM. I am pretty sure they did.....odd, very odd.

It stinks. It is well known Celtic and Rangers have supporters groups from all over Scotland, probably there shall be a bus or buses from Angus travelling to glasgow for the old firm games. Both Angus and Glasgow are heavily affected by snow. However this is deemed fine, whereas a small contingent of supporters and players from Brechin to a completely snow free area is deemed dangerous. It's a joke.

Same sign on A82. No poor road conditions anywhere near! Useless

the amber weather warning is only on the east coast and the trains are running from perth to inverness and Dundee to Aberdeen then onto inverness the a96 is open and clear as is the a9. who else remembers the horrendous journey down to easter road for a league cup semi against hearts on a sunday with no public transport in worse conditions than now on the a9?

Even at Development level Ross County's success is "bought". Last season's team was largely shipped in and not developed by them at all.

It strikes me that the whole thing has been allowed to get into such an irretrievable mess that the only way forward is to start again from scratch and reconstitute the society. Nobody seems even to know who the membership are nor which set of rules the thing is operating under. Indeed as I have been writing, Caley D has posted suggesting that some change with respect to the rules took place on January 8th of this year. How could this be the case if the Society hasn't, as I understand it, held a General Meeting since 2015? Meanwhile a group of six calling itself "The Board" seems in the interim to have appointed itself and, having only reluctantly revealed who the individuals are, appears to be avoiding situations where its status could be challenged such as a General Meeting, which is long, long overdue. Look, folks, this has all the signs of an irredeemable shambles, the upshot of which is that the football club continues to have a completely dysfunctional supporters' organisation at a time when it never had greater need of an active one. Meanwhile the very title "Caley Jags Together" simply acquires a more and more ironic reek! Any sense of togetherness is long gone. The best way forward might be for a completely new body to be formed with a properly constituted board elected by a properly identified membership and operating under properly defined rules... and with a completely fresh title. Then a General Meeting of CJT needs to be called with two items of business on the agenda. 1) To invest all CJT's rights and assets in the newly constituted body and 2) To wind up CJT. Before you dismiss this as fanciful, please remember that this is, in effect, how this football club came into being in 1994.

I suspect that the SPFL's take on it will largely coincide with the generic Scottish one - whatever the situation is within peeing distance of George Square gets applied to the whole country. Similarly, before Christmas, we had Ian Blair's complete inability to conceive of the effects of an accident on the A9 on a 250 mile trip to Dumfries. Observed on a sign beside a black A9 to Dingwall on a glorious morning yesterday - AVOID ROAD TRAVEL. Full stop. Complete generalisation.

If the pitch is playable, play it. Also, the decision not to play Dunfermline on the Saturday a few weeks ago looks increasingly moronic.

Eh? My post was in response to one by Kingsmills who was suggesting a boycott of the TV companies, not a boycott of attending the matches. I didn't respond to your earlier post, but seeing as you mention it again, I don't think a boycott of attending games would work either. Personally, I am not going to stay away from supporting my team just to p*ss off a TV company which couldn't care less whether I'm there or not. They are only concerned about how many watch on TV. Personally I can't think too many people who choose to watch a match on TV are going to switch off when they see a smaller crowd.

Thanks to CaleyD for yesterday posting links to both the new Rules and the old Rules. They make for interesting reading and I would recommend anyone who wishes to participate meaningfully in this constitutional debate to have a read of them. Whatever the situation was before the current Board of CJT took over, it has recently got a whole lot worse. We have several people who have expressed concern about the unconstitutional way in which some matters have been dealt with by the Board and therefore it is important that the Board's Rules are seen to be followed by all parties going forward. But what Rules, if any, are now legally valid? The old Rules state that amendments to the rules must be submitted as an "extraordinary resolution" at a general meeting of the Society and that they need to be approved by a majority of 75% of the votes cast. The new Rules have been submitted to, and now registered by, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). In submitting them, the Secretary signed a Statutory Declaration stating that the amendment has been made in the manner provided in the rules. Given that these new Rules were not presented to a general meeting and were not approved by the members, the seriousness of the action, which Davie alludes to above, cannot be underestimated. But whilst there is clearly a serious legal liability issue for the Board, there is also a serious practical problem for the Society as a whole. The Rules are deemed to be in force when registered with the FCA. The new Rules have been registered but were not approved by the membership as the old Rules require. And the old Rules are no longer those registered with the FCA. So which, are the legally valid rules ? Or are neither of them now legally valid? I would suggest the Board seeks urgent legal advice on this and takes the appropriate steps to rectify the situation. In the meantime, I would assume the old Rules should apply both because the new Rules have not been approved by the membership and because they were submitted to the registration body with an untrue statement. On the plus side, there do not appear to be too many differences between the old and the new Rules and therefore using the old Rules until the new Rules have been appropriately registered should not lead to major problems. There is clearly a need for a Special General Meeting (SGM) for a number of reasons. (Note the term in the rules is "special" and not "extraordinary"). But it is important to note that under the Rules (old and new!") "no business other than that stated in the notice of the meeting shall be conducted at the meeting." The meeting will not allow members to raise issues from the floor. So whilst there is an urgency for a meeting for other reasons, it is also important that the agenda of the meeting is carefully thought through and that as a priority, it deals with the Rules issue. I would respectfully suggest that in the notice of the meeting the Board provides the members with copies of the old and new rules together with a document which details the changes and the reasons for them. Provided that nobody identifies any serious problems with the amendments then there should be no reason why the new rules cannot be approved by the required 75% of votes cast. Sorry for the length of this but it seems to me that having an assurance that our Rules are constitutionally and legally valid is a basic precursor of moving forward. All other actions require to be carried out within the Rules and we cannot have their legitimacy undermined because the Rules used were not valid.

