Charles Bannerman

On or off? Search me! Where is it recorded? See CaleyD's post around 11am today. He quotes an email from the board stating that it is "impossible" to hold the meeting within the 28 days. April 18 is 26 clear days on from the original requisition, but only 13 after the day of notice. Farce? That's what I've been trying to say at least since the existence of an anonymous board was posted here on Feb 27 - but this reality check is dismissed by some as unduly harsh on the board members! And in that last connection, I should perhaps add that if their backsides hadn't been held to the fire from the start..... we still wouldn't even know who they are!!

Alas, I fear that the current situation is beyond redemption and it is no longer possible to hold a constitutionally valid meeting with a watertight outcome on Wednesday 18th, or to comply with the original requisition at all. In terms of the notice, only 13 clear days were given and, as Caley D stated, it would only require one successful objection to render the meeting invalid. It's also not clear whether any objection could be retrospective, should someone not like any outcome reached. Then there are the means the Board used to publicise the meeting. Did they comply with the legislation? Meanwhile, the removal of the Facebook notification and the Board's attempt to have the arrangement cancelled could arguably leave enough doubt about whether the meeting will go ahead to invite a third possible challenge. The current arrangements could also result in one "side" considering themselves to be under-represented, casting further doubt on any outcome. I suspect that the legal expert within our numbers may have his views, which I imagine it may well not be appropriate for him to express publicly. However, even as a complete layman, and simply based on the several parallels with earlier events on both sides of the merger divide, I do have to wonder about the legality of the story so far? Indeed, if any CJT member got fed up enough, might the whole thing now be wide open to some kind of challenge by way of Interdict, which I believe is a means of preventing a legal wrong?

I strongly disagree. The absolutely central "fact" in this sorry and seemingly endless saga is the Board's persistent refusal and inability to discharge their obligations to Caley Thistle fans, to the law and indeed to the football club in which CJT has a 10% voting stake. Were it not for this extending catalogue of failures and prevarication, there would not be an issue here, because the root cause is the performance of the Board, which hence needs to be highlighted as each fresh depth is plumbed. If this Board is intent on persistently refusing to fulfil these obligations to Caley Thistle fans, then the Board's backsides need collectively and continuously to be applied to the fire until such time as they meet their statutory obligations. As for "my newspaper" - this Thursday's edition will indeed cover this question.... as well as another supporters' institution which has made major progress in recent months - the ICT Social Club.

And I wonder what the response would have been if GKN had come up with that one.....? For goodness sake - these people have, although they apparently deny it, set themselves up as the board of a Limited Company which is subject to Statute. It doesn't matter how "complex" it is to arrange this meeting - they have made themselves legally obliged to fulfil the necessary requirements. Once again, the impression is inevitable that they just do not have the first clue about the implications of what they have insisted on letting themselves in for. I would also suggest that if they are finding it "impossible to achieve" the "request" (it's not a request - it's a legal requirement), then rather than clutch at the excuse of dismissing the procedure as "quite complex", they should instead look at their inability to collect incoming communication within a period of nine of the ample 28 days they have to arrange the meeting. In a sense, they have almost rendered the meeting - or at least Resolution 1 - unnecessary, since the need for them to be replaced has been made demonstrably obvious by their own incompetence.

I don't know if you're a member of CJT or not, Blair, but you would need to make sure that you had become one before you turned up because this meeting should be restricted to members of the Company. In terms of admission, I'd be interested to see exactly what procedures are in place to ensure that everyone that's admitted is a bona fide Company member. I also wonder if Caley D's queries about provision for proxies have been addressed?

Yeh, back in the 70s, I used to be offended by the gender pay gap in Pan's People?

Yes, and I'm sure Joe McCarthy also tried to tell Arthur Miller what Miller meant when he wrote The Crucible. ? Now, to return to the thread topic - is it still the intention to go ahead with a meeting, notice of which appears not to fulfil the legal requirements?

Never actually tasted the stuff, TBH. (Unless the Caley Club has had a dodgy batch of Vodka delivered.) God Almighty, isn't the internet completely awash with obsessive, Politically Correct snowflakes these days! I blame the demise of Religion myself. It used to be the Wee Frees trying to control your behaviour by condemning you to Eternal Damnation for attending a dance. Now, in this post-religious era, you instead get summoned to the Penitent Stool of Facebook, Twitter and Internet Fora by the New Puritanism of simpering handwringers, desperate to fill the behaviour control vacuum which the demise of religion has left. If you look at some of the things folk get offended by on other people's behalf, they are quite frankly far too often completely absurd. For instance, just the other week I was called to task on here for referring to the bleeding obvious of the spoken English of the growing number of call centre employees from the Indian Subcontinent not being very good. Just as well Caleyboy wasn't around during WW2, otherwise he would have branded the chorus "Hitler has only got one b*ll...." as "disrespectful and offensive to our opponents." It really is high time people gave up this self-righteous cr*p, lightened up a bit... or rather a lot.... and allowed freedom of speech to return to our society. Meanwhile, I await with interest the outcome of football clubs eliminating the gender pay gap and seeing how Sportsound achieves gender equality in terms of its participants.

HELLLPPP! I touched the stadium door handle earlier today!

Bill Harper was Principal Teacher of Maths at Millburn, I believe. I think he left not long before 1976 which was when I briefly joined the Millburn Maths Dept and the excellent Ruaridh MacDonald was head of department by then. On that subject, does anyone remember the execrable and self-righteous Bill Greig who styled himself "Senior Assistant Principal Teacher Of Mathematics" - because he had been appointed slightly before Bill Weeks? He was a dreadful individual who was in love with his belt, but at least I got my encounter with the most unpopular and unpleasant colleague of my career over early!

I still can't help but get the feeling that this Board - whether it is self- appointed or has simply failed to reveal the manner of its formation - simply doesn't have a clue as to how serious a situation it faces. This isn't the local Allotments Committee. It's the Board of a Limited Company and as such is subject to the provisions of the Companies Act. What we are now learning is that this Board isn't even capable of organising a meeting within a clearly specified set of rules - and worse still, its excuse for not doing so is that it doesn't have an effective system for receiving communications. I suppose all I can say to that is that, given its non-existent means of giving out communications, this is hardly surprising! Perhaps the current Board's inability to perform even the basic function of receiving communication should also be noted at the forthcoming meeting, because the sorry tale of the calling of this meeting is as unacceptable as the earlier statement that they weren't going to call one on their own initiative because they (conveniently) didn't think it would do any good. I've heard some feeble excuses for self-preservation, but I find this ongoing pantomime to be a regular learning experience.

Apologies! I just looked at a 2 month old post and replied.... never thinking that someone else had made the same post a couple of days previously. Like Admiral Nelson.... I kind of took my eye off the musket ball.

AW! What a missed opportunity, which I only spotted now on reviewing this thread, but better late than never...... As Admiral Nelson said: "Well I see no ships!!!"

I would have thought that the notice calling the meeting SHOULD have defined the business of the meeting verbatim from the communication requisitioning it. Caley D's post does seem to suggest that I am by no means the only person questioning practices and procedures relating to the calling and transaction of this meeting.

IF this, plus any other means of announcement, meet Companies House guidelines for the process of publicising General Meetings, notice was issued at around 2330 on 4th April for a meeting on 18th April. According to this:- www.shoosmiths.co.uk/client-resources/legal-updates/Clear-days-some-clarity-9061.aspx ... and in particular to this quote from it:- "All notice periods for shareholders' meetings must be notice periods of 'clear' days. This means that the notice period must exclude the day on which notice is sent as well as the day on which the meeting is to be held".... the period of notice given for this meeting appears to be 13 clear days. Does this fulfil the requirements of Companies House legislation and of the CJT Articles of Association? Also, does the wording of the notice mean that the debate on Resolution 1 will be followed by a vote on it on the night? And if that vote was to be for the removal of the current Board, what would the procedure and timescale be for the election of a new one in terms of Resolution 2?

The SPFL have just published their scale of payouts for league placing and, since it's looking like a mid to lower table Championship finish for ICT, the club can expect around £200,000. The drop down within the Premiership in particular and from league to league is pretty vast - especially between the top two divisions where the bottom Premiership side, with £1.07M, gets twice the Championship winners' £533K. Just as a sign of how days have changed, if you take 7th in the Premiership as a not atypical ICT finish in years gone by, this season, that's worth £1.36M. It's just another reflection of the financial cost of relegation.

I was a member of the Supporters' Trust but decided not to carry that on to CJT because, on reflection, membership of a supporters' organisation could constitute a conflict of interest since I have not yet quite retired from the reporting business. Furthermore - and somewhat ironically in view of recent posts - I feel that there could be a similar conflict of interest if I WAS a member of the organisation .....at a time when I may be making public and media comment on it as the jobbies get closer and closer to these rapidly spinning blades!

So firstly.... who appointed the Board then? Was a properly constituted, properly minuted and properly concluded General Meeting of the Company involved? If not, then how was the Board appointed? The manner of its appointment seems not unrelated to the current requisition for a General Meeting with a motion for it to stand down. In terms of court action, you have correctly used the conditional - "MIGHT be necessary" - which reflects what I said. I am sure you are aware of how close the Board is to being in breach of the Articles of Association and hence of the Companies Act, in terms of providing categorical arrangements for a meeting to the membership within the prescribed timescale. In terms of my interest in CJT, I'm perfectly entitled to express my views on and take an interest in anything I want without the need to be a member of it. For instance, I am not a member of any political party but still feel free to express my views on any of them. But more to the point here, I AM a shareholder in Inverness Caledonian Thistle and am hence more than entitled to express a view on a body which has a protected 10% voting right in that company - especially when the group claiming to control that body make the Masons look like the inventors of the Freedom Of Information Act. Indeed, I would suggest that your very questioning of my interest is just another reflection of the extremely defensive and restrictive attitude which has been the hallmark of this Board rom the start. Please remember that it even had to be prodded before it would reveal who it members are! If the Board are well aware of the timescale, then presumably you are equally aware of when and how you are legally obliged to provide the membership with confirmed details of the General Meeting which has been requisitioned.

Does this self-appointed "Board" not realise that they are dealing with and are subject to the serious matter of Parliamentary legislation called The Companies' Act here? The ONLY thing they have going for them in terms of their handling of this requisition for the meeting is that 6:27pm on Tuesday April 3rd to 7pm on Wednesday April 18th does, as defined above by Caley D, constitute "14 clear days". HOWEVER that is rendered totally irrelevant and redundant by the fact that, on at least two grounds, they have not yet competently issued a notice of any meeting in terms of the Articles of Association and the Companies Act. Firstly, they haven't actually called a meeting - they have only expressed an unconfirmed intention to do so. And secondly, even that unconfirmed intention has only been communicated to a single individual and not to the membership of the Company as required by the Act. On the assumption that the original requisition for the meeting is competent - and the "Board" have given no indication that they believe that it is not - then they have failed to meet the requirements of the legislation. This situation is still possibly a little short still of the need for Court action, but in that event, the "Board" would certainly find themselves having to explain why they failed to comply with an Act of Parliament and possibly also justify their claim to be the Board of CJT. On the other hand if they are NOT legally entitled to act as the Board of CJT, neither are they legally entitled to respond to a call for a General Meeting. In that event.... who is, then?

4-0 Oakley.

Quite frankly, I'd want to give a very wide berth to anything associated with Scottish football which includes the word "Loyal".

.... presumably for not showing the required degree of loyalty!

Might as well include CJT in there as well.

I'm.... I'm....I'm....I'm.... I'm....I'm....I'm.... inclined to agree that if British refereeing isn't considered great, the same might be said of that part which is Scotland. I.... I....I...I...I...I...I...really wasn't impressed by today's ref.