Free Professional Provision

[Scotty]

if I come home I am usually well oiled, get a lift to the game

forgot the lifted at the game part :o

[Jay_7]

I too have worked in middle management and am aware of the need to look at things from both sides. As my background is in Financial Services (primarily compliance) and Change Management, then certain things stand out a mile as being obviously "wrong" in the way the club are doing certain things and trying to spin other things....and I can also see how poorly they have managed the transition up to the SPL and all the changes that have come about and been forced upon them by that process.

I'm intrigued, care to elaborate....?

The appointment of Brewster could be your starter for ten. Warnock announced by the press as a runner for the vacancy, the BoD do nothing to deny this rumour and even go as far as setting up a poll to see who the fans would like, Brewster or Warnock. Surprise surprise, Brewster was offered the job before the job was even available. Donald Park leaving for personal reasons? The John Rankin transfer saga? All of it was smoke and mirrors from the board.

[billyshears]

I don't see why the club should be criticised for portraying certain events in as positive a light as possible. Spin has been around since time immemorial, it is used by all organisations, and in all walks of life, why should football clubs not be allowed to?

[Jay_7]

I don't see why the club should be criticised for portraying certain events in as positive a light as possible. Spin has been around since time immemorial, it is used by all organisations, and in all walks of life, why should football clubs not be allowed to?

There's portraying an event in a positive light, and there's blatant lies being told to fans. I for one, don't like being lied to.

[Scotty]

it would probably carry a lot more clobber if remarks and comments are passed by others rather than the usual suspects. Perhaps summat in the programme describing Boardroom Banter may entice others to comment on the forum - they can have any user name and that is practically anonymised if they want to post their comments. The concerns raised have to be on behalf of the support and not the Internet minority.

My initial suggestion to GB was to have a partnership of interested parties and to highlight it not only on here, but also on the official site, the trust site (if they wish) as well as putting something in the program.

I further suggested that points for discussion could be added by users on here or via an email address that we can setup for those who are not members of the site to submit questions to. If we get a few more members that want to discuss things on here out of the process, all the better, but the email address will allow those who dont want to join this site, don't really surf the internet, or who may have an issue with those of us who run it to participate.

I don't see why the club should be criticised for portraying certain events in as positive a light as possible. Spin has been around since time immemorial, it is used by all organisations, and in all walks of life, why should football clubs not be allowed to?

There is spin, and there is spin. When it is done well, or when it is appropriate it is fine but when it is done badly or used to mask the truth (which usually comes out eventually) it is perhaps not such a good idea. The club have been guilty of both and quite frankly, PR is one of the areas where they fall down badly.

The previous BB articles had a fair bit of what some might call spin. At the time, I preferred to say that things were "told truthfully from a certain perspective" !!! There were no lies (that I am aware of), but positive points were emphasised and questions that were asked were answered directly where possible. I will be quite happy to follow that same format in future articles and emphasise the positive things that show the club in a good light but its a two way street. We need to be respectful of the club and its officials to make this work and keep them engaged in the process but they also have to be respectful of their fans and not go down the "mushroom" route. If we can achieve this then maybe we can both learn things and crucially "understand" where the other is coming from.

Right now I am happy that GB has agreed to this and I am approaching it with a fair amount of positivity, much like many of the posters on here. There are probably lots of little things/incidents I could pick on to make me bitter if I wanted to be, and Billyshears, I dont know what your connection to the club is, but you seem to know more details than some. However, as far as I am concerned, we have all moved on, its water under the bridge and in this matter I will have no personal axe to grind, no grudges to settle and a mindset where all I want to achieve is for the club and fans to view each other in a positive light and show each other a bit of respect and understanding. Maybe then we can all get back to what we actually want which is to support the team on and off the park.

[billyshears]

Billyshears, I dont know what your connection to the club is, but you seem to know more details than some.

Scotty, we are living in the information age, and since you used to live here you know that Inverness is a very small place - everybody knows someone, who knows someone, who knows something!

Unfortunately it is typical of the paranoia found on fans fora such as these, that if you can see things from the club's point of view, you are automatically believed to be connected in some way. The boring truth of the matter is that I just like lively discussion, there is nothing more tedious than a thread where everybody agrees. These are the ones which fizzle out within a couple of days, much better to stoke the debate by offering the alternative viewpoint.

Hope you don't mind me adopting this attitude, and rest assured it will never degenerate into anything out of order (I'm sure I'd be getting the :thumb04: if it did). I wholeheartedly believe that the more balanced the views coming from this site, the more credible it becomes. A lot of my mates think the site is full of people coming on a moaning all the time (I obviously put them straight on that one). Also I don't know how you're numbers have been since the changeover, but a lot of these guys don't even come on here anymore since you have to register to see the full discussion threads - what was the idea behind that one?

[Scotty]

Scotty, we are living in the information age, and since you used to live here you know that Inverness is a very small place - everybody knows someone, who knows someone, who knows something! Unfortunately it is typical of the paranoia found on fans fora such as these, that if you can see things from the club's point of view, you are automatically believed to be connected in some way. The boring truth of the matter is that I just like lively discussion, there is nothing more tedious than a thread where everybody agrees. These are the ones which fizzle out within a couple of days, much better to stoke the debate by offering the alternative viewpoint.

Wasnt your opinions that made me think that, it was a couple of comments you made. I would say that many of your points are valid and well put and have added to the debate. I am sure Alex who is often accused of being overly positive will welcome having a fellow positive poster to share in the abuse banter. Who knows, perhaps more people will be posting positively if and when the BB and communication in general with the club improves.

Hope you don't mind me adopting this attitude, and rest assured it will never degenerate into anything out of order (I'm sure I'd be getting the :thumb04: if it did). I wholeheartedly believe that the more balanced the views coming from this site, the more credible it becomes. A lot of my mates think the site is full of people coming on a moaning all the time (I obviously put them straight on that one).

I would agree. Its an age old argument that gets trotted out that "everyone is so neggy". My age old response is "well, come on and be positive then". As far as I am concerned, there is no point in people complaining about negative posters and then not doing anything about it. Funnily enough, in these last couple of weeks where positive noises have been coming from the forum in relation to the rebirth of BB and improving communication with the club, I havent heard many people applauding the positivity of this initiative. Simple fact is, we are all ICT fans and we all want to see the club do well. Some people are never happy and will moan all the time, some are never unhappy and will be positive all the time. I like to think that I personally have a balance of the two and will come down on whichever side I believe in. I like to praise the club and will do so when its merited, but I will also criticise when I feel it is warranted.

Also I don't know how you're numbers have been since the changeover, but a lot of these guys don't even come on here anymore since you have to register to see the full discussion threads - what was the idea behind that one?

Numbers are pretty good really, and the rationale is quite simple. On the old forum we had complaints of slow page loads, sluggishness etc so when we moved over here we decided to concentrate our server resources primarily on the active members.

Guests can see all forums and can see the list of threads but can only see the first post in each of them. This reduces the number of queries and locks on tables within the database considerably and speeds everything up for "real" members. I am tempting fate now, but I can honestly say we have not had a single complaint about the speed of the forum that has been traced back to the forum itself. There may have been brief slowness on a couple of occasions in the last month because of Internet conditions or our service provider but the site itself seems to be like **** of a shovel compared to the previous one.

[Joonya]

Scotty - I am asuming you will not have much of an update from the club until your meeting on the 27th?

[Scotty]

you assume correctly

[Scarlet Pimple]

Site flows fast.

Good one!