Possibly a bit harsh there bell and Calder recently along with Oakley have been decent! High hopes for young McKay as well not all gloom! If not play offs this year least a final to look forward to

I drove up from Fife. Which has similar conditions to Brechin, not a bother once out my street. Unbelievable they called this game off. The traffic from Brechin to Inverness would hardly have had a major impact on the road network. Poor call by the police and clubs. About time we stopped being the nice guys and start doing what's best for us.

It's maybe also worth observing that, at time of writing, all league games, run by the SPFL, are off while a few yards along the corridor, all four Scottish Cup ties, with their attendant TV money and run by the SFA, are still on. On the other hand maybe it's simply a case of the SFA not having noticed that it's been snowing because they are still looking for the "Morton ball".

Bizzarely, Aberdeen v Killie is going ahead despite Killie fans facing, presumably, similar travel difficulties if not worse than Brechin fans!

I suppose if the police are advising that folk from the Brechin area should not travel, then there is little option but to call it off. Given the chaos there has been in some parts of the country it is understandable if on-going travel advise is on the "precautionary" side. How folk on the continent must laugh at us! A basic principle is a match should go on if:- 1. The pitch is playable 2. The access road and pavements around the ground are clear of ice and snow. 3. The away side assess that it is safe for the team to travel. Fans live all over the place and it will be safe for some to travel and not for others. It must be up to individuals to listen to advice and decide for themselves as to whether it is safe to travel or not. We are all accountable for our own decisions. I wonder how much money the club has spent on using the under soil heating to make the pitch playable only for the match to be postponed.

That is the sort of patronising comment usually made about us. It's no less patronising coming from one of our own fans.

Who feckin cares - apart from Uncle Roy and his wee pal Charlie.

Its a lot warmer in the cheap seats!! ?

Toilets!!! Is it not just pee where you stand/sit?

we should just scrap the whole season and start again in april over the summer months.

Liz’s response is direct but does offer much more in terms of ways to work together. I refer to an exchange between Liz and a poster on here (in the other pinned thread), snorbens-caley man on Aug 25th. Replying regards new members, Liz as Chair said: ‘once the renewal process is completed we will open up again to new members’ I am not a member and would like to be but have been waiting 6 months since that message for the membership to be sorted. Anyway, what’s done is done. I would like to become a member of CJT and be part of that 20 or more in attendance - at an EGM - can I? I’m still adhering to the principle for existing membership to be sorted. Also, I posted on here quite firmly and would stand for a vote to be on the board if that’s what is needed. As with others, not my angle or intention but I do agree with Liz about stepping up to the plate. A bit chicken and egg in a horse and cart however for me in this respect as new membership has been on a hiatus.

I prepared a document back in 2011 which was made available to the members at the time and before they were asked to vote on the implementation at the GM in 2012....attached for those who like a little bedtime reading!! ST Rules Comparison.pdf

I absolutely agree that CJT need to discuss the voting rights with the Club Board before anything else, but in order to do that, it is essential to establish that the people representing CJT are doing so legitimately and have the backing of the membership. We need an EGM and then it should be the CJT Board which emerges from that which takes the issue forward.

A change of name for commercial reasons is one thing which might easily pass any of us by. A move, by one of the oldest clubs in the country, to an entirely new location is a different thing altogether.

For a sports journalist, that question betrays a surprising ignorance.

We can't blame the pitch or the referees, guys. We are bang average and the reasons are various: small core support, poor club management over past 2.5 years, poor recruitment, poor discipline, hangovers from previous regimes etc. My concern is not this season, but whether we can sustain another year as a full-time club. That is where we are at - either next season or the next, we have to accept the real possibility of having to go part-time. That is the magnitude of the failings over the last 2 seasons.

The current board is only in place at present to protect the 10% shareholding. In my view if the people who are currently listed as board members had not stepped up to resolve all the issues there was a real possibility CJT would fold and the shareholding lost. There has been many appeals for people to step forward to take key roles. There has been letters issued, e-mails sent and also posts on here to try and get people to come forward. We have been accused of impropritories however, have been working hand in hand with supporters direct who have confirmed that the board is legitimate. I, as the chair am more than happy to stand down at any time, however, there has been nobody who is willing to take on the role so im stuck. As a lot of you know my personal sircumstaces changed drastically last year following the death of my 16 month old grandson, priorities changed. An EGM can easily be called and the current board totally replaced if thats what is required, however, im not wasting my time organising that if only 20 people turn up and nobody is prepared to take on the roles that are required. The roles that are currently needed to be filled with people who have the time on their hands to deal with everything are: Chairperson Vice Chairperson Treasurer Secretary Membership secretary On top of these roles, general board members are also required. Ahead of the last AGM which unfortunately I could not attend, there were requests for new board members to stand, we got nobody. So all those people who are quick to shoot me and the other office bearers, please feel free to step, e-mail you intention to stand for board membership and we can put the wheels in motion to get CJT back on track. Scotty - anyone who wants to check their current membership position can also e-mail the new CJT e-mail addess in the opening post and it will be confirmed. Liz MacRae

What a load of rubbish been spouted about rebuilding and consolidating we should've been going all out to win the league at first attempt have less money nxt season! Jury's out in my mind on all of Robbos signings to don't see any spl quality there at